United Finds Guitars

Mark's return from Peru back in August was exciting, except for the fact that Mark's guitar did not come back with him. Apparently the 12 hour layover in Lima, Peru was not long enough for the airline LAN to move his guitar from one airplane to another. When we returned home to Edmonton we needed to do a missing baggage claim here with the airline we flew in with, United.  We aren't idiots here, we knew that the possibility of finding Mark's guitar was pretty slim, and were happy that he had not taken his best guitar with him. Our only consolation was that the airline would eventually have to repay us the money for it and that Mark would get to buy a new guitar. He was not unhappy about the idea of guitar shopping.

Brian Westnedge thought that our guitar would never return. United is well known for lost baggage.

So imagine our surprise when we got a call from them last week telling us that they had found Mark's guitar. In Chile. Santiago, to be exact. It had been there for more than a month.

Because apparently Chile is easily confused with Canada?? I guess they both start with a C.

So even though United didn't lose our guitar, they did find it. And I feel maybe had redeemed themselves a little. See, they've had some bad press in the last year due to guitars and I think they thought they had better step it up a notch so that they didn't have some Canadian musician writing a song about them and putting it on YouTube. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Makes me laugh EVERY time. And then I hum the song all day.

And I'm a little happy that maybe they have gotten better with their luggage policy. After all they found our guitar in a country it was not supposed to be in, with a different airline. Maybe all their time and effort is going into saving the rest of the guitars in the world... naw. I don't think so.

UPDATE FROM MARK: I discovered that the fine folks of LAN had sent the guitar with Air Canada. I don't know which is worse, United or Air Canada. They are both a part of the 5-Star Alliance, which I'm sure has its origins in some sort of ancient pagan worship that involves sacrificing luggage and bumping or re-routing passengers as a part of their regular rituals. I called AC to see if they knew where the guitar was currently, since it was supposed to have arrived already on October 4th. They had no clue. Not only that, they didn't have a number at the airport unlike ALL of the other airlines. Head office was no help. So I called up United Airlines in Edmonton and asked for their luggage department. Apparently it had just arrived on that day (October 5th) from Air Canada and was in their possession. I had assurances that it would arrive that day on my doorstep via their courier.

This was my week of insanity. I participated in several meetings this week and Pastor Bill has been away, and I was a guest speaker our church's AWANA program. I got a phone call while at the church from a gentleman with a thick accent letting me know he was standing in a drizzle on my doorstep with a violin. I laughed. Faith was home and lights were on, but she was indisposed and couldn't make it to the door. I told him to leave it on the back deck and I would pick it up when I got home. Then I had to run into the sanctuary and deliver a message right at that moment. On the following Sunday I preached and my guitar, complete with inspection tags from three different government agencies, accompanied me on stage as a testimony of thanks to God. Because as we all know, this was a miracle. United finds guitars?