Liam Garner is a long distance cyclist who set out at 17 to bike from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina, completing nearly 20,000 miles and becoming the youngest person to ride the length of the Americas. Now, Liam is continuing his global cycling journey, riding roughly 15,000 miles from Portugal through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia toward Singapore as part of his goal to bike across every continent.
Liam Garner is a long distance cyclist who set out at 17 to bike from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina, completing nearly 20,000 miles and becoming the youngest person to ride the length of the Americas. Now, Liam is continuing his global cycling journey, riding roughly 15,000 miles from Portugal through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia toward Singapore as part of his goal to bike across every continent.
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Liam Garner:
Day seven, biking from Portugal to Singapore.
Day seven officially marked my first full week on the bike and my legs needed a break. But first, I had one important detour to make. Cape Vincent, the most southwestern point of Europe. And from there, it was a smooth ride through some grassy hills to the town of Luče where a family offered to host me.
Hello.
Speaker 2:
[inaudible 00:00:21] just in time.
Shelby Stanger:
At just 17 years old, Liam Garner set off on the bike trip of a lifetime. He started in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska where he strapped a tent, a sleeping bag, and a bear canister to his bike. From there, he began pedaling to the southernmost tip of the Americas. Along the way, Liam faced extreme weather, dealt with serious injuries, and met some of the kindest people he'd ever encountered while seeing majestic sights. Nearly a year and a half and 20,000 miles later, Liam arrived at Ushuaia, Argentina, becoming the youngest person to ever bike the length of the Americas.
Now, Liam is chasing another wild idea. This time he's biking roughly 15,000 miles from Portugal, across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, all the way towards Singapore. It's all part of his grand plan to ride across every continent in the world. A project he expects will take him a total of seven years.
I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Liam Garner, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. You're sitting behind this beautiful tapestry and you are not in the United States. Where are you?
Liam Garner:
Currently, I am in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, one of the ancient Silk Road cities. I'm currently sitting in I think a 250-year-old courtyard at my hostel.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing. And I hear some roosters in the background.
Liam Garner:
They're not ours, but they're someone's.
Shelby Stanger:
What are you doing right now? Tell us about your wild idea that you're on.
Liam Garner:
Well, right now my current trip and goal that I'm biking towards is doing Europe to Asia, or Portugal to Singapore. And so I actually just had my year anniversary of starting this trip this week. So it's officially been one year since Portugal, since Lisbon, and I probably have just shy of a year, maybe more than a year, until I finish in Singapore. But this is, like I said, this is kind of like a sub idea of the main one. And the main idea that I came up with when I was 17, and I've been working on ever since, is I want to hopefully bike every continent in the world.
And so right now I'm on Continent four. I did North and South America in Europe, and now I'm in Asia. And after this, I have Australia, Africa, and Antarctica.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, this is incredible. How old are you, can I ask?
Liam Garner:
Yeah, of course. I'm 22.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. So what was the story of the first time you went bike touring? So you grew up in Southern California.
Liam Garner:
Yeah. So I grew up between Long Beach and Orange County. And like I said, first ever bike trip, it was during COVID and I knew... There was one day in particular, I just really wanted to go camping and I had no way to go camping because I didn't have a car. And I had a really just crappy beach cruiser and I'm like, "What if I just bike to San Clemente from here? It's like 50 miles. I should just go for it." And so I did it and it was the easiest thing ever. It was just like four or five hour bike ride. Went there, camped at the state beach and then I was home in the morning before afternoon. And it completely opened my eyes to the options, you know?
Shelby Stanger:
After that camping trip, Liam's wild idea started to snowball. He discovered bike touring, which is basically backpacking on wheels, strapping your gear to the bike frame and finding a new place, often in the wild, to crash every night. A couple of months later, Liam decided to up the stakes and bike pack for a full week. This time he'd ride 500 miles north from LA to reach a must see San Francisco landmark.
Liam Garner:
There was this really viral bougie Taco Bell getting super popular online, on TikTok. And it's supposed to be the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world, in the Bay Area in San Francisco. And I was like, "How funny would it be if I just went to that Taco Bell?" Because I knew I wanted to go to that Taco Bell, but I didn't have a car, right? And I'm like, "Well, I should just bike there. That'll be my excuse to do a week-long bike trip for the first time."
And so that's what I did. I spent eight days biking from LA to San Francisco and a few months later I made a video series about that just stupid bike trip I did to Taco Bell, and it actually went viral. And so that series I think got something like six million plus views.
