Travel stories number one

Apr 01, 2008 - 08:48 AM PST

There are times in which you can seriously regret being a musician. There I was, hauling an electric piano through the broad streets of LA. I had never carried anything as heavy in all my life. I wasn’t going to loose an inch of dignity to this shit. I carried it just as Jesus would have carried his cross. I carried the fucking thing all over town, employing all sorts of means. What bothered me the most was how absolutely everyone starred at me. Hadn’t they ever seen a man carrying a box twice his size before? Assholes. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the jolliest of moods when I finally reached the airport. Getting through the door was quite a complicated affair since I couldn’t push the door and the piano case at the same time. I tried putting the box inside one of those little luggage carts. I kept on with the scene I had been playing all day long (hauling heavy stuff). I couldn’t get it into the cart without the fucking thing turning over. I gave up, and with the most dignified of surrenders, dragged the case all the way to the CrapAir desk. When I finally reached it, I wasn´t at all prepared for the clerk’s stupidity.
- OH MY. You’re gonna have to pay extra weight for that.
- Yes, I know I’m going to have to pay for that. It wouldn’t fit in the fucking cab, I know I’m going to have to pay for what!
- Sir! Please.

I did realize how big the fucking thing was. I had carried it on my back and dragged it across town. A scene to remember; There I was with an overwhelming and ridiculously sized box and standing with the most dignified of looks. No sir, I wasn’t going to loose an inch of my cool because of some clerk’s denial of the obvious.
- Oh my, my. It’s really big.
- Yes lady, we’ve been through this. I AKNOWLEDGE THE SIZE OF MY ………Just tell me how much is it going to be.
- Mmmmm. (Senseless punching of keys and the whole airport vibe.) 200 dollars.
- What? You’re joking right? I mean, it’s not the last Siberian tiger left in the world. It’s just a piano.
- It´s really big.
- (Sigh).
So there I was, with a flagpole up my ass and a plane to catch. Out went the cash. Still, it wasn´t quite over. First came the Spartan task of getting the case on the other side of the desk, it wouldn’t fit on the scales and both me and the clerk fought to get it across the desk. Then came a big problem. Once it was on the band, It got stuck on the little luggage door that leads the luggage to God knows where. For some reason beyond my fault, they couldn´t stop the mechanical band and all the luggage was falling off from it.
When I was finally sitting down in my place holding an insultingly overprized whiskey in my hand, I saw the airport staff, more than twenty men, pushing the case up a ladder connected to the plane. There were also mules pulling it with ropes, and a shirtless man beating on a giant gong, marking the beat of the whole enterprise.