Bob Smith Update: Australia=50 Countries
Editors Note: This submission had been lost in the archives, sorry Bob!
On the Road COVID-19 Style and OOPS
Australia (mainly)
It’s been a challenging year for many reasons. I consider us very fortunate, mostly by happenstance. We had booked travel home to California in February after our Summer season in Australia but that was cancelled due to very early intervention by the Australian Government. All of a sudden we were hosting 7adults in Sydney in 4 isolation zones and figuring how to rearrange everything we had planned like everyone else. Renovations done and 3 months of various lockdowns and mandates later we had acquired a VW 4WD camper van and took every opportunity to escape during breaks in lockdowns and interstate border closures. As of this writing we are again in Tasmania after 22,000 km camping and road trips from Cape York south to Hobart. A constant companion has been my venerable Voyage Air guitar.
At my last writing we had been to 49 countries. Australia closed borders to travel but we managed one exception, to Norfolk Island, for our anniversary and Christmas making to total now 50 Countries!
Now for the Oops – and another reason why Voyage Air is the must have travel companion…
In an act of absent minded neglect, at a camp area called Craggy Peaks near Ben Lomond, I leaned my guitar against a swivel chair which took zero effort to swivel. As we all know if a disaster is to happen, it happens quickly and in the perfect spot to inflict maximum damage…
Broken – but again fortunate because (1) the neck is removable and (2) my son was climbing the Ben Lomond cracks near-by and he lives in Hobart while studying Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley and (3) he lives in a shared house with someone who repairs antique furniture. After climbing and visiting the neck went home and was glued…
Within 3 days I re-assembled my guitar (remember where your shims go) and restrung it and we are now on the road to Freycinet…
I don’t recall seeing in the Voyage Air website the added advantage of removable (as opposed to folding) necks but it should definitely be there because ‘stuff’ happens, but the best repairs are the running repairs.
Hope you are all staying safe out there – we have permission to leave Australia now – rest assured it will be with my Voyage Air.
Bob Smith