Shelby Stanger:
That bike trip to Taco Bell became a launching pad for Liam. When videos of his ride went viral, one viewer left a comment that became a bug in his ear and inspired Liam's next wild idea.
Liam Garner:
It was senior year and I knew I didn't want to go to college, but in the comment section of the Taco Bell video of all places, I had someone leave a comment basically saying, "Oh, this totally reminds me of a book I read about someone that biked to Patagonia. This is the name of the book to Shake The Sleeping Self." And I probably had thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands of comments on those videos and I happened to read that one. And I went and I looked up the book and I bought the book and I read the book, and then I read the book a second time, and then I read it a third time. It really planted the seed.
Because Jedidiah Jenkins, his book is the most widely known for biking the Pan-American. And so reading his story really kind of gave me the idea like, "Okay, well, if this guy can do it and that guy can do it and this person can do it, why can't I do it?" I already knew I loved bicycles. I already knew that I could do it with what I had and I knew that I needed to do something drastic after high school and just change my life.
Shelby Stanger:
What did your family think about it?
Liam Garner:
So like I said, I was a very stubborn, even more so back then, person. And I come from a very long line of academic matriarchal Mexicans on my mom's side. And so she grew up in a house full of very highly educated women. They were very proudly educated. They fought hard to have a higher education. And when my mom went to the US and had me, she brought that philosophy. And she always knew, or at least she thought, "My kid is going to go to school and he's going to get these degrees and he's going to be highly educated just like the rest of our family." And her sisters, all PhDs and teachers. So that was what was expected of me.
And senior year is when I really solidified this idea in my mind to do Alaska to Argentina. And I told her, because I told her everything, and she kind of just laughed it off like, "Okay, honey, whatever." And then time kept going on the year's ending and she would ask me like, "Oh, what colleges have you applied to?" And I would tell her, "Mom, I haven't applied to any colleges. I'm biking to Argentina." And she'd be like, "Oh, okay, okay." And then one day it was I think a couple of weeks before graduation, she came into my room and I remember she just asked me, "Oh, Liam, I'm so excited to hear what colleges have accepted you. What colleges did you get accepted into?" And I said, "Mom, I'm biking to Argentina. I didn't apply to a single college, nor am I going to get accepted by any."
And I could just tell that it clicked and for the first time she knew that that's what I was doing. She just said, "Are you really going to do this?" And I said, "Yeah." And she just turned around and walked away.
Shelby Stanger:
No matter what his family thought, Liam was determined to make this trip happen. It was 2021 the COVID pandemic was in full swing and the idea of paying full tuition for online college classes wasn't appealing. Instead of sitting on a computer all day long, Liam wanted to do something tangible, something that allowed him to interact with people and see the world. He reached out to the Taco Bell manager he'd met on his bike trip there and together they convinced the team at the company's headquarters to buy Liam a new bike.
Honestly, it wasn't the best bike for riding 20,000 miles, but it was free, which was a big deal for a kid who'd just graduated from high school. From there, Liam's journey was officially on. He packed up his equipment and flew to Alaska. What went into planning that first adventure. I mean, you're like 17 years old. How did you fund it?
Liam Garner:
There essentially was no planning, just kind of the, like I said, the will to go and just figure it out along the way. I was just so cavalier, but to a fault. It was a bad personality trait, but it got me there, so I can't hate too much. But I had always been so frugal and really hoarded my money growing up. So every birthday, Christmas card, every dollar I ever made throughout my life, I saved. And I didn't know what I was saving it for, and then I finally did know what I was saving it for when I did that trip.
And on top of that, I also had Patreon and some donation pages where people could pay me five to 10 bucks a month and help support the trip. And so between the money I saved up and the couple hundred I got every month from donations and also a very frugal shoestring budget, I was actually able to essentially break even every month in my trip.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you do that?
Liam Garner:
Just by suffering a little. The reason I really also loved bike touring is because it is the absolute cheapest way to travel that is available. There's no cheaper way to travel than bike touring. I know that might not sound true because you're thinking like, "Okay, well, you have to buy a bike and you have to buy this and that. And what about being like a backpack bum, you just hitch everywhere?" Still. I've done the backpacking. I backpacked for eight months from Argentina, backed home to California. I've done road trips, I've hitched and bike touring still is by far the cheapest. And I'll tell you why. It's because you have ultimate freedom and you don't need to rely on anyone for anything, which means you don't have to pay anyone for anything. The only expense is food. You don't need gasoline to fuel the bike. You don't need to pay for accommodation, you're just sleeping outside if you're willing to do that. So it can be as expensive or as cheap as you want.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have a highlight from that first trip? Just something magical you saw, landscape, like someone you met?
