Cody (he’s the publisher) just got back from Italy.

Our Lifestyles editor spent a few days in the great Northwest a while back and our education reporter just returned home a few weeks ago from an extensive tour of France.

Those folks get around. But not me. I have no desire whatsoever to go to Europe.

Just not interested.

“But,” someone asked me, “don’t you want to see the painted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel?”

No thanks. I’ve seen painted ceilings before. I even helped paint the ceiling in our new bedroom addition and got some paint in my eye. That hurt like a wasp sting. It was two weeks before I could see straight again.

But seriously, as for the traveling thing, I reckon I’d never leave the house if I didn’t have to leave it. But they (and by “they” I mean the aforementioned publisher) make me come down here to the office. I don’t know why they can’t just send my checks over to the house.

One of the problems with going here and yonder is that I’m one of those people who’s afraid to fly.

In a plane, I mean.

Or a helicopter.

Or any mode of transportation that requires me to leave the ground.

I don’t like aircraft.

“But,” they say, “statistically speaking, planes are the safest way to travel; way safer than cars.”

Yeah, well, statistically speaking, if I’m driving down the road and my engine suddenly quits, I’m not going to drop 30,000 feet.

The last time I took a plane trip, I purt near bled to death.

I had just bought some new shoes the day before I was to go meet some folks in Louisiana. The day of my departure, I was running late while wearing said shoes. So I got out of the car next to the airport entrance, kissed my wife (or at least I THINK it was my wife; I was in a BIG HURRY but I definitely remember kissing SOMEBODY; it could have been the skycap), bolted to the gate and noticed that about halfway there, that familiar feeling one gets in one’s heels when wearing new shoes began to manifest itself. “Oh no!” I thought, “blisters are not far behind.”

After I boarded the plane to Dallas, I gripped the edge of the arm rest and prayed hard until we touched down in “Big D.” That’s when I noticed that my connecting flight was one of those “puddle jumpers” (a propeller-driven aircraft kind of like the ones that Indiana Jones is in every time he’s involved in an air crash) and it was leaving in just a few minutes from Gate 50A.

At the time, I was at Gate 1A. I walked/ran as fast as I could and somewhere at about Gate 23B, the blisters on the back of my heels popped.

At about Gate 31A, the flesh began to rub off the back of my feet and at about Gate 44B, my shoes (both of them) were filling up with blood and I was limp/crawling Igorstyle.

The clerk at the hotel heard the “squish-squishing” of my blood-filled new shoes as I walked across the lobby to the check-in counter.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

“Oh, it’s just a little blood,” I told her.

“You stepped in some blood on the way in here?” she asked.

“No ma’am,” I calmly replied. “I’m standing in a puddle of it.”

I don’t know if that response scared her or confused her but I did notice she wasted little time checking me in and handing me my key card.

That kind of thing could only happen to me.

The rest of the trip was spent in agony as I tried to sooth my skinless heels.

The good news was that ... oh wait, there was no good news.

Never mind. I’m going to go lie down now. My feet hurt.