This video was posted in a comment by reader JimBob. I’d seen the video referred to in news broadcasts, but this was the first I’d seen it.

It struck a chord (no pun intended) with me, because I used to travel by air with my beloved Gibson Dreadnaught, which is forty-five years old (pictured here). I even foolishly checked it with regular luggage a couple times, only to watch it get bounced around on the luggage carousel. I learned that it is way better to “gate check” it, but even then it is at the mercy of airport luggage peeps, and, as the story in the video points out, sometimes that amounts to a giant FAIL.

I decided I needed a traveling guitar ““ one I could bring on planes and to blogmeets without worrying about it. Having admired a guitar that the Late, Great Rob “Acidman” Smith played at a blogmeet in Jekyll Island, Rob explained that it was reasonably priced and he said, “I can get you one like it if you want.” I said, “Sure,” thinking that it was a bit of blogmeet bluster.

I few days later I got a call from Rob who was calling from his buddy’s music store. He said, “Jeeyum, I found you a sweet guitar. Listen to it.” With that, he played it over the phone and observed that it “Played real nice.” He concluded, “Buy this guitar, and if you don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you.”

I bought the guitar (here is a picture from the web), intending that it would be a knock-around ““ don’t-worry about-it-guitar. That was in July of 2005.

I brought my Travelin’ Guitar with me to a Blogmeet in Austin, where I got the chance to play with Rob again. He was thrilled that I was happy with the guitar that he hand-picked for me. That was in May of 2006. Little did I know that Rob would be dead the following month. I wrote about his death and our improbable friendship here.

As you may well imagine, what was to be my knock-around, don’t-worry-about-it guitar is now precious to me. I have since bought another Washburn (similar, but not the same as the one Rob picked out), again from Rob’s friend’s store in Georgia, and it has become my travelin’ guitar. I think that Rob would agree that it “plays real nice.”

Strange how that humorous video brought all that back. Go figure.