Liam Garner:
Oh, that's a big question. I mean, the whole trip was life defining. I don't know if I would say life... It was life changing, but more than life changing, it was life defining. And I think that it was so interesting at the time because I was aware of this, and it's even more interesting in hindsight that I was 17 and I finished the trip when I was nearly 20 and those are just incredibly formative years. I was going from being a child to becoming a young adult and a man. And a lot of people would consider that time to be kind of the coming of age period. And whether you do that in college or you do that during a gap year or whatever you choose to do in life, that's usually what people look back to like, "Wow, I changed as a person."
And for me, not only was I coming of age mentally and through my experiences, but it was physically tied to the world. I didn't become a different version of myself in one town. Every day I was in a new place chronologically and I can still go back and look at the map and see day by day and remember town by town. It's essentially like a physical representation of how I became an adult.
Shelby Stanger:
After reaching Argentina, Liam spent eight months backpacking home to California. When he got back, he tried to settle back into normal life again, but it was tough. He was spending way too much time scrolling on social media and he started to feel disillusioned.
Liam Garner:
Suddenly I was at home and it's like, "Okay, well shoot, back to reality, time to just, who knows what I'm doing, get a normal job," and just back to the same old listlessness and screen addiction problems. It was all the reasons multiplied that had made me want to leave in the first place all coming at me at once. But, yeah, I'd had this goal of biking every continent. I just didn't know if I was going to have the means to do it, so I knew I was going to have to stay at home a little bit.
But basically I filmed the whole trip from Alaska to Argentina and back home. And I wasn't even expecting necessarily to make a whole series out of it, it's more for personal reasons. I've always loved taking photos and videos of the things I'm doing. And I made some friends in the year that I was home and I showed them some of the clips that I had and they just looked at me and said, "Dude, I haven't seen any of this on Instagram. Why haven't you posted any of this?" And I'm like, "Oh, I'm just working at my restaurant now. I'm busy. Maybe one day." And they're like, "No, dude, you got to post this tomorrow. You should make a whole video series about it."
And my friend Caleb, he looked at me and said, "Dude, you need to promise me right now that you're going to make a video about this within the next two weeks. Promise me." And I posted that video two weeks later and it got over 10 million views. And so that whole year, 2024, was career defining because it was in that year that I finished the Alaska to Argentina series. It was over a hundred episodes in total. And I think between my platforms, the series got over 160 million views. And it was that push from just a really great friend. I really didn't think that anything would come of it, but my friends pushed me to see what would happen and now it's my career. I'm here again. This is trip two and it's actually my job and I'm making a living from it, which I'd never in my wildest dreams expected.
Shelby Stanger:
After graduating high school in 2021, Liam Garner went on a 527-day bike trip from Northern Alaska down to the southern tip of Argentina. The journey was completely transformative for Liam. He left as a teenager and came back as an adult. Once he was home, that same listlessness that inspired his first ride crept back in and he decided that it was time for another adventure. Thanks to the audience he built with videos from his first trip, Liam was able to find some sponsors and save enough money to set off another bike expedition in 2025. Eventually you decide to go Portugal to Singapore. When do you leave for this trip?
Liam Garner:
I started this trip... Well, so I started biking from Lisbon, my official first day on the bicycle was March 31st, 2024, just over a year ago today, but I flew to Lisbon March 17th from LA. So I spent a couple of weeks just finishing up some work in the city and prepping. So, yeah, it's been a year now. Crazy.
Shelby Stanger:
Congratulations. What did you do differently in terms of logistics, your bike, your gear?
Liam Garner:
So on the last trip, barely any money - I left with what I had, figured out everything as I went or later. And so many things I did were just so stupid and just pure poor planning. And I got myself into so many situations that I could have easily avoided. This trip I knew, I'm like, "Okay, I can be smarter than that as much as it's fun doing it that way." And I also thankfully had the privilege of also having a social media presence on this trip, as opposed to the last trip. And so this trip, I didn't plan three days in advance before I left, like the last one.
I actually spent a few months sending countless emails and DMs, just a different company, seeing if anyone was interested, any sponsors. And I was actually able to get the bike sponsored along with my racks and my bags and my clothing along with some other products, and that has just been an incredible help. Also, because I'm making money from social media now, I technically am actually making money while on this trip, as opposed to the last one where every day I was struggling to break even.
