Most people go to church to save their souls. Jamie goes to save her soles.

I have no idea how she knew anything about this particular shoe store in Barcelona, but WE HAD TO GO THERE! It was like a religious pilgrimage for her. And now you can see why — one full wall of shelves from floor to ceiling, all crammed full of shoes of every size and style and color and material imaginable.

Moses spent 40 years wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land, and we spent about 40 minutes wandering Barcelona’s La Rambla district in search of this store.

But I swear to god that it seemed like 40 years.

UPDATE: Jamie was horrified when she read this. She informs me that these are not mere shoes, they are espadrilles. They’ve been handmade in this very shop by the same family since 1941 and they are iconic in Barcelona.

That’s Christopher Columbus pointing west from atop a column that sits on the Barcelona harbor.

Some anonymous wit once said “Christopher Columbus didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was when he got there, and didn’t know where he had been when he got back.”

He probably got lost on his way to the Orient because he never had great neighbors like Brad and Ginny Parkinson.

We would have been lost in Barcelona without them.

Ginny gave us tips on restaurants and museums and things to see and do here. And Brad’s the guy who “invented” GPS, which allowed us to find our way through the narrow, twisted streets in Barcelona’s El Born and El Gotic districts to find all those places Ginny recommended.

Ahhhh, Iceland! Where many a manly meal begins with heaping helping of whale. Nothing like a little deep-fried blubber to start the day off right.

UPDATE: We just returned from dinner at GrillMarkaðurinn, our favorite Reykjavik restaurant. Our dinner was, as always, delicious. But the menu included some items we chose to avoid — Horse Tenderloin, Puffin Mini Burgers, and Minke Whale Steak. Mmmmmm.

Taking a break from sightseeing on the streets of Reykjavik, Jamie and I sought refuge in a small, crowded coffee shop. She told me she wanted a cup of coffee and wandered off to find a table while I placed our order.

The barista handed me an empty cup and said I could fill it from a wide selection of choices at the bar behind me. I didn’t know exactly which kind of coffee Jamie wanted, so I thought I’d better let her make her own decision. I spotted her sitting at a nearby table, looking downward so that I could only see the top of her hair. I walked over, set the cup and saucer down on the table in front of her and said, “Here’s your coffee cup.”

The attractive, short-haired woman at the table looked up and said, “I didn’t order coffee.”

It wasn’t Jamie.

Startled, I blurted out, “You’re not my wife.”

She started laughing. The woman at the next table (also not Jamie) started laughing. Then I started laughing. Half the damn coffee shop started laughing.

They did look almost identical — other than the fact that my ersatz wife was Chinese and about 20 years younger than Jamie. In my defense, they both had short, dark hair with very similar cuts.

The other short-haired young woman’s name was Summer, and oddly enough, she’s also from Texas.

You can see where we’re going on this trip if you click on “2017-18 Itinerary” up there on the navigation bar at the top of the page.

(By the way, don’t you love the name of the capital of Madagascar? Antananarivo. Say it out loud. It rolls off the tongue. It’s mellifluous. It just plain feels good to say, doesn’t it?)

But even more interesting than where we’re going are the places we’re not going. And the reasons why.

St Helena – A small, isolated island in the South Atlantic to which the British exiled Napoleon. He died there, probably the victim of the dastardly Brits’ arsenic. I wanted to see Napoleon’s home. Jamie wanted to sample the world’s most expensive coffee. And we both wanted to see Jonathan, a huge Seychelles tortoise who at 185 years of age is the world’s oldest living land animal.

Why aren’t we going? St Helena has always been pretty inaccessible, so the government spent many tens of millions of British pounds to build an airport that was supposed to connect them to the outside world. Unfortunately, someone neglected to check wind shear at the site prior to the commencement of construction. In other words, St Helena now has a lovely airport, but it’s impossible to land a plane there.

Oh, well, another time.

Angel Falls and the Catatumbo Lightning, Venezuela – Two of the world’s little known, but most incredible natural wonders, can be found in Venezuela.

Angel Falls, the world’s highest waterfall, drops 3,212 feet from the top of an escarpment to the jungle floor. To put that in perspective, it’s seventeen times taller than Niagara Falls.

The Catatumbo Lightning is the result of a very localized weather system that can only be seen where the Catatumbo River empties into Lake Maracaibo. That’s where the world’s most intense lightning storm rages for more than 260 nights per year. As many as 280 lightning strikes per hour light up the sky for ten hours each night.

