Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
It's an interesting conspiracy theory to consider that most of the people touring have been duped into their gear selections by the mind melding powers of the google Borg collective.. and equally attractive to be one of the few who are "in on the secret" about how it should really be done. Otherwise it might just be that most people, most of the time, have different priorities than going as light as possible for the sake of going as light as possible. I'm not knocking your choices, they are as valid as mine, but I suspect they represent the minority opinion in regards to overall touring.
There is a tipping point at which worrying about weight becomes a concern of diminishing returns. That point is whether you can achieve your touring goal in relative comfort. I suspect most people find that tipping point using conventional means and that is why there is no real push to further strip away what is already, for many, spartan resources. I like being self sufficient and don't want to call a taxi or hitch hike or sit around waiting for someone else to fix what I could fix because I wanted to save some weight and not bring enough tools. I don't like cooking, but some do, and they would probably enjoy doing that on their vacation rather than eating canned food from a pot with a spork. I can't relate, but I have even heard of some people packing spices!
The same applies to bikes. The law of diminishing returns suggests that people need a dependable platform they can trust and ride in order to complete a tour. That is what they seek(and why Ortleib panniers are so popular). For most that is a mid grade bike made of conventional materials. Once you can achieve your goal, you look to other sub goals within the tour itself. For some that is blogging, photography, site seeing, meeting locals, cooking... and for a few it is seeing how much additional weight they can drop from their kit. But that is a subgoal unrelated to the main goal which many people aren't that attracted to because they can already achieve their main goal with the weight they have. It's a valid sub goal, and for some forms of touring it may play a part in the main goal. But not usually to a large degree.
Your first paragraph is a bit defensive, but your points are valid. However, putting up other options is not a dictum on how to bicycle tour, but just that -- other options.
There was a guy I used to tour with in a group that always amazed everyone by the fact he had only two small panniers and a bar bag on his bike. IIRC, he had a steel-framed touring bicycle, but I can't remember the brand. He was comfortable in camp (and cooked), fast on the road, but a real gentleman who waited up for the regroups. Now, this is a decade or more ago, and I thought at the time... Wow.
Over a period of time, and with various experiences, people do decide whether what they take on a bicycle tour is actually worth the weight and bulk. Heck, I used to take a folding camp stool with me; now, if I need to, I take a small square of closed cell sleeping pad. My tool kit is now a Topeak Hexus folding tool and maybe a shifter cable, tube patch kit, and not much else; I used to have a crescent wrench in there along with FibreFix spoke, BB tool and other stuff.
There is one other little point. The more stuff you have, the more likelihood there is of misplacing or losing something along the way. Keeping it to the basics really does help avoid that.