You know it's close to the start of the tour when you finally feel the itch to find bike boxes. I keep threatening to swap out our steeds for folding bikes, but apparently we're not quite ready to make the leap yet. So we dusted the spiderwebs off the car and made the quick trip to Free Range Cycles. Shawna and Ian were happy to scrounge up two perfectly-sized boxes for us. We have other sources, but we love to hit up our favorite bike shop first, mostly so we can touch base and let them know we'll probably have some stuff for them to fix upon our return.

Lost somewhere in the excitement of this new chapter of our touring lives (and let's not forget our non-touring lives, too!) are some facts that would have stunned my younger self:

• This is our fifth bike tour in Europe!
• This is our seventh overseas bike tour!
• This is our twelfth bike tour of over one week's length

I'm not even sure what the number would be if we included all the overnighters, weekends, long weekends, and other jaunts. A good guess would be about thirty. That's a lot of riding!

My trusty 2015 Surly Disc Trucker has over 40K miles on the odometer. Much of those are training and commuting miles, but it gives me some sense of how dedicated we've become to the activity of touring. Prior to that, I rode on a 2006 Jamis Aurora, which I think only had 8K on it when I sold it.

It was almost thirty years ago that we bought cheap MTBs for leisure rides around town. They probably would have served us fairly well for our first few tours, but after our first taste of touring, I wanted to buy bikes designed for the purpose. While still reeling from the sticker shock of a custom-built Long Haul Trucker (they didn't sell complete bikes at the time), the owner of our local bike shop offered the Jamis as an alternative. I'm glad she did, because otherwise we would have walked away dejected and empty-handed. If we had a crystal ball that would show us that, yes, this is the sport for us, we would have bitten the bullet and purchased the Truckers. Would we still be riding rim-brake Truckers 19 years later? Maybe!

As I reflect on our years of cycling, a few things spring to mind. One is that we seem to be following the trajectory of many fellow CycleBlazers: as our day jobs wind down and our financial obligations lighten, we have found more opportunities to sneak out on decent-length tours. Now that we're retired, will we spend nine months every year on our bikes, like some of our hardy colleagues? Or will we chart our own path?

There is one thought that stands out more than everything else: just how lucky are we to be able to do this? Yes, we have worked hard, made a lot of sacrifices and lived in a way that many people would find restrictive. Even so, we were handed opportunities that, honestly, the vast majority of humans never have. Fewer than twenty per cent of the world's population has ever flown in an airplane. That doesn't surprise me, until I think of the countless leisure flights we've taken. What makes us so special? Nothing.

I want to provide a little counterpoint to this. I think about the kid we met at a campground in Montana. He told the story of how he felt restless one day, gathered a few belongings, hopped on his Walmart bike, and pedaled west from his home on a North Dakota reservation. He looked pretty tired, but the entire time we spoke, he had a huge grin on his face. We had all the "fancy stuff" (believe me, we could get a lot fancier), yet it was obvious that he was having even more fun than we were.

From our first trip down the Oregon Coast in 2009, I came to believe that bike touring was the great equalizer. We met teenagers who were doing a hundred miles a day on their fixies, teachers in their thirties enjoying their summer vacation, groups of middle-agers on catered tours, and grizzled veterans who looked like they'd been on the road every day for the past fifty years.

So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the style of touring we're developing doesn't make us elitists. We may not feel comfortable wild camping every night, eating tortillas and peanut butter for every meal, or riding bikes we found in a dumpster, but we do go out of our comfort zone every day. It may not everyone's idea of an adventure, but it is to us. I am forever grateful that touring is a part of our lives and that we're able to continue doing it. Knock wood!