1st November 2008

Washington this morning was a very different affair... it was very very quiet, everything shut. I imagined most of Washington's youth had a sore head.

We walked the short distance to the hotel and Bureau I would be working from and met with my boss Graham. We had a short tour of the BBC Bureau in Washington which was pretty chaotic. The whole floor had pretty much been ripped apart and re-wired to accommodate the Radio, TV and Online from London. it's a huge operation.

We (luckily) are in a hotel opposite, called St Gregory's. we basically have all the rooms on the 2nd floor and it's my (and two other peoples) job to rig and run 5 studio's.

My brief is to work for 5Live programmes, this means doing the Weekend News on Sunday, and "5Live Drive" on Mon, Tues and Wed.

We spent the morning rigging the studios in the hotel for the World Service, Local Radio and Network radio.

Monday's 5Live programme will come from a small town in Virginia called Culpeper, so today we drