How long will we keep traveling? What does home look like? These are questions that have been weighing heavy on our minds for the last few months. Since 2009, when we first sold everything to hit the road, we’ve been mentally on the move, stopping in cities for periods of time but never feeling settled. We gave up on the traditional concept of home as a collection of rooms to store your stuff. Home, for us, became each other -as long as Laura and I were together we were at home. We were happy with that definition and it kept us going even as we camped between sand dunes, froze our tails off, and rambled around the bottom edge of the world.

Today we got off the bus in Portland, the end of the line after three weeks of visiting family and friends after returning from New Zealand. We spent a few days with my family in Los Angeles, a few days in Palm Springs with Laura’s dad, a few days with friends in Santa Monica, a few days in Corvallis with Laura’s mom, and now… here. Home. Definitions are fluid because we change as people. For us, home is also where your community is. It is friends. And it is something we’ve sorely missed.

We’ve decided to put some roots down in Portland. Of all the cities we’ve visited, Portland draws us back every time. It is an exciting city to be a cyclist and we’ve made many great friends here. It is also a hot bed of cycling innovation and thinking. The dream of constant travel is alluring and we’re so thankful that we got a chance to see what it was like for ourselves. We’ve learned that for us, travel is a different life, not a better life. You experience so much, but it also exacts its cost.

So that begs the question, what now? We’re switching gears from being bicycle travelers to being advocates for bicycle travel. There are so many plans and projects that we dreamed up while on the road that are difficult to grow while constantly moving. We will still go on trips and continue to film, photograph and write about them; the only difference is that, at the end of it all, we’ll have a home base of operations. I’ve always looked at things through an advocacy lens on our travels and it has been fascinating to witness what works and what doesn’t. It’s time to connect the dots. It’s time to bring together the different ideas we’ve seen about promoting cycling, bicycle tourism and travel – and make our contribution.

So stay tuned folks. We many not be actively traveling at the moment, but the wheels are always moving forward.

(Keep our adventures going and the site growing! If you’ve enjoyed our stories, videos and photos over the years, consider buying our ebook Panniers and Peanut Butter, or our 2012 2012 calendar or some of the fun bike-themed t-shirts we’re designing.)