Originally Posted by
wahoonc
Cycle Touring: Getting on a bicycle, riding along enjoying what you find along the way. The equipment, distance, locale and verbiage are all secondary.
Aaron

Suits me.
I've always tended to think of "touring" as synonymous with "
loaded touring": a giant bike with a hundred pounds of stuff strapped to it while the owner spends three months riding around the country. I suspect that's a common definition.
But I also have a hard time coming up with a name for the kind of riding I enjoy these days (not that naming it is especially important): spending a day cruising around, carrying the stuff I'm likely to want and need, often with no specific goal in mind other than to see new and interesting places and things. When asked, I call it "day touring" which seems as good as any other name for it - though my wife likes to refer to it as "idling, piddling, and general loafing".