Uke travels 32,188 miles in 3 weeks and survives...how far has yours traveled?

Hi All, just got back from an amazing trip in Australia playing with the folks down under (Even ran into Bosko from Bosko and Honey on the street...what a coincidence!) and interviewing Allen McFarlen of Barron River Guitars (who made one of my custom ukes I took to Australia). I thought it would be fun to see how many miles I traveled with my uke over the past three weeks.

I will say the Reunion Blues bags are fricken awesome. I took my tenor in my RB bag and had no problems on any airline, even the little rubber band prop plane I took to Hervey Bay heading over to Fraser Island. I was freaking out thinking my case would never fit in the overhead of a Dehavilland Twin Otter (I convinced myself it would not) but it did...barely...with some squeezing but it worked.

All in all we traveled from San Francisco, to Nadi Fiji, on to Sydney, then over to Melbourne, up to Cairns, over to Brisbane, hop over to Hervey Bay, back to Brisbane, then to Fiji, and finally back to SFO.

All in all, we traveled 32,188 miles together in 3 weeks.

How far have you traveled with your uke?

Cheers,
Jay

I drove from Oak Park IL to Geneva (IL) yesterday. But I had three ukuleles with me, so that's three times the distance!

You have most of us beat, no doubt! Not only that, I bet you may have had the most awesome vacation of all UUers...

I took my Moore Bettah from SFO to Honolulu to Lanai to Honolulu to SFO.

What I hear from you, and concur with, is travel with your uke! These things were made for playing and they are not made of paper... put them in a case and go. For the record, my case is a Uke Crazy hardshell (plywood), so you don't need to spend a fortune on a Protec or Ameritage or whatever. Just put your uke in a case and go!

Tuscaloosa, Alabama is the greatest distance any of my ukes have traveled. That's only about 3 hours away.

Wow - some trip, Jay! I brought back a uke from China, so I guess that's thousands of miles. And my Kanile'a went from Milwaukee to Pittsburgh to Reston, VA to Pittsburgh to AZ to HI and back to AZ. Most of that in a Reunion bag.

But probably the biggest trip I ever took a uke on was only about 25 miles with my Kala travel soprano. But it was to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up, on foot. So that might win a minor prize for number of steps.

My first Kala went from LA to London, to Entebbe Uganda, around 9500 miles. Then lots of miles riding around on a bus for a few weeks, then a flight to Nairobi.

It stayed in Nairobi with a guy I sold it to.

Anyway, if you add all that up, it's around 10,000 miles in a three week period.

Mines been to Rome twice but would really like to go to Fiji and Australia!!

Tigeralum2001 said:

You have most of us beat, no doubt! Not only that, I bet you may have had the most awesome vacation of all UUers...

I took my Moore Bettah from SFO to Honolulu to Lanai to Honolulu to SFO.

What I hear from you, and concur with, is travel with your uke! These things were made for playing and they are not made of paper... put them in a case and go. For the record, my case is a Uke Crazy hardshell (plywood), so you don't need to spend a fortune on a Protec or Ameritage or whatever. Just put your uke in a case and go!

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Absolutely. However traveling that far and that long, it did get to be a pain carrying it with a camera bag and several bags of checked luggage. I did not take a uke to Africa, although I have been toying around with a funding project to get about 50 Ukes and get them in the hands of kids in Tanzania and Kenya. No Ukes there. They never heard a uke or knew what a uke was. I thought it would be super cool to actually start an instrument distribution in a country where those places don't have uke access. They have had crude built guitars from some guys I have seen on Youtube but I'm talking full on uke. I think it would make an awesome documentary and you could possible start a permanent presence of uke in those countries. Can you imagine a Masai playing a uke? Wow!

My flea and I just got back from the Galapagos. Played for the tortoises... They didn't seem impressed. Then a side trip to the rainforest in Ecuador where we played Happy Birthday to the leader of an indigenous Indian tribe. I like to call it 'my first international gig'....

dogstayplay said:

My flea and I just got back from the Galapagos. Played for the tortoises... They didn't seem impressed. Then a side trip to the rainforest in Ecuador where we played Happy Birthday to the leader of an indigenous Indian tribe. I like to call it 'my first international gig'....

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Galapagos is on my bucket list. Sounds like some nice traveling!