Okay.. here's the last bit wrap up...

After the great visit to the [un]Holy Land we rose at 0 dark thirty for the trip to Tel Aviv as Ben Gurion is the only airport in Israel to handle international flights.

[ interesting aside - planes flying to India and points south from here have to head out over the Med, turn left, go straight south and then hang another left out over the wilds so that none of the flights cross Arab/Muslim territory..two obvious reasons for that, of course, but it adds to the flight time and logistics ]..

anyway..

Get into the morning vue for the pre-flight check.. we watch in horror as they feed the bags through the detectors which are set up right in the concourse before you go to the ticket wicket - anything hinky and your hand luggage then goes to a ' personal inspection' counter - but what was scary was thet the machine actually spits the luggage out in a flying arc off a rather steep conveyer..Anything delicate had a 50-50 chance of survival..at best..

Line up for the ticket check and boarding pass issue..same old,same old.. the name ' change' causes me to be pulled aside for further scrutiny and scans, etc..finally get the fishy eyed go-ahead but with an extra sticker on my flight bit. We had two suitcases and a guitar, which had to be processed through a separate gate so that it wasn't just chucked into the bowels of the plane and crushed to pulp. - more on this later -..

flight to Paris is ' without incident' though I could have done with something other than raw fish, crunchy salad and stinky cheese as a lunch...

Next day at CDG airport, when the missus is heading home and I'm staying behind to be a good guy[ at Air France expense ] they have to pull my luggage [ no unaccompanied luggage on the plane ]..well..

Next day when its my turn to fly home I get pulled aside again this time to be given an e-mail saying that I have to retrieve luggage when I land..

Get home to find that my bag was cleared through with my wife's bag when she landed and I'm left with the guitar..so much for matching luggage to people to prevent terrorism, etc.. all due to the computer tag being issued to me when they slapped them on the kit at Israel...computers, don't you just love'em?

guitar had a blue strap wrapped around the neck because one of the hinges was a bit wonky.. when I picked it up at home port, the strap was gone. Wife, who came to pick me up insists that the guitar had been ' played with ' while out of our hands in security lock-up as it was out of tune to her keen ear..

I'm thinking it was merely ' inspected'- right? - surely the baggage boys weren't have a little rock/folk fest with it while it sat overnight at the airport..??

anyway... I'm back, staring out at freezing rain falling and thinking time to book another excursion..

Gunny, what's the weather situation in Arizona?

Ahhhh, mid-70s, it'll be 80 (F) over the weekend here in the high desert.....Spend the afternoons out on the back porch watching the dogs laze around in the sun, spend weekend mornings out there drinking my coffee (still have a mild chill in the mornings...makes it nice)....yep, yep, yep....

quote:

I'm thinking it was merely ' inspected'- right? - surely the baggage boys weren't have a little rock/folk fest with it while it sat overnight at the airport..??

Sorry bout th outa tune thing . Funny th monkey said th same thing,but he threw a heck of a concert on th tarmac

Wondered why there was this whiff of bananas when I opened the case..

The weather in Arizona depends on how many people are being sprayed with misty water at the bus stop. Then again there is YUMA ( Hell? ). You cool off there by standing next to a radiator.

Yuma is certainly on the road to purgatory! But I traded that in for a town on the gateway to Death Valley.

As for the guitar and flying, you do know that you are supposed to de-tension the strings for high altitude flights? As for the blue strap, it currently resides on the wrist of that fat baggage handlers new girlfriend.