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Press KitThe following is information about the many interviews, newspaper clippings and various media venues that have recently promoted Dean's work. You may also read the Press Release for Dean's Book, "Wonderous Journey," by clicking here. * This page uses some PDF files: Jacobs captivates audience at Wayne State College By Lynn Sievers/Wayne Herald
Weber students travel the world By Rob Daniel/Iowa City Press-Citizen
High school leaders urged to follow their dreams By Julie Blum/Columbus Telegram Radio Spot by KTIC/KWPN in West Point World Traveler By Cynthia Peterson/L Magazine What a Wonderful World By Gary Reber
Dean's journey is about to continue By Don Bowen/Fremont Tribune Fremont native heeds passion to travel By Beverly J. Lydick/Fremont Tribune
Travel author is featured speaker at Sunday's Western Iowa Art Show By Missouri Valley Times News Bryan
High School by Paul Cordes
KODY Radio North Platte, Nebraska
Television Interview with
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Dean Jacobs of Fremont speaks at a brown bag luncheon Thursday at the North Platte Public Library about his "Wondrous Journey" around the world two years ago. Jacobs has written a book, complete with pictures, titled "Wondrous Journey: The World is Waiting | |
The world came alive Thursday at the North Platte
Public Library, in pink and orange African sunrises, green pastures in New
Zealand, Australia's Ayers Rock glowing red in the sunset and brown,
smiling faces of children in Cambodia.
The photos were part of a presentation by Dean Jacobs of Fremont, about
his "Wondrous Journey" around the world two years ago.
In 2001, Jacobs left a well-paying job and sold his home to fulfill a
dream to travel the world. Now, he has published a book, "Wondrous
Journey: The World is Waiting for You," of his journals and
photographs from the 22-month adventure.
Jacobs' story is about dreams come true, he said. He remembers tears streaming down his face when he saw Mount Everest in
Nepal, fulfilling a lifelong dream. From there, 18,187 feet in elevation,
he traveled to one of earth's lowest points, the Dead Sea in Israel, below
sea level.
He walked inside an Egyptian pyramid and lay inside the coffin there. In
Cairo, he met Rose, a Parisian who is now his fiancé.
"I always thought to travel I would have to win the lottery or be
rich," the Fremont resident said Thursday, wearing a navy Peruvian
vest with angular designs similar to Native American decorations, a
fraying, blue handkerchief from his journey around his neck. On his right
hand was a jade ring he bought in Nepal for just $6.
"I'm here to say anyone can do it. If you really want to, if it's in
your heart, that's available," he said.
In his travels, he ate crocodile and camel, and tasted snake blood. He
communicated with the universal languages of smiles and nods. In Asia, he
spent three weeks teaching English to Tibetan refugees. He learned to
scuba dive and saw the domed spires of India's Taj Mahal.
He held a baby wombat, a cross between a teddy bear and a small pig. In
Indonesia, he saw entire families riding on one mo-ped. He saw the majesty
of the mile-wide Victoria Falls in Zambia, where the ground shakes and the
spray rises a quarter-mile into the sky during the rainy season.
In the wild plains of the Serengeti, a national park in Tanzania, he
watched thousands of cheetahs, zebras, hippos and elephants roam wild and
free.
"'Serengeti' means 'the grass that goes forever,' and it does,"
Jacobs said, with wonder. "There's a magic in a place where animals
are not encaged, you are in a cage. It's special."
In Vietnam, he experienced love and forgiveness from a man who expressed
concern about 9/11.
"I was surprised that he would talk to me, after what happened,"
Jacobs said. "He told me, 'That's in the past. We can be
friends.'"
Through it all, Jacobs learned the magic of living a dream, which he hopes
to share through his book and presentations.
He said that has already happened, mentioning a letter he received from a
young Nebraska girl who heard him speak.
"She said, 'I never knew dreams came true until you came,'"
Jacobs said, with tears in his eyes. "That's so amazing, that someone
from Nebraska could come and speak and give them permission to
dream."
He said any sacrifices to make his dream happen were all worth it.
"I have less money in my back pocket, but the treasure lives in
here," he said, pointing to his heart.
"I have the privilege of sharing that treasure with you."
Jacobs ended by quoting from the Pico Iyer essay "Why We
Travel."
"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to
find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about
the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what
little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe
whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to
become young fools again - to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in
love once more."
Man finds love on 'Wondrous
Journey'
It's just before dawn at the base of Mount Ararat. The tent unzips. A 12-gauge shotgun pokes through. "Money!"
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Dean Jacobs, who gave up a six-figure salary as a salesman at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals to travel the world on $15 a day, sits up in his sleeping bag. He's in his underwear, staring down a barrel at a man with a blue scarf across his mouth like some bad guy of the Old West.
He's a world away from his hometown of Fremont, Nebraska. "Money!" The man points the barrel at Dean's bag and then back at Dean, yelling in a foreign tongue, with just the one English word thrown in. Another young man in a mask is in the other tent robbing three other climbers.
