I was reading a travel narrative, and the writer used a word that struck me in an epiphanal way. Theroux was describing his coastal tour of Britain (The Kingdom by the Sea) as “long coastal stretches of decrepitude.”

   That I wanted Carol and I to see what he was writing about on our own upcoming trip (“…what had been villages well served by railway lines had become curiously anorexic-looking and tumble down, somehow deserving the epitaph from ‘Ozymandias.'”) struck me as very odd: I wanted to sightsee. As I read on (“defunct viaducts, abandoned cuttings, former railway stations, ruined railway bridges) it occurred to me Theroux was describing what 1500 years from now would be the ancient ruins of a then former world empire. The funny thing is the current existing sites of 1500 year-old ruins hold no interest for me. In fact little is more boring than a well-preserved and properly docented or audiophoned historic pile of slave-constructed rocks, except for maybe the section of medieval religious paintings in a typical European art museum.

Anyone reading between the lines of this travel blog has to surmise that the way Carol and I eat and drink in Europe is not sustainable year round. Even when we spent all that time in Germany, we still found ways to turn the food pyramid on its head (thanks to some wonderful Italian restaurants there). Inevitably though, we wound up enjoying our last meal in Europe the way diners on death row enjoyed theirs. “When we get home, we’re going on a diet,” Carol would intone solemnly. I would receive those words with the same death row chill an inmate would experience in learning there’d be no intervention from the Governor.

  Moses might probably understand, but that’s about the only one. And even he would note I wasn’t looking for any Promised Land.

   In June 1971, I left the United States, and spent the next nearly three years traveling abroad. Always with very little money, I amounted to little more than a vagrant for a good portion of that time. On the positive side, I was genuinely looking for some place and station in life where I belonged. It had never occurred to me in that time of my life that in order to find what you’re looking for, you need some idea of what that is.

When I told my New Orleans family and friends I’d be spending my summer after college graduation at Oxford, they assumed I’d be heading to northern Mississippi. Probably to pick cotton, for all the good my degree in Political Science was going to do me. When I told them it was “the one in England,” they still thought I was going to pick cotton. Planning to go back there this October after more than 45 years, I realize that picking cotton might have provided the needed structure in my life that neither childhood or adulthood has evidently provided.

Views like this make it tempting We were having a glass at Carol’s daughter and son-in-law’s golf club. The patio features a wonderful view of the course that routes through a valley with the purple and sage saddleback range in the distance. I commented on the panoramic view and the course’s deep green under the […]

   Yesterday was the first anniversary of the first trip Carol and I took together. We went to France, which had been the scene of my first solo train trip the year before. Without really thinking it through (which is generally my method of thinking things through), this second France trip was a test of how well I stack up as a solo versus a companion traveler. In retrospect, it was probably more of a test of how well Carol stacked up as a companion to a solo traveler.

Commenting on one of my blogs, a reader suggested I needed more friends. I replied that I have many friends, it’s just that they’re imaginary. As for real flesh and blood friends, I’ve taken Jiminy Cricket’s advice my whole life: “Books are your friends, my friend.”

The clue that my calculations on the day were significantly off was when we walked passed a parking lot snug against the San Ysidro border station. Carol wanted to show me Mexico, one country I had never visited before.

   I watched the woman, standing out of her seat and self-indulgently dancing, while blocking the view of the stage for all those seated several rows behind her. I was as captivated by her selfish exhibitionism as I was Jackson Browne’s soulfully heartfelt music emanating from the stage. I thought, based on recent concert experiences, why isn’t that damn woman blocking Carol and I?

   When I first arrived as yet another of southern California’s transplants, I had a strong feeling music concerts would be in our future. So many venues well within driving distance. I was right. Our Year of the Concerts began in July with Jethro Tull. With most of the crowd on Social Security, it was a sedate bunch, their mobility limited by bad backs, joint replacements and adult diaper rash.

   For my background reading for our Italy trip, I’d stumbled across a couple of memoirs written by Americans coming to grips with their Italian heritage. I settled into My Two Italies by Joseph Luzzi. I was particularly intrigued by his recounting of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s years in power. Berlusconi headed the Italian government from 1994 until 2011, when he resigned to face charges of “bribery, Mafia collusion, false accounting, tax evasion, government corruption, and sexual solicitation.”