On the 12^th of December, accompanied by our fathers, we pedaled the last few strokes to the finish line in The Bund, Shanghai, to the cheers and hugs of many of our friends and family. We’ve spent the last weeks reveling in the comforts of home and adjusting to our post-trip lives. The question on everyone’s lips is the same: what’s next?

While exactly where we’ll be for the next few years for us remains unclear, here’s what we have planned for the next few months, and some musing about our next steps.

The Book

We’re compiling a book about our journey, which should be ready a few months after we return home. It’s a compilation of our best blog posts and published works, buttressed by some new narrative writing and excerpts from the extensive diary entries and notes we maintained during the journey. It’s a book that doesn’t require a reader to start at the beginning. One will be able to pick up any chapter and relive, for a half hour, a period of our journey. We’ll keep P1 fans up to date on progress, and of course announce when you can order your copy on Amazon or download it onto your Kindle.

The Editor Trip

After spending the month of January visiting friends and spending time with family, we’ll take off for a tour of Chicago, DC, and New York to meet with all the editors we’ve built relationships with on our journey. The point of the trip is to assess who we want to work for, where we want to work, and get advice from power players in the industry on next steps for a career in journalism.

The Talks

Chris and I have developed a few TED style talks about how to tell stories. They are based on the foundation of our journalistic strategy: CCR, or Character, Conflict, Relevance. One talk, spearheaded by Chris, talks about how to think like a journalist to get more out of your relationships. The other talk, spearheaded by Morgan and followed by a short workshop, is a practical lesson in how to use CCR to build powerful 30 second anecdotes that will help sell your ideas. We’ll be giving these talks at various schools, companies, and headquarters upon our return. Let us know if you’re interested in hearing us speak, or you know someone who is.

From Morgan: Musings on My Future, and a Life of Adventure

I left Paris with the notion that I might “settle down” after this trip, that so grand an undertaking might actually quench my thirst for adventure. By the time I got to India, I realized just how ridiculous that notion was. Adventure, and the challenges and excitement that it brings, are a part of my spirit that I will never shake. I have to embrace it, and follow the turbulent path upon which those urges guide me.

The question that lies ahead is not about whether I will quest for adrenaline highs and exoticism and the limits of my endurance, but when and where. It is also about whether I can overcome the opposite: a vitriolic fear of enclosed spaces with computer screens. The allergic reaction I have to chaining my life to such a space is strong enough that is has dampened my ambition. I’ve always had dreams of power, but somewhere on this trip I decided I would sacrifice them, for a while, on the altar of total freedom.

So while I’m not sure where I will be three months hence, I can say one thing: I will not take a job where I’m required to be in an office every day. I might have to become an office monkey later, when some great goal of enterprise or politics forces a routine. I will probably even have to make a compromise now, for journalism is a passion, and writing has to be done somewhere and editors have to be appeased. But my adventures are far from over.

I imagine that my life over the next few years will be some sort of hybrid. There are three things that I really want to do with them: find and write good stories, travel and learn languages, and spend as much time as possible climbing mountains. More specifically, I want it all. I want to climb the tallest peaks, take year-long walks across Africa, work on an Arctic expedition. I want to plumb and experience the hells of humanity that I have barely brushed on this trip: entrenched poverty, ethnic conflicts, wars. I want to write about all of that.

I imagine that that lifestyle will have to be supported by some combination of freelance writing and table waiting, or perhaps teaching English in foreign countries. Supporting myself will require some creativity.

I’m not totally sure where I’ll be three months from now. I need to get a lot of advice, and maybe make some money, before I take my next big jump. The decision, though, will hinge on two questions. Where can I build a name as a journalist? Where can I learn to climb?

Here’s to all the shenanigans, challenges, and friendships to come.

From Chris:

For now, a career in journalism is the game plan. I’ve got my eye on three publications in SF, DC, and NY that specialize in the type of long-form feature stories we honed throughout our journey. I know I’m about to become a poor, struggling writer, but I’m addicted to the thrill of it. Each story becomes its own adventure. Breaking into obscure scenes like child boxing and hip hop is just a badass career to have as a twenty five year old.

But for me, the real focus of the next two years is building relationships. Cycling from Paris was a chance to explore a vast swath of humanity — so many different lives and cultures – but it has been difficult to truly know people and places we passed. Creating bonds takes time, and I look forward to suspending some of my mobility in the next couple of years to accomplish that.

I know I’m not done traveling yet. I’ve got another long adventure in me, and the next two years will serve to gear up for some of the loneliness and loss of community that such adventures entail. I want to give back to the friends and family who so generously allowed me to vagabond over these last two years. Because come 2016, I know I’m doing it again.