Traveling with No Destination and No Goals: Lessons from a 3-Year, 38,000-Mile Solo Bike Ride Around the World with Jacob Lemanski

Zero To Travel Podcast

Jason Moore

Society & Culture, Business, Entrepreneurship, Places & Travel

4.6 • 866 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What would happen if you left home with no destination, no goal or deadline, and simply just went until you couldn’t go any further? Jacob Lemanski is an engineer-turned-world traveler who bicycled 38,000 miles over 999 days, crossing six continents and circling the earth twice. After returning home, he turned his travel journal into a video podcast, How To Move The Stars. He also founded an art and clothing company inspired by the experience and now runs a bike touring business in Colorado. Jacob shares what it was like to travel without a finish line and how it reshaped his entire approach to life and adventure. He reveals how three years of solo, open-ended travel deepened his understanding of presence, identity, and emotional endurance. You’ll hear what it took to stay on the road for 999 days, the personal cost and reward of extreme solitude, and how returning home led him to reshape his life through creativity, entrepreneurship, and reflection. This episode challenges conventional ideas of success and shows what’s possible when the journey itself becomes the destination. What’s one journey you’ve been holding back from because you felt you needed a clear goal or endpoint? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you’ll share by sending me an audio message. Tune In To Learn: What inspired Jacob to leave home without a destination and why he expected to quit much earlier What it’s like to live without a schedule for three years and how that changes your sense of time What the trip taught him about limits, identity, and emotional endurance The emotional impact of returning home after years of open-ended movement How Jacob turned thousands of journal pages into a long-term podcast art project Why he built a giant ant farm, and how psychedelics helped him process the trip His best advice for aspiring long-distance cyclists and building a trip around your personal limits And so much more Resources: Sign up for our FREE newsletter Jacob’s podcast, How To Move The Stars Ant Life psychedelic art and clothing Mountain High Bicycle Tours Want More? Lessons From Caring for the Dying and Bike Packing 18 Countries With Jerry Kopack 7 Bike Rides of a Lifetime With National Geographic’s Roff Smith Bike-Packing Scotland and Breaking Free of Cultural Expectations with C.D. Seventeen Thanks To Our Sponsors Apple Card - Earn 3% back on the Apple products and services you love with Apple Card. Smart Travel Podcast - Before you book, learn how to get the most out of your travel dollars. Follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The goal was simply to go until I quit, whatever that looked like. In my head, I thought I'd get
0:06.6	tired, but you know, you go to sleep and you wake up, you have energy again. So, you know,
0:11.5	throughout the trip, there was lots of reasons I might have stopped. I could have got injured.
0:16.0	Maybe I met someone that got me to stop. I wasn't sure what exactly what the end looked like, but the goal was
0:22.8	simply to go until I couldn't go anymore. I didn't actually have any destination at all.
0:28.6	That is today's guest, Jacob Lomanski, and that was his mindset going into this self-supported
0:35.5	bicycle ride, this solo trip that in the end ended up spanning
0:40.9	38,000 miles across six continents and took him twice around the world. Two times. His goal
0:49.4	of no goal is both Zen and Forrest Gump in nature. I mean, come on, who of us has not had that
0:56.8	sort of Forrest Gump fantasy where we just spontaneously take off and keep going until we get
1:01.1	tired and want to go home? Well, in this episode, Jacob shares the story behind how his
1:06.9	counterintuitive strategy of going until I feel like quitting led to three years of
1:12.6	unplanned adventures across six continents. What living without a schedule for a thousand
1:17.1	days taught him about presence, what hundreds of days of solitude taught him about himself
1:22.6	and the world, practical insights on funding long-term adventures, including how much his journey
1:28.2	cost, the benefits and challenges of human-powered travel by bike, how he transformed his experiences
1:34.1	into art and entrepreneurship and loads more. It's a wonderful conversation, and it's happening
1:41.0	in this episode right now. So buckle up, strap in. Thanks for being here.
1:44.5	And welcome to the Zero to Travel Podcast, my friend.
1:52.5	You're listening to the Zero to Travel podcast where we explore exciting travel-based work,
1:57.6	lifestyle, and business opportunities, helping you to achieve your wildest travel
2:01.7	dreams.
	...

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