It's been a blazing drag trying to accumulate the bits needed for the passport renewal application but right now I'm doing the countdown awaiting the arrival of the courier who will take the application to the U.S. Embassy in London where it will be sent back to the U.S. for processing. For whatever reason, it's mandatory to use the courier service so I wait and then pay the fee.
It will be a tremendous relief to get this in motion but it would still be premature to book a flight to Schiphol (Amsterdam airport). It's always possible something else will go wrong and then I would be out the cost of the ticket if I book it too soon. It's necessary to go to Schiphol to stage for flying back to the U.S. as there is no direct flight from Edinburgh.
On the last time back, the Customs agent discovered a container used to sell joints in Amsterdam. There was nothing in it but there was enough trace molecules or whatever to register a positive on a drug-sniffing machine. I was stunned when he showed it to me as I had no idea it was in there and I was even more stunned when he said there could be a five hundred dollar fine for it. I was tempted to say congratulations, Clyde, glad to see you're on the job stopping the ton of heroin that comes into the U.S. every day. I didn't say it as he would have brought out the anal probe for sure if I had.
It doesn't matter if I write about this as I'm not smuggling any contraband of any kind. I was amused to see a TSA inspection tag inside my guitar case from when I flew over here. They x-ray all luggage so they already knew there was a guitar in there but some wizard decided to open it and see, yep, it's a guitar alright. Gadzooks, if he wanted to do something useful he should have detuned it so it wasn't damaged by the flight.
Never ever fly unless you have detuned your guitar. You may get away with it on a short flight but the strings will pull the neck right off it on a long one. The strings get cold and contract ... pop ... your guitar ends up in splinters. The neck wasn't pulled off the body of mine but it was severely bowed. That was repaired in Greece but I was never satisfied with the work and it will go into the shop again in America.
And the beat goes on.
It will be a tremendous relief to get this in motion but it would still be premature to book a flight to Schiphol (Amsterdam airport). It's always possible something else will go wrong and then I would be out the cost of the ticket if I book it too soon. It's necessary to go to Schiphol to stage for flying back to the U.S. as there is no direct flight from Edinburgh.
On the last time back, the Customs agent discovered a container used to sell joints in Amsterdam. There was nothing in it but there was enough trace molecules or whatever to register a positive on a drug-sniffing machine. I was stunned when he showed it to me as I had no idea it was in there and I was even more stunned when he said there could be a five hundred dollar fine for it. I was tempted to say congratulations, Clyde, glad to see you're on the job stopping the ton of heroin that comes into the U.S. every day. I didn't say it as he would have brought out the anal probe for sure if I had.
It doesn't matter if I write about this as I'm not smuggling any contraband of any kind. I was amused to see a TSA inspection tag inside my guitar case from when I flew over here. They x-ray all luggage so they already knew there was a guitar in there but some wizard decided to open it and see, yep, it's a guitar alright. Gadzooks, if he wanted to do something useful he should have detuned it so it wasn't damaged by the flight.
Never ever fly unless you have detuned your guitar. You may get away with it on a short flight but the strings will pull the neck right off it on a long one. The strings get cold and contract ... pop ... your guitar ends up in splinters. The neck wasn't pulled off the body of mine but it was severely bowed. That was repaired in Greece but I was never satisfied with the work and it will go into the shop again in America.
And the beat goes on.
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