And so because of that, the budget isn't necessarily some super stressful cloud hanging over my head this whole time. So it's given me a lot more freedom to take my time and enjoy things and not have to sleep on the street in the rain if I don't want to.
Shelby Stanger:
Hey, good for you. So how is that working? What's a typical day like for you, wake up to sundown?
Liam Garner:
So I would say on average a really nice routine for me is I like to shower at least twice a week. I think that that's pretty reasonable. I don't think that that's a unreasonable situation. Usually after three days of biking is when I'm like, "Okay, I'm stinky. I'm gross. It's time to shower." And at least once a week I like to take a rest day. So twice a week, I like to stay somewhere, but usually five to six days will be biking and then one day just fully off.
It truly depends on the place. Like I said, every week in region and different. Here in Uzbekistan, we've been taking so many breaks. This is already my third day here in Bukhara just because it's such a cool city to see. I don't want to skip past it. For me, the priority is the travel and the sightseeing, not the biking and the miles. But through Afghanistan, we'll probably do a lot more ride-heavy days as opposed to rest days.
Shelby Stanger:
What about the people you've met along the way?
Liam Garner:
People have been incredibly friendly.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you need to go?
Liam Garner:
No, no, no. That was actually the hostel owner, she just brought me some bread.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, she sounds so sweet. That's awesome.
Liam Garner:
Yeah. Yeah. She's out here with her kids right now. This is some traditional food that's just fry bread out here.
Shelby Stanger:
Yum.
Liam Garner:
[foreign language 00:18:18] Yeah, that was nice of her.
Shelby Stanger:
You're learning languages really fast too. And you've pronounced names well. It's incredible.
Liam Garner:
I wish. That's one of the only words that I know. I'm trying. I'm trying. But, yeah, I've been changing languages so quickly. I will give myself some credit, on the last trip I did learn Spanish, but it did take me a long time.
Shelby Stanger:
Liam is such a kind young man. You can hear it in the way he talks about the cultures and the people he's encountering along the way. Some nights he finds locals willing to host him and other times he stays in hostels or camps outside. His gear - his tent, sleeping bag, clothes, and recording equipment - is all strapped to his bike.
Tell us a little bit about the gear you are using. So what's the bike that you're using? How is it different?
Liam Garner:
The bike that I'm riding is called the 600ADX from Priority. And Priority is an awesome company. And so they did sponsor me on this trip, but I was the one that reached out to them because I already had had my eye on their bikes for a long time. But basically on the last trip, my bike just broke constantly and it's hard to experience where you are and have fun if you're just worried about fixing your gear. And so I knew that I wanted a bike that could handle what I was doing.
I don't know if you've heard of this before, but typical bikes have a chain and a derailer. But there's also something called a belt drive bike, which has a carbon belt, like you would see in a car or a motorcycle, and all the gears are inside of a pinion drive in the frame. So there's no derailer or anything, which means it's essentially impossible to brake. And Priority is essentially one of the only American companies that makes belt pinion drive bikes. So I reached out to them and I said, "Hey, I absolutely love what you're doing. Can I have a bicycle please?" And they said, "Okay, absolutely. We will send you a bicycle."
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing.
Liam Garner:
And it's been amazing. Yeah, it's been such a game changer. This thing, it's just every day it rides so smooth. It's impossible to brake, unless you get hit by a car, which unfortunately did happen earlier on this trip, but I fixed it. But, yeah, it's been amazing having this bike and some good gear.
Shelby Stanger:
I can't gloss over that. You got hit by a car?
Liam Garner:
Yeah. So earlier... Thankfully, I'll start by saying this trip has been so stress-free compared to the last one, but there has been some crazy weeks. And specifically a week when I was in the Balkans, I was leaving Bosnia and entering Montenegro on a really remote road in the mountains. And there was a Russian couple on vacation in a rental car. And it was kind of like one of those one lane mountain roads that everyone is supposed to go really slow on around the corners and give people space, and they were just going full speed around a blind corner fully in the lane. They didn't want to drive next to the cliff, so they were driving in the right side. And so as soon as I turned the corner, I just completely go straight into them.
And thankfully, I didn't go over the hood. They clipped me on the left, but they ripped my left pedal off and they hit my left handlebar, and so they destroyed my left brake and my hand, my left hand. I'm so grateful for it though in the end because I could have broken an arm or worse, I could have died. So the fact that I just sprained my thumb after everything is said and done, honestly, best possible outcome. It does suck. It led to a ton of just money and time being wasted. I had to repair the bike so many times. It only was recently figured out finally. And also the medical bills, I just had to pay $300 in Georgia for the doctor and my MRI, but it is what it is.
