to be fair, I bought a Tricross (which for the OP, I think is a great bike to propose, as a light-med tourer and unloaded, a fun tough "nearly" road bike, but I digress) came home with it, saw the new rear rack I bought for it was going to need shaping of the struts, so I grabbed the rear rack off my mtn bike that I have used for commuting et al for years, and slapped it onto the Tricross with nary a problem. The mtn bike is an old Spec Rockhopper, and the lug holes are in the same position as the Tricross.

Did a two day light tour with it the next day, have had that same rack on it all summer, it has never loosened and while I havent "fully loaded" it as on a tour, I have had all kinds of stuff on it, and its been no worse than the rack on my old touring bike that I did many long tours on.

No, I havent even tried to see if my old Blackburn front rack will fit on it, I should check that out now that you say it can be tricky, would be better to mess around with it now rather than just before realizing it would be nice to slap a rack on front...tks for the heads up on that.

Im a big supporter of using cross bikes for multi uses, I think it is their biggest strength. Plus they are generally still a fun road/commuter bike that will be definately more "sprightly" than a real tourer, for the 90% of non-touring I do (but practically 100% always have at least one pannier on, from nearly empty to nearly full)