- Liam Garner set off with a bicycle and around $8,000 to try to accomplish a "ridiculous goal."
- Over 17 months, the teen cycled 20,000 miles across 14 countries, from the US to Argentina.
In August 2021, 17-year-old Liam Garner set off on an adventure of a lifetime with a bicycle, some camping equipment, and about $8,000 in savings.
In January, the Los Angeles native completed his 20,000-mile trip from the northernmost point of Alaska to the southernmost point of Argentina.
Over the course of the 527-day-long trip, Garner told Insider he rode through 14 countries, reconnected with family in Mexico and Panama, and amassed a following of over 350,000 people on Tiktok.
Right after he graduated from high school in Los Angeles, the teenager started preparing for his mega-adventure. Before his trip, the longest distance he had cycled was from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back.
He decided to challenge himself with the "most ridiculous goal" just to see if he could do it.
"I hadn't ridden a bike in over six months, and I didn't even have a bike until the month I left," Garner told Insider. "It's good to have blind confidence in yourself, sometimes."
His mother did not approve of his trip, and his father did not know about it until he was already in Alaska. But Garner says that they are both his "biggest supporters" now.
He flew over to Alaska and set off on his bike from Prudhoe Bay, the northernmost point in North America accessible by road.
His trip was not without its difficulties, and at some moments, he felt like giving up.
One of those times was when he was robbed while cycling in southern Mexico en route to Guatemala. He lost his phone and his wallet, and had to cycle without an internet or GPS connection, in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
In June, Garner got into an accident in Colombia, where he was thrown off his bike and hit his head. That accident landed him in hospital for a month.
Garner also says he's proved to himself that it's possible to travel the world without being rich. He managed to earn around $8,000 in total from TikTok and Patreon to keep going, while traveling on a shoestring budget.
"So I had a goal, my goal was to spend $450 or less a month because that's the price of my car insurance at home. If I could live on less than my car insurance, no one could tell me that I was spending too much, right?" Garner told Insider.
On January 10, Garner finally reached his destination — the city of Ushuaia in southern Argentina.
The teen is now backpacking home to Los Angeles, after which he plans to write a book about his travels. He is already thinking about his next cycling adventure from Europe to Asia.
"I feel like people just need to know that they are capable of incredible things," Garner told Insider.