Friday, June 25, 2010

Guitar fees on airline

So I have pretty busy summer once again for the best parts. I'm just back from Poland with Sliotar. We played a nice festival in a beautiful town called Ełk, in north east of Poland. And next month Sliotar is going for a month long tour. But before all this, I am going back to Poland tomorrow, just for a holiday:-). We rented a little cabin in a middle of nowhere, beside lake. The plan is to relax in a quiet surroundings, exercise out doors, swim, kayaking and long walks in the forest. Also lots of Barbeque's on open fire.
I wanted to bring an acoustic guitar with me, after all when I get back, week later we start the tour, and I would hate to start it with stiff fingers. And also there is something silly romantic about singing a song at a camp fire... Anyway! So I am flying with Aer Lingus, pretty decent airline in these parts of the world. And bringing the guitar was not as straight forward as I thought. Now I do fly a lot with my instruments with work, but here I am just going on a holiday. The options given to me were: either buy a extra seat for the guitar (you are not allowed to keep the instrument on the seat for safety reasons, so you must store it at an over head locker and the airline reserves the right to sell the seat again!), or I can have the pleasure of handing it over to the not so caring hands of luggage handlers and transport it with in the cargo hole. This option would cost me €30 one way, totaling in €60.
But I have thought about a third option. I will look for a cheap second hand guitar for €50 in Warsaw. As I have some good friends there, I could leave the guitar with them and next time I go over, I would have it there:-). And I do go there about once a year. There are two other things I would like to point out here. First of all I can hear some one saying, don't! It will be really bad guitar! but this has it's own benefits. I am not going to gig with it. Just little practice, and guitars that are bit rough and have higher action, are great for building finger strength and speed. Try this out. Practice something on a cheap guitar with high action for a while, and then play it on your main guitar. I bet it will be piece of cake. Also I like tweaking guitars. One of my acoustics I shaved fair bit off the braces inside, and the tone of the guitar changed totally. I also changed the tuners, saddle and nut and now it is my favorite acoustic:-) And yes, this would be something I would not mind doing while sitting beside a lake in the middle of nowhere.
So we shall see what I can find and If my plan works. But for now, enjoy the summer and I will keep you posted.
J.P.

1 comment:

  1. I totally get that. My GF is from Germany and we're over there quite a bit. Usually I throw an epiphone into the overhead with a little ickle amp in the suitacase.

    Last Christmas I just wasn't bothered and there was a little nylon strung guitar made in the DDR in the house so I set about making it right over Christmas.

    I came back twice the player as I scraped as much as I could out of that little instrument.

    Good luck with the blog JP. You've got a reader here with full empathy for your situation.

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