I didn't help myself any by chewing on some of the black things that were in the dish. Slowly my mouth began to heat up and soon seemed to burst into flame. After the second glass of water Charlie nonchalantly mentioned that it was best to keep away from the black things, they were black peppers and sudden death. "Thanks Charlie". They drove us a different route back to their place, once again up into the hills where we had spectacular views back over the bay, the lights on either side of it shone brightly and lit up the whole area. The houses we passed were often just as spectacular, the area must be a very popular one with those who can afford to build there and it was easy to understand why. We'd decided to stay there the night and rang Matthew to tell him. Having solved the problem of having to get back to San Francisco we spent the rest of the evening chattering about fandom and fans. Once again I felt the same way I had that afternoon with buz and Elinor. For a neo like myself it is hard to remember the time when LOCUS did not exist (though I did get the first issue I'm sure) and that Charlie had been in fandom long before that. The couple of Hugo's they have picked up for LOCUS were proudly displayed so that they were almost the first thing we saw when we entered the house, there has been a lot of grumbling in fandom about LOCUS not really being a fanzine but I cannot find it in myself to get mad at people who are so obviously proud of having won the award. I wouldn't vote LOCUS a Hugo but I was rather stunned the first time I realised that I read every word in every issue, I didn't think all that stuff interested me. If we had contacted Charlie earlier during our stay with Matthew we would have had the opportunity of collating an issue of LOCUS and we were sad to have missed the opportunity. All the same we saw the typer on which LOCUS is produced and, even more stunning, the mailing list. It's huge, if I had a mailing list like that I would be thinking very seriously about chucking the whole thing in, it would be the logical thing to do. Rut having been bitten slightly by the newszine bug I know that feeling of having a large mailing list. And so we slept our last night in San Francisco (and our first and last night in Berkeley) in the Browns spare bedroom. Dena woke us when she returned from dropping Charlie off at the station on his way to work. She cooked a breakfast of pancakes which vent funny but were delicious all the same. We sat around the kitchen table for a while talking but too soon it was time to leave. We said. goodbye to Cat and Dena drove us down through the Berkeley campus and dropped us off near the BART station. As we waved goodbye to the fast departing car it suddenly dawned on us that we actually knew where we were, just over the road was the familiar top to the Berkeley station. Dena had said that she would be dropping us there but it had never occurred to us before how close to them we'd already been a couple of times. When we emerged to Market Street we thought for a few minutes about taking a ferry ride around the bay as a suitable close to our visit. We vere tired so instead we caught a tram back to Matthew's place and collapsed onto the beds there and slept into the afternoon. 78