Why aren’t we going? Former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher is famous for saying, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” In case you doubt the wisdom of Thatcher’s words, look no further than Venezuela. The country sits on the world’s largest oil reserves — even larger than those of Saudi Arabia — yet cannot pay its bills. The country is bankrupt, inflation has destroyed its monetary system, its people are destitute, and it was recently named the most dangerous place in the world.

If you don’t mind, we’ll pass for right now.

For reasons long forgotten, I thought it would be a good idea to study French when I was a freshman in high school. Another kid in Monsieur Drouault’s class, also named Jim, had just moved to Southern California’s so-called Inland Empire from somewhere in Oklahoma. No matter how godawful my little hometown was, I knew it was probably better than his hometown. Oh, how I pitied that unsophisticated Okie rube.

The other Jim soon became very well known in school. For all the wrong reasons. He thought of himself as a musician and composer. He was one of those kids that all the teachers loved. You know the kind. Every time we had an assembly or talent show or student gathering of any kind, they pushed him out on stage to play the piano and warble another of the horrible songs he had written.

I knew they were horrible songs because, well, I was a smart ass teenager who just knew those things.

Every time he got up on stage, the student body let out a collective groan.

“Oh, my god,” someone invariably said. “Not Jimmy and his piano again.”

Let’s make a long story short.

By the time I graduated from our local community college, that no talent loser had already written three top ten hit songs. And he was just getting started. The recording industry’s biggest names soon lined up at his door, begging him to bless their careers with some of his magic. Jimmy Webb had become one of the hottest talents in show business and for a while it seemed like he had written every other hit song on the radio.

For example:

Up, Up And Away – The Fifth Dimension, 1967
By The Time I Get To Phoenix – Glen Campbell, 1967
MacArthur Park – Richard Harris, 1968
Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell, 1969
Worst That Could Happen – Brooklyn Bridge, 1969
Galveston – Glen Campbell, 1969
Where’s The Playground Susie – Glen Campbell, 1969
All I Know – Art Garfunkel, 1973
Honey Come Back – Glen Campbell, 1970
MacArthur Park – Donna Summer, 1978

Every big name singer around the world recorded his songs — Sinatra, Streisand, Dusty Springfield, Al Wilson, Nina Simone, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Waylon Jennings, the Four Tops, Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66, Ray Charles, Roberta Flack, Sammy Davis Jr, Nancy Wilson, the Temptations, Tom Jones, Dionne Warwick, Mama Cass, Art Garfunkel, Joe Cocker, Cher, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, the Everly Brothers, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, and David Crosby to name just a few. For god’s sake, even Bob Dylan covered one of Jimmy Webb’s songs.

Some astute judge of talent I was.

Well, here we are 50 years later and Jimmy Webb has now written an autobiography titled “The Cake and the Rain” (a reference to the lyrics of MacArthur Park). It’s packed full of tales of his formative years in Southern California’s remarkably misnamed Inland Empire and how he became a legendary composer.

And the best part: He has written extensively about our close friendship, how his time with me in Mr. Drouault’s French class inspired him to write all those hit songs, and how he would have been nothing without me. How I was his muse. I was touched and honored that he dedicated the book to me.

OK, that last paragraph was a complete lie. Not a word of truth in it. I guarantee you that Jimmy Webb doesn’t know I ever existed. If he does have any memory of me, it’s that I was one of those jerks who groaned and said, “Not Jimmy and his piano again.”

So here’s the thing:

Jimmy Webb has written about a thousand hit songs and an autobiography. I, on the other hand, have written a mere handful of mildly amusing radio and television commercials and some silly blogposts. He wins.

But in my mind we are forever linked together because of Mr. Drouault and by the fact that we are both writers.

In psychology, I think they call it rationalization.

I bought the iBook version of “The Cake and the Rain.” I’ll be reading it while we travel. I think it will be pretty interesting even if he doesn’t mention me.

I think that’s a very funny headline, but Jamie just told me it’s mean. Believe it or not, I do not see those two truths as incompatible.

It’s mean because it implies that our very good friend Don, who is such a sweet, generous man that he always volunteers to drive us to the airport to begin these ’round-the-world trips, is an ignorant redneck.

In reality, he’s a very worldly, very sophisticated guy. For many years, he traveled the world selling diamonds to billionaire Saudi princes and the Gnomes of Zurich. He was the guy with a briefcase full of diamonds handcuffed to his wrist.

Nevertheless, although I feel a little guilty about the headline, I don’t feel guilty enough to change it.

Thanks for the ride, Don and Jennifer. We’ll see you in six months.

In just a couple hours, we’re leaving on another mind boggling six month trip around the world.

But at this particular moment, rather than looking forward to the alien landscapes of Iceland or the exotic beaches of Mauritius, I’m thinking about pants.