And now I know since then, this happened about six or seven months ago, if it wasn't for that couple hitting me with their car, there's so many people I wouldn't have met and I wouldn't even be with the friends I'm with right now today. I am grateful that that happened because it's just another one of the things that led me here.
Shelby Stanger:
Liam, you have an incredible attitude. Have you always been the kind of guy that sees the glass half full?
Liam Garner:
I've always been... I don't know. It's hard looking back, because I don't know how I felt in the past. But I know now what my philosophy is and I know that the philosophy I have today is because of what I learned on the last trip. And the last trip I did, like I mentioned, I was on a very tight budget. So it wasn't for no reason, but I just...
I've always struggled with perfectionism and OCD. And when it came to money on the last trip, if I even spent 20 cents too much on bread or something, I would just ruminate about it all day and it would eat me up. Like, "Oh, I wasted $2 or like, oh, I lost a dollar yesterday. This is terrible." But one day on the last trip, I just kind of had an epiphany and I realized that, whether or not this is true, if you just choose to believe that everything happens as it's supposed to, then you can never regret anything and never beat yourself up over anything.
And so I'm not going to sit and try to prove this to people. Obviously no one knows if everything happens like it's supposed to. But ever since I chose to believe that one day on the last trip, I've never been happier. Every little mistake I make, "Oh, it must be for some reason," and my happiness has been tenfold since then. So it's a philosophy I really am grateful for.
Shelby Stanger:
Liam has been on the road now for 14 months. When we spoke, he was in Uzbekistan about to ride into Afghanistan. He knew it was going to be a shift, but he was applying that same unshakable optimism to this next leg of his journey.
Tell me a little bit about going to Afghanistan. What are you looking forward to? What are you going to be cautious of?
Liam Garner:
On the last trip I was passing through a lot of countries that people essentially just told me, "You're going to die. They're going to kill you. You're crazy for going." And some of them, just like Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia, Peru... At the time, El Salvador hadn't turned itself around. It was one of the most dangerous countries in the world. And so all these countries just had such a negative stigma. And growing up, I'm Mexican and I grew up going to Mexico to see family all the time when I was a kid. But even despite that, I knew that Mexico wasn't some insane place. It still was a little intimidating when everyone is messaging me every day, "You're going to die." It still gets to you a little bit.
But I can tell you on the last trip, it was the friendliest, most amazing experience ever passing through all those places. And I've learned that usually the more negative stigma a place has, the more you end up being pleasantly surprised. El Salvador genuinely was the friendliest people I'd ever met, until I went to Turkey on this trip, and people told me that I was going to get murdered on day one.
Obviously, I think people should be safe and educated before they go somewhere, but chances are... I don't know. I think that the news is predisposed to sharing the worst of people and places and things. And one of my biggest motivations for traveling is I just really feel that you can't speak about a place or know a place until you see it yourself, and I don't want to take someone's word for it. And because I've done that, I feel like I have such a clearer picture on so many places that normally would be talked about in such a negative light and I know it's all BS.
And obviously Afghanistan rightfully has a lot of negative attention and I absolutely do not agree with any of the values the government has at all, but it's a country of what? I believe over 50 million people, with dozens of cultures, dozens of ethnic groups and histories and 99% of all the people I've ever met traveling have been incredible. I'm not too worried. I think that it's going to be nothing but a good time.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the things that traveling the world has taught you? You seem so knowledgeable when I speak with you.
Liam Garner:
I think it's taught me everything, honestly. Just my personal experiences while traveling and the decisions I've made and the people I've met and that have influenced me. I had such a hard time or I was having such a hard time the couple of years before I started the first trip in Alaska. And I've always struggled throughout my life, especially in school. I was really not doing well. And if I hadn't had gone on that trip, I know that my life would be so much worse off. I can't even imagine where I would be right now.
Forget about career-wise or friendship-wise. I don't know where I would be. I don't know if I'd be here. And so the first trip, and this trip as an extension, just has taught me why I love life and what I'm supposed to be doing.
Shelby Stanger:
You can see videos from both of Liam's rides on Instagram and TikTok at Liamtheimpaler. That's L-I-A-M-T-H-E-I-M-P-A-L-E-R. On those profiles, you'll find links to his Patreon where he's posting exclusive content.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thank you again to our partner, Capital One, and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.