Originally Posted by
Capt Overpacker
Back to the ride leader, he's organizing the ride as an "Intro to Bicycle Touring."...He hopes to expose our club's riders to a small dose of the touring experience to see if he can form a group of riders who tour regularly in this region. He's open to riders bringing a SAG vehicle to carry gear, particularly useful for those who are not equipped to carry their own gear. It's not touring in its purist form. But it's a start. He's bringing at least one additional rider with touring experience from out of town.
When I was in CO, I did something like that for our local cycle touring group. Each year, I would organize a "three day ride", where we'd cycle on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sometimes it was out and back [staying same place for Friday and Saturday nights] and sometimes it was a loop with different place each night. We stayed in variety of places ranging from campgrounds to a large B&B. The club continued to do some variation of these after I moved away - at least for next years.
I wouldn't get too hung up on the exact definitions of purity here. Sometimes having a SAG vehicle can be nice, either in carrying less or enabling someone to join the trip as SAG driver that wouldn't normally participate. As trip leader it also gave me some extra comfort that if someone accidentally bit off more than they could chew - I could still have others do something a bit more challenging for them - so I didn't have to bring it all the way down to lowest common denominator. So it all worked out fairly well for the participants - and the bigger metric for me was whether folks had a good time and whether I piqued some curiosity from some others on what it might mean to do a more extended tour.