What got me started in touring?

A picture I cut out of the newspaper way back in the early 1990s. I still have it. It is a blue bicycle with blue panniers front and back. Something about it intrigued me ... it planted the idea in my head that perhaps one day I could have a blue bicycle with panniers, like in the picture ... and travel the world.

It helped, of course, that I've been into cycling since I was about 6 years old (thanks to my father), and that my father did a short tour in the Rockies (Jasper to Banff) when I was 17 years old ... which I vowed I would do myself one day.

It took a while for me to get into it, but my first tour was that Jasper to Banff tour ... that triggered it all. And then some time later, I got a blue bicycle on which I've been touring ever since.