By this point of his journey, Dean has learned a few things. Like to stash your money in different places. He gets out his wallet, hands over all the money in it, about $150.
A few days later, a snowstorm makes Dean abandon the ascent and he's in a village below Ararat, in a hut of stone and mud, sitting up on a black-and-red Turkish rug.
He's telling an old toothless lady the story. She brings him cookies,
biscuits and tea and offers a smoke from her pipe. She is smiling.
A friend interprets: "She wants to know why you didn't fight them? She says, ‘There were
two of them and four of you.' "She says, ‘Come back to the mountain next year, and I'll be your
bodyguard.'" They laugh.
Then he's in Syria, a country President Bush has just called part of the "Axis of Evil." Someone picks Dean's pocket. Everyone else throws out the red carpet. He meets a Bedouin family. They invite him to stay a few days.
He meets a
Bedouin woman about his age, 40 years old. She has 15 children. "Will you be having more?"
"Inshallah." God willing.
Then he's riding a motorbike through a town in Thailand. Something tells him to turn left and soon he's riding along a lake. He
sees a volleyball net near a cluster of shacks. He stops. It's the end of Ramadan, the fasting month for Islam. There's a feast. The
people, Muslims who can't speak English, invite him to eat. He plays volleyball with them.
Then he's in Ethiopia, singing with cement workers on a bus. Speakers on the bus blare music. As the bus drives by, people on the
street dance. Dean thinks to himself: Why do these people who are so poor hear this and
dance? When we who are so rich would hear it and call it noise? A man on the bus says his wife is about to give birth.
Dean gives him a gold Sacagawea coin. "A lucky golden dollar for your baby."
By this point of his journey, Dean has developed a theory: If you're searching for something, you'll find it. If you're searching for evidence that the world is a bad place, you'll find it. Some governments and people are bad. But if you're searching for evidence that the world is good — what he realized he was searching for when he began his 28-month journey through Asia and Africa and Europe — you'll find it.
And, along the way, you may discover something you didn't think you were
searching for. He 
meets her at a hostel in Cairo.
She's a French woman, a photographer, with curly dark hair. He watches her easy way with the Egyptian children, who flock around her
in the streets. He listens to her broken English. A friend, she says, couldn't use the airline ticket to Cairo. She jumped
at the chance. He can tell she sees the world through the same lens he does.
Their first date, they sail on the Nile. There's no wind that night. They
laugh. He's in Paris, visiting her. He's traveling with her through South America. He's asking her to marry
him, on a sailboat under the stars heading to the Galapagos Islands.
He's saying goodbye, for now. She must do the paperwork to come to the
United States. "Fremont is not Paris." "That's OK, cherie."
He visits her this past August. They go hiking in the French Alps. He asks
her to marry him, once again, this time in French. It's just after noon at the base of Mount Blanc.
Reach Colleen Kenney at 473-2655 or ckenney@journalstar.com.
Where to get the book
Dean Jacobs, a Fremont freelance photographer, has self-published a book
about his 22-month journey around the world covering 28 countries.
The book, "Wondrous Journey," is available in local bookstores
or through his Web site, www.travel4life.org.
A stranger in strange lands Fremont man pens book about world travels
By
Keith Rydberg
Reporter
Anyone who wants to experience the world on $15 a day would be wise to contact Dean Jacobs.
The 42-year-old Fremont resident has recently completed a book on his decision to leave his career at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and take a 22-month journey around the world. “Wondrous Journey — The World is Waiting for You” is a collection of Jacobs’ journal entries and personal photographs from his trip to 28 countries from May 2001 until April 2003.
Jacobs, who is also the uncle of Melissa, Kathy and Sarah Jacobs in Blair, will sign copies of his book from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Saturday, December 11, at Blair Book and Supply in Blair.
Traveling by himself, Jacobs said he left his Fremont home May 16, 2001, with no real idea of where he would go or when, if ever, he would return. He said his decision caught friends and relatives by surprise, even after he explained his reason for leaving.
“I have always considered myself a pretty independent and free-thinking individual,” Jacobs said. I went into this just trusting my heart and seeing what unfolded. I spent a number of years searching for things and it almost seemed like something was calling for me. I felt like I could not afford not to do this. I had been ignoring this pull inside me for some time and I finally decided to honor the calling. I told my brother that it was going to be a long trip. I even gave him power of attorney over my personal effects in case anything would have happened to me.”
Although Jacobs was able to use pay phones to call back to Fremont occasionally and use e-mail whenever he could find an Internet connection, his family primarily kept track of him through journal entries he posted on his web site, many of which Jacobs copied word-for-word in his book. Jacobs said it was difficult letting his family know where he was going to be next as he improvised on most of his journey as to where he would go and how long he would stay when he got there.
“I had a map of the world that I used before I left and I just basically placed dots on the places I wanted to see,” Jacobs said. “I knew I wanted to go to Victoria Falls for one thing. I also wanted to go to Thailand just because I liked Thai food.
Also, I wanted to travel to Vietnam just because of the political controversy that exists there.”
