Tour fever
 

One thing that I wonder is how long it takes most people to get the desire to go back out on the road after returning home from a tour.
Do you get home and hope to not even make eye contact with your bike for a while or do you feel road sick and wonder where and when to go next?

When I get home from a tour, my desire is to do the laundry, switch out some clothing and other supplies for something different, rest for a few days, and hit the road again.

I usually have to have something planned for after the tour to distract me ... like starting another year of University, moving to a new place, starting a new job, or something.


However, after a long randonneuring event, I'll often park the bicycle and not look at it for a few days.

It depends on how long the tour was. On a tour of a week or longer, I probably won't ride for a few days. On shorter tours, I'll probably be planning the next tour in my head before I even get home.

My wife and I usually start talking about our next tour before we get home. We also have a "bucket list" of tours, and it is a matter of prioritzing and saving vacation time. We are always a little sad when we get to the end of a tour. On our longest, 11 weeks, we really did not want to stop. However, once home it is nice to hop on an 18 lbs. road bike (we are always fully loaded), and just cruise a little.

The tentative destination for the next tour is often set well before the current tour even begins. I've got the next 3 years lined out with a 3 stage cross country.

After a long tour, I'll give the bike a rest for a few weeks and spend the time regaining my running and swimming fitness. It's usually being rebuilt anyway.

On a long tour I have tons of time to think....... I also run into other tourists who feed my thinking with stories of past tours they have done.... That just fuels my imagination even more.

Were were right back out riding immediately after our first tour (Trans America), but these days I don't ride much other than when on tour, preferring to trail run.

That said, I will say that re-entry into the "real world" is tough after a couple months of the simplicity of on the road. Coming home can be pretty hard to cope with and it takes a few weeks for me to be OK with "real life" again.

On a tour that lasts over a month, I'm dreaming and scheming very shortly after I'm back and sometimes even when I'm on the road on the that long tour :)

Yep ... when I was on my 3-month tour of Australia, I was already thinking about a tour up the US west coast. Now that tour didn't turn out quite the way I thought it would ... too much train, too little cycling, but nevertheless the planning stage was while I was on the previous tour.

I get back on a bike and ride a couple days after I get home. It's so fun to ride my unloaded Allez after riding my loaded LHT for a long tour. Plus, I'm in such great shape from the tour that I can ride longer and faster, and I don't like to let that fitness fade.

I don't pine to go on another tour immediately, but I inevitably have such a great time on tour that it makes me want to do it again. I can usually only take one big tour per year, so after one I start considering where to go for the next one.