the door than there was a call from Gordon R. Dickson (some may call him Gordy) but us Australians are not too familiar with writers in the flesh so it was Gordon R. Dickson until some time during the evening when the effects of drinking Scotch straight took hold and by five in the morning I was just a little bit out of my usual state of mind. Gordy, along with the few other writers I've met so far have al1 impressed me on just about all level and their drinking capacity is truly something to be wary of. I should have known better than to keep more or less up with Gordy after a night at Buboncon with Busby. The next morning I had the worst hang- over in about four years, worse than the one I remember having with John Foyster and John Bangsund and a few other people back at the Convention that John (Foyster) and I ran in 1971. I woke up feeling exactly like a piece of pine board, the experience was enough to put me off drinking booze for a long time. Whatever happened onMonday seems to be rather unimportant alongside what I mentioned in the previous paragraph. However that evening Valma and I were treated to a cultural experience which, while it is said to exist in Australia is something I've never seen before and may never see again. I refer, of course, to the exhibition of women taking their clothes off and dancing around with nothing on in a professional capacity. This was more interesting from the point of view of seeing what the sort of place where these things happen in is like rather than seeing lots of rather well formed female bodies prancing around - PLAYBOY is for that sort of thing after all even if the bodies do stay in the same place. So we arrived at this place at about seven in the evening and stayed until about half an hour before it was ready to close down for the night at one in the morning. The most instructive and enjoyable part of the evening was getting to meet a couple of the women who were nice people and obviously didn't mind displaying themselves. One thing, from the stories one of them told about the conditions working in such a place it must be an exciting life. We drove one of the women home and then went and fed ourselves and then went back to Freds' place and went to sleep, which is the sort of thing that one does after a long evenings activity and when one still feels a little strange from the night before. Tuesday we went shopping in the downtown area of Minneapolis, which is to say that I spent about $25 on books and stuff about music at one of their music shops. Such an array of literature on music I've never seen before, but I'm led to believe that I will see the like of it again once we get to San Francisco. Of course buying up big in books and records and bits and pieces of stuff makes ones case begin to get rather heavy (but I mention this mainly because I just attempted to lift a case which I had put a lot of books into, and while it wasn't impossible it wasn't much fun either).