hazarding a harrowing, mapless Slavonian ride in the descending gloom to the Hungarian border, during a drenching conquest of a Croatian mountain, and on a flat tire with my fiery Juliet in blistering Verona. In the autumn of my 2008 life I am attempting to acquire a modicum of Hungarian to enable me to pass as a Magyar descendant if I can coax my wife into a bike tour to Budapest in 2009.

That is a priority destination after our visits with Wildbloods in Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, South Wales and Bristol (see my Wildblood surname website) in fall 2007 and late summer 2008. My next report will probably include New Year’s in Cape Province.