There are thousands (actually, right now 9720) of journals and articles in Crazyguy. Each one has something behind it, something that made it happen. Just for fun, I took a sample of one, choosing the most recently updated one right this instant.Those who knew me as a Statistician are now of course choking on their lattes, since a "sample of one" is the most notorious error in the book of statistics errors, followed (or preceded) by the "biased sample of one" - in this case happening by not choosing at random.

Anyway, I came up with "Normandy Invasion" by Keith Klein. Keith begins by writing:

"We were among the last off the ferry in Cherbourg, and we had to stand in line for passport control for quite a while. This was Sue's first trip to Europe, and she was eager to get as many stamps in her passport as possible. Visiting France had been her dream since she was a small girl, having been raised by her Francophone mother who along with other sundry Quebecoise relatives had filled her head with a romantic vision of the "mother country". When the bored douanier waved her passport aside without the precious tampon, she asked him to stamp it properly. "But madam", he said, "if I stamp it you will have to leave in 90 days." Thus began our love affair with France.

I'm someone who needs goals. So in my touring life I have always tried to define a goal for each tour for motivation, and to give me a point where I can say "it's over". "

Keith goes on to explain that the French cycling association gives out a medal for each of 36 French regions that one visits, that he already has 15, and is on the hunt for more. So from this we can write down two motivations: the romance of visiting a certain place, and having a bucket list of tours to knock off. We can understand those motivations easily. We have them too. For our tours we also in general share no doubt dozens of the other motivations that people cite, and lots of them apply to each single tour. This tour will be the same, but it adds some very special motivations:

We want to share whatever we have found in cycle touring with the latest generation of our family.

We want to share with them the way we see everything, from the natural landscape to going for an ice cream to coping with a little hardship.

We want to see them having tons of fun - selecting gear, seeing some giant pigs, swimming in a clear lake. Seeing someone having fun is the most fun.

We want to share in the kids' unique perspective on the tour, and experience it their way, with them.

And we want to create a lasting record - this blog - of this, their big trip, that they can look back on. One day, too, they will look back on it as something they did with their grandparents, while they were still around.

Few of these thousands of general and specific motivations are necessarily, or likely, the ones for Amelia, Violet, and Avi. We haven't interviewed them about it. Maybe we ought to - and if we do we will add it in. For now what we have is some snippets. These snippets have come to us via their parents.

Snippet 1, from Sabrina:

"We read Hilda and the Troll almost every day, and Amelia talks about you both and how you are in the tent, and then you ride bicycles all day, and eat ice cream (she was remembering the posts about ice cream from days past). Then she asks when she gets a bike.. "

Ah, Hilda and the Troll - a romantic role model. Who is Hilda? According to Amazon.com:

"Hilda can never sit still for long without setting off on another adventure. She can't resist exploring her enchanting world—a place where trolls walk, crows speak, and mountains move. The magic and folklore of the wild, windswept North come alive in this book about an adventurous little girl and her habit of befriending anything, no matter how curious it might seem."

So, ultimately we need to take Amelia to the Black Forest, or someplace like that. But in the meantime, we like the ice cream quest, and maybe befriending things along the way, preferably around our tent. We feel we have a good chance of success with this, and we are eager to see Amelia's reaction to the trip.

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Snippet 2, from Laurie:

After last year's trip in Idaho, Dodie put together a picture book for Avi and for Violet. The books showed Avi and Violet out on the tour, and documented what they saw and what they did. They featured kid's book style text to comment on the photos. A bit like a blog, they were more like a travel book, only Avi and Violet were the main players.

Avi, especially, loved his book. He would often choose it over ones in his extensive library - the library already mentioned here.

So for there to be an adventure, and for oneself to be in the thick of it is a great reason to go out on the road. I think that is a motivation for all cycle tourists. And then for there to be a "book" about it later? Great!