I am a planner. We will be heading to Montana from the east coast on June 29th for an 8-day tour. Booked the flights already to avoid fare increases due to escalating gas prices. Already thought about the cat situation after a bad cat-sitter experience last year. And since we will be travelling during the July 4th "weekend," I have already started to make lodging arrangements where I feel space might be at a premium. (You might consider doing so if you plan to be in Telluride for that festival. The town can get very crowded in summer.) Soon I will also be making arrangements with a LBS at the start/finish point for bike receiving and assembly. As for gear, we usually take a 3-day tour over Easter weekend. This allows us to make sure gear is in useable shape. Easter is late this year, so that will put it closer to the tour than usual. Since we'll be shipping the stove along with the bikes, I will do some routine maintenance on it a week before the bikes are shipped and test it. Even with all that, we will probably be packing things the night before our flight.

For my first long tour, I gave up my apartment 3 weeks before the trip started and flopped with mom. Mail forwarding was taken care of at that time. I made a set of instructions and left mom with a checkbook to pay my credit card bills and other things that might come due. My gear was all new and I had tested it at home. The night before I was to catch the train to the west coast, I went drinking with some of the guys and said "See you in about 4 months."