Taking Five ... Days, That Is

After dinner at the hotel lodge in Jasper, Alberta, as our family meandered back to our rooms along the lake last week, my father-in-law turned to me and asked, "Did you bring your guitar?"

I thought about the thousands of tiny toys and socks we had stuffed into every crevice of every bag and laughed out loud. "No," I admitted. "It's about the only thing we didn't bring." My father-in-law laughed but had the good grace not to look relieved.

When packing up for last week's family vacation in the beautiful Canadian Rockies, I never once thought about hauling the guitar to the airport. What with the car seat, stroller, various backpacks, roller bags, stuffed animals, and one growing toddler, we just didn't have enough hands. It was either the guitar or my changes of clothes, if you see what I'm saying.

Not only that, but I really don't have the case for airplane flying. Sure, my guitar sarcophagus makes me feel plenty secure around the little one and the not-so-little dog, but I've seen Toy Story 2 enough times to know that what goes on behind the scenes along the luggage conveyor belt just ain't pretty. For international jaunts, I need something more durable—like Iron Man's suit, perhaps.

Days later, while checking our "oversized" stroller bag at the Calgary airport, we waited patiently in line behind three hunters who were working to clear their igloos full of bear meat, hides, and skulls—not to mention their cases of bows and arrows. Just when we thought the entertainment couldn't be better, a youngish guy rolled up behind us with what looked like a Picasso sculpture of a gleaming refrigerator. A double-take revealed it to be the gigantic roller case for a bass fiddle. The thing was taller than any man in line. Between such exotic cargo, I felt pretty boring clutching a basic black bag containing a run-o'-the-mill umbrella stroller.

Even less cool was the middle-aged woman with the smart haircut who couldn't wait to fire the following salvo at the bass player: "Makes you wish you picked up the piccolo, doesn't it?"

As she proudly rounded the corner at speed-walker pace, the bass player sighed, "Yeah, I've heard that one before."

My dreadnought is perfectly puny next to the massive bass viol, but I still won't be hauling it through airports anytime soon. Of course, the week's hiatus didn't do much for my playing, although I'm happy to say that my hard-won callouses are still functional.

What with weather changes and neglect, my strings are sadly out of tune indeed, and I am out of practice. You are technically supposed to detune your guitar when you take a long break like that so that the tightened strings don't put too much tension on the neck and wreck everything, but I failed to do this what with diapers to count and tiny jeans to fold. It happens. I hope there are no dire consequences. But no matter how bad my guitar playing gets, dear lady with the smart haircut, I'm still not picking up the piccolo. So there!