MIDAMERICON I slept so well that I only just got up in time. Rose misjudged the time it would take to get to the airport and we hit all the traffic lights. The Continental counter was decidedly understaffed. The woman kept saying "Wait for the electric cart." Could we go down ourselves to the boarding lounge? No, she said, we'd never make it. A porter finally arrived with a sort of giant golf-buggy, and I was loaded aboard, He had actually come to collect a little old lady and hand't heart of me, but he dutifully drove like a maniac, intoning the while "You'll never make it. You're gonna miss it for sure," Rose ran alongside with the chair (yes, really). When, (ghasp! pant!) we got to the plane, all the passengers were standing about because it was 25 minutes late. On board I had yet another interesting conversation with yet another male flight attendant, whose observation that all pilots are mad did not seem particularly extreme - after an extremely bumpy flight and the roughest landing of the whole trip we taxied at breakneck speed to the airport and pulled up with quite a jerk. At the airport I was paged -- I had to ring Midamericon and a car would be sent (they really did look after me very well indeed). Of course there were other fen on the same flight. When Rusty Hevelin and Flloyd Johnson arrived in a big station wagon we all piled in with our luggage. As Carey was to discover, following me about has its compensation. I did need someone to follow me about, or more accurately to push me around. The hotel was an abomination. To go anywhere at all you had to go up steps and then down steps. I knew immediately that the former occupant of the Presidential Suite on the top floor couldn't have been Franklin D. Roosevelt. Asenath Hammond-Sternbach, who had injured her leg en route, was going out of her mind with frustration in a rented wheel chair which she couldn't even get into her room. Carey quickly sniffed out all the ways to get around the building, and we saw lots of kitchens and service corridors. So, I think, did Robert Heinlein, who was always being spirited in and out of back doors by the Dorsai. The Dorsai were a rather dippy-looking crew in paramilitary gear who clearly wanted to be presidential bodyguards when they gew up. For the time being they were making do with protecting the Guest of Honour, who appeared to be greatly enjoying the attention. The security system was supposed to be foolproof. Upon proof of identity one was given one of those plastic hospital bracelets. Naturally some people regarded this as a challenge. Alan Frisbie, festooned with bracelets, wore a tag proclaiming himself Craig Miller, having identified himself with a forged ID card. For me the convention began with Jan Howard Finder's Aussiecon reunion party. This was well attended and the food wasn't bad either. At the opening ceremony I think that either I or Carey or probably both of us managed to upstage Heinlein when Carey lifted me bodily on and off the stage (I had to make a short speech). A slide show followed, longer than the one at Aussiecon, but in my opinion not as good. Midamericon was not as large as it was feared it might be, but at around 4000 attendees it was still gigantic by Australian standards. The main function room seemed to be the size of an aircraft hangar, and the huckster room in the basement wasn't much smaller. The amazing thing was that people still seemed able to find their friends, because most of – 8 –