Let’s just step briefly into the WayBack Machine for a cautionary tale:

Jamie is a very smart woman. She realizes more than most that I have managed to master a narrow range of subjects. A very narrow range of subjects, if you want to get all nitpicky about it.

So she took over when we got married. She did all the planning and I did all the paying (one of things on that very narrow list of subjects, I suppose). She found and booked the venue. She found a designer and seamstress who made her wedding dress. She bought the flowers, hired the caterer, and arranged the reception. Yes, she did everything.

With one exception.

“All you need to do,” she said, “is bring your clothes.”

On the day of our wedding, I grabbed the bag containing my clothes and drove to the gorgeous oceanfront hotel in Laguna Beach where the wedding was to be held. About an hour before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, she told me it was time for me to get dressed.

I went to my room, took my bag of clothes out of the closet, and began to get dressed. It was quickly apparent that I had no pants.

No problem, I thought. Jamie’s taken care of everything, so she must have packed them somewhere.

“Where are my pants?” I asked.

“What do you mean ‘Where are my pants?’” she responded.

“Well, all my clothes are here except my pants.”

Normally a sweet, lovely, mild-mannered woman who, in the words of my farmer father, wouldn’t say shit if she had a mouthful, she exploded.

“I gave you one thing to do! All you had to do was bring your clothes! Are you telling me you forgot your pants? Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

I fear that response may have angered her even further.

She turned bright red, stormed out of the room, and as she neared her mom’s room at the far end of the hall, I heard her scream, “He forgot his fuckin’ pants.”

Well, as the old saying goes, all’s well that ends well. We jumped in my best friend’s car, sped ten miles down Pacific Coast Highway to our house, retrieved the missing pants from our closet, and sped back up PCH.

In the end, the ceremony was delayed only twenty minutes or so and the rest of the day — meaning all the stuff that Jamie had been in charge of — went off flawlessly.

And that brings us back to today, when we’re leaving on a six month ‘round-the-world trip.

Jamie has been packing her bags for weeks. Things go in, things come out. First the suitcase is full, then the suitcase is empty and then she repacks it again. Maybe one more sleeveless blouse is added, maybe one more pair of sandals is removed.

Every few days she would look at my empty suitcase gathering dust in the corner of the closet and warn me. “You’d better start packing.”

I laughed. She’s so silly, I thought. I can do this the night before we leave. It will only take a few minutes.

So I started packing last night knowing that we’re leaving for the airport at 7:30 this morning.

T-shirts? Check.

Buttoned shirts? Check.

Underwear? Check.

Socks? Check.

Shorts? Check.

A couple caps? Check.

Shoes? Check.

Sunglasses? Check.

Toiletries bag? Check.

Pants? Not so fast, Seabiscuit.

A few months ago, in preparation for this trip, I bought two new pairs of pants. They fit perfectly. But it’s been a sweltering hot summer here in Texas so I hung them in the closet and I haven’t worn anything but shorts for the last three months.

Jamie, being the worrywart that she is, insisted that I try on my new pants before putting them in the suitcase. I, of course, thought this would be a pointless exercise because those pants fit perfectly back when I bought them. If I do say so myself, I immediately looked like a GQ cover model the moment I donned those pants. A geriatric version of a GQ cover model, perhaps, but a GQ cover model nonetheless.

Well, in the last few months, I have apparently eaten too many blueberry muffins at Snug, my morning coffee shop and office. I have apparently sucked down too many Nutter Butters at Frio’s, my favorite purveyor of gourmet popsicles. I have apparently eaten too many Reese’s Peanut Butter cups when we visit our friends Joe and Judy. I have apparently guzzled down too many calories everywhere I’ve gone.

BECAUSE I COULDN’T SQUEEZE INTO ANY OF MY NEW PANTS. NOR, FOR THAT MATTER, ANY MY OLD ONES.

So I am now taking off on a six month trip around the world with a single pair of very tight jeans and one pair of sweatpants.

And, of course, with the incredibly smug attitude of my wife, who believes I am completely incapable of dressing myself for important events.

She may be right.

But let’s just keep that between you and me.

No reason for her to know.

None at all.

ONE MORE THING: I asked Jamie to read this before I posted it just to make sure I had all the details correct. Her response? “You forgot to mention how pissed off I was when I was upstairs packing your bag at 8:00 last night while you were sitting on your ass downstairs watching an episode of Cops that you’ve already seen about a hundred times.”

I implore you not to put any faith in what the woman says. She is a well-known prevaricator of the worst sort. I do not believe I had seen that particular episode of Cops more than 40 times. Certainly no more than 50.