When Your Smartphone Dies...

We can experience such strange problems in this technological world. Yesterday, my new smartphone died. The day before, it was working just fine. The next day I tried to turn it on and nothing. I was pretty sure it was charged up, but thought it might be a random battery draining. When I got back to my room (currently on Gran Canaria, an island in the Canary Islands), I tried to charge it, but nothing. No response any which way. It was completely defunct.

My first thought was to take the battery out and put it back in. But I couldn't figure out how to do that since it's new to me and there was no obvious battery slot on the back. I'm not super duper dependent on my phone yet, but the next day I was changing to another hostel that looked tricky to find and it would be a heck of a lot easier with the phone.

A Traveler's Lesson: Don't Overstay Your Visa!

Wow, what a $%#^@! relief. About a week ago, I decided to double-check how much time I was allowed in Europe this time, since I'd spent about 2 1/2 months in Europe during the summer. You don't actually need a visa, just a valid passport. But the rule is that with a U.S. passport (and many others) you're allowed to stay 90 days in Europe in any 180-day period. So it's easy enough to deduce if you only enter once: just don't stay more than 90 days and you're cool. However, figuring it out when you've left, been gone a while and then re-enter can be tricky.

I entered the European Union (actually the Schengen zone, which is kind of the same as the E.U. but slightly different) in Iceland, and thought that I could now stay for a couple of months since I'd been gone for more than two months. I was somewhat winging it based on several different articles I'd read about how it worked (note: I don't recommend winging it when it comes to possibly overstaying your time in foreign countries!). But they let me in at Iceland, so all seemed well at that point.

Then a week ago, as I was considering my upcoming travel plans, I realized I should get a little more specific and figure out exactly how much longer I was allowed. And I eventually figured out that, whoops, I was pretty sure I'd overstayed my time by about two weeks already at that point, because I hadn't stayed out of the E.U. long enough before re-entering. I looked around online for what the potential consequences were for overstaying in the Schengen zone. But there's no specific punishment. However I did come across someone who had been fined 700 euros for overstaying by a few weeks.

Twenty-Six Years of Traveling Around the World

Apparently, I like to travel. I don't know if it's in my genes, or else my jeans or what but there was some sort of adventurous spirit in me from an early age. I first started hitchhiking when I was just seven or eight or nine, somewhere around there. I lived up a dirt road in northern California with my parents and younger brother. The school bus dropped me off at the bottom of the dirt road, and then it was a mile-and-a-half walk from there to our big cabin in the woods. At some point, I got the idea in my head to just kick back in the shade and read a book instead of walking, and catch rides with neighbors.

My global adventures began a decade or so later, when the day after I turned eighteen I hopped on a plane with an oversized, multi-pocketed bright red backpack bound for London, England and a summer of exploring Europe. I put my hitchhiking skills to the test by hitching from London to the southernmost extreme of England at Land's End (where one can gaze wistfully westward across the Atlantic and imagine all the previous, much more adventurous explorers who set out across that ocean, with high hopes of finding a better life in the land I'd just departed).

From that far end of England's land I turned back north and hitched all the way to the top of Scotland at John'O'Groats. I made my way across northwestern Scotland to the ferry and hopped over to Northern Ireland; hitched to the other side of Ireland; and then back again to Dublin, where I started using a Eurail train pass that would get me around the rest of Europe for another three months.

Gabriel Morris in Greece at age 18

"Following My Thumb" Available on Amazon!

My exciting and adventurous new book, "Following My Thumb: A Decade of Unabashed Wanderlust" (Soul Rocks Books, June 2012) is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Click here to order a copy of the book through Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Following-My-Thumb-Gabriel-Morris/dp/1846948495/

Gabriel Traveler You Tube channel (click here)

Click the link above to go to my You Tube channel, with almost 200 travel videos. Feel free to subscribe, as I'll be posting more movies soon, including upcoming ones about more of the Greek isles, India, Jasper National Park in Canada and lots more.

One day on Santorini, Greece

This is another short movie that tells the tale of my one day on the island of Santorini, Greece in 2009, which ended with finding a hidden church overlooking a spectacular sunset...

My new travel site, Gabriel Traveler (click here)

Lots of cool new stuff on my new travel site, gabrieltraveler.com. Just click on the subject line above.

A short movie about my amazing trip to Egypt in 2009

Going to Asia for the winter (click here to follow my travels on Facebook)

I will be traveling to Asia for the winter. In October, 2010 I fly to the Philippines for 3 weeks, and will be spending most of my time there in the stunning Palawan region. From there I will fly to the small city of Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo, Malaysia for a week. Then I fly to Bali and will be there (and other islands in that area) for 3 weeks. After that I fly to Kuala Lumpur, the largest city in Malaysia for a week. And then I'll fly to New Delhi, India. At this point I'm planning to spend the whole winter in India, staying mostly in one little village on the Ganges River, practicing yoga and meditation, writing and all-around relaxing and chilling out. I will be documenting my travels with photos, videos, travel stories, etc. on Facebook instead of here on my blog, because I prefer the video and photo quality there, and also it's easier for people to see when I've posted new stuff. Just click the subject line above to join my group devoted to my trip, and follow the adventures.

Jasper, Alberta (click here for photos)

I'm now back in Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada; where I worked before around a year-and-a-half ago. After my 4 1/2-month trip this past fall to Greece, Egypt and Turkey, I decided to come back up to Canada to work again and hopefully ski for the winter. I first went to another small ski town, Fernie in British Columbia, which I'd heard nice things about. I stayed there for three weeks, and even moved into a house with a housemate. But after three weeks I hadn't gotten a single call back from an employer and the money was running low.

So I called up here to the company that I'd worked for previously (actually I did this after a little over a week, to cover my butt in case I didn't find anything). They had one position available, working at the front desk of one of their hotels, and they offered it to me after a phone interview. I took it and came up here by Greyhound (I sold the car back in Portland) and settled in. And as it turns out, I realized that I like Jasper better anyways, so it's good to be back. They also offer employee housing that's affordable, so I have my own room in a two-bedroom apartment, which I'm sharing with a guy from the Philippines. I plan to stick it out here at least into the summer and most likely until the fall, but of course we'll just see. Click on the subject line above to see some photos that I've taken in the past few weeks.