I'm not sure how I got it into my head that touring was possible. Probably from talking to people in my bike club who toured.

The impetus for my first tour was that I used to publish comic books. My partner in the business lived in San Francisco, and the big convention every year is in San Diego. Every year I would fly to SF, and then we would all go down to San Diego. Every year we took a different mode of transporation; one year we drove, one year we flew, one year we took the train. So I suggested that we cycle one year. My friend, who was the artist on one of our books said that sounded like a great idea. Of course, being an artist, he flaked out on me. I couple of years later, when I was no longer publishing, I did the tour without going to the convention.