Limiting his budget to between $10 and $15 per day, Jacobs said he kept a small budget on purpose as it allowed him to see things a normal tourist might not notice. Through most of his trip, he stayed in hostels with dormitory-style housing where he often met fellow travelers who were on similar treks.
“I used a small budget when I traveled because, No. 1, I knew that if I managed things right, my trip would be longer,” Jacobs said. “Also, I chose to have a small budget because I was interested in seeing beautiful things that were off the beaten path, such as the Australian outback. There is almost a whole community of people like me around the world. While I never met anyone who had traveled as long as I had, there were a lot of people who had been doing the same thing for several months.”
Since returning from his trip, Jacobs started the Travel4Life publishing firm and makes a living selling copies of his book, speaking to children and adults and explaining his philosophy. He also maintains his website at www.travel4life.org.
“There are a couple of things I hope people will get from my book,” Jacobs said. “First, I hope they get the message that if they have a dream, they should follow it because there is a real magic that happens in the fulfillment of that dream. Also, I hope they learn that the world is an amazing place.”
Omaha World Herald
Published Thursday
January 20, 2005
Michael Kelly: Global traveler finds a lot of warmth
BY MICHAEL KELLY
WORLD-HERALD COLUMNISTYou're single, enjoying your career and a six-figure salary. If you're like most people, you sure don't take that job and chuck it.
Dean Jacobs of Fremont, Neb., did just that.
"I bought a Rand McNally map," he said, "unfolded it on my bed and started putting dots on things I wanted to see but thought I never would."
For nearly two years, starting in the spring of 2001, he personally connected the dots, staying in low-cost hostels on a budget of $15 a day.
"The amazing things,"
he said, "were the surprises along the way between the dots.
Ninety-nine percent of my experiences were nothing but interesting,
fascinating and heartwarming."
Sure, he was robbed at gunpoint near Mount Ararat in Turkey, and armed men accosted him in Africa before letting him go. But more often he met people like the Syrian man who stood in a long line for bread and offered some to Dean.
"He said, 'I want you to know you are most welcome in our country. Maybe you can tell your people that not all of our people are evil.'"
As America marks the start of a new presidential term, with strife, violence and uncertainty in the world, Dean Jacobs, 42, says his travels give him hope.
He's not naive. Traveling in the Middle East, he said, was physically and emotionally wearying because of the tension, animosity and anger. But despite contrasts, he said, people are more alike than different.
"The world," he said, "is an extraordinarily fascinating, complex, inviting place that has far more kindness and generosity than we give it credit for."
Dean, who graduated from Fremont High and Wayne State College, where he was student government president, worked 10 years for Pfizer Inc., the world's largest drug company. He lived in Seattle and then San Diego.
But after musing and meditating for a few years about what many earthlings have pondered - what on earth are we doing here? - he decided to explore.
Through 28 countries, he took photos and kept a journal, resulting in a self-published book, "Wondrous Journey." He will sign copies from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Bookworm, 8702 Pacific St. in Omaha, and read at 7 p.m. Monday at the Crescent Moon Coffee Shop in Lincoln.
The book ($29.95) also is available on his Web site, www.travel4life.org.
Dean was in Australia on 9/11 and received an outpouring of sympathy. He visited Indonesia and the Thai island of Phi Phi, and worries that friends he made didn't survive the recent tsunami.
He saw the sun set on Mount Everest and the ritual bathing in the Ganges River. He found kindness often, especially in Cairo, Egypt, where he met a Parisian named Rose, who is now his fiancée.
Dean, living again in Fremont, hasn't returned to a regular job but is thinking about it. While traveling, he thought a lot - about connecting dots and people, and about a journey of the spirit.
"I walked the footsteps of Jesus and saw the birthplace of Buddha," he said. "I prayed with Muslims and saw a pilgrimage of Hindus in the mountains of north India. I was with Christians in the Holy Land and Jews at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
"If we focused on sharing the love those religions bring into the world rather than trying to prove ours is the best way, the world would be a different place."
WOWT - Channel 6 Interview
Omaha World Herald
BY JOHN KEENAN
WORLD-HERALD
STAFF WRITER
Dean Jacobs of Fremont has written "Wondrous Journey," a large-format paperback with color pictures that documents his two-year journey throughout the world.
A Wayne State College graduate, Jacobs covered 28 countries, from Egypt, where he had his picture taken with the Sphinx, to the rice fields of Flores Island, Indonesia, which he captured in a nice aerial shot.
But Jacobs' pictures aren't all of stunning vistas. Often the photos show Jacobs or the friends he met on his travels: a woman with a Komodo dragon in Indonesia, a man holding a frilled lizard in Australia.
His text is chatty and informative. Jacobs gives travel presentations at middle schools, an endeavor that takes charisma, and the book has a friendly, informative tone.
The books can be ordered from Jacobs' Web site, www.travel4life.org. He is signing copies of the book from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday at Borders Bookstore on Maple and 132nd Streets
The Wayne Herald
KETV - Channel 7 Interview
WSC grad finds 'goodness' in humanity By Jonna Huseman/Design Editor
The Omaha Reader
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