The phone really didn't wake me but it tried hard enough. When I finally came around it was to the sound of Valma talking to somebody and after a few moments I realised that it was Pete Weaton. They were discussing the fact that Alexis Gilliland was waiting for us downstairs and that we had obviously slept in a little bit. We packed up all the accumulated mess quickly enough, very quickly we might have said under normal circumstances but we still seemed to take a long time about it. When we had almost finished Alexis rang and asked us if we were ready. "Almost" we replied and a little while later we were down in the lobby with all our stuff. There were a lot of other people standing around with their luggage as well, the last remnants of the convention. We stood around for a while chatting with Robin Johnson who had offered to re-arrange our flights for the rest of the trip, giving him last minute instruct- ions. The Gfllilands' car isn't terribly large but somehow Valma and Pete and I all managed to stack our luggage and ourselves into it and Alexis took us out of the gates of the hotel and through the streets of Washington. Our first destination of the day was the Washington Monument and the drive to there from the hotel was an educational (to pick a word out of the hat) one since I had hardly seen any of the city in the time we'd been there. The city looked little different from any other, the wooden planking over the road where they are building their subway was amusing and the lowness of the buildings seemed unusual until Alexis pointed out that by law nothing is allowed to be higher than the Capitol within the District of Columbia. The only exception to this rule is the Washington monument which was constructed before the law was thought of and I suppose that in a way it is very apt. From a distance the monument looks like a tall thin needle, I had been at a loss to place it when the name was mentioned but when it came into view I realised that I'd already seen it in more than enough films. Still, when we parked the car and walked up to it I was staggered by the size of it, at the base it is a massive structure and when you stand right next to it you tend to forget how high it is. This little mental omission was very rapidly put to rights when we entered the lift which rune up the centre of the monument and were carried up to the observation deck at the top. It cost us about ten cents to ride up in the lift (which is the only way to get up since they closed off the stairs), we had to stand in a queue for a little while but being a Tuesday there was no great crowd of visitors. On the way up a tape recorded voice told us some 'interesting facts' about the monument but they instantly fled from my mind when the doors opened st the top and we crowded around the little observation windows while Alexis pointed out various interesting things. Peering through the windows is a very quick and effective lesson in the geography of that part of the city. In one direction there was the Capitol, in the opposite the Lincoln Memorial and the Pool of remembrance. Off to one side was a little two storied building which was the White house and off to the other side was a large lake and the Jefferson Memorial. Over in the distance was the airport, I had read a lot about it being very closed in and the problems they were having in trying to operate it properly but before I had never quite understood what had been meant. One glance at the little airport and the land around it filled in the picture completely. As we all watched an aeroplane took off and flew past the Monument. It was a long way away but clearly we were way above it from our vantage point. On our way back to the parked car we met Bruce Pelz and a couple of other LA fans who were on their way to the monument. We talked for a couple of minutes but it was not surprising that we happened to meet, with DISCON over there must have been many fans out exploring the places of interest and it is a wonder that we didn't bump into more of them later. Everybody has heard of the Smithsonian Institute, I suppose it must be the most well known museum in the world if it could be called a museum. I don't know what else it could be called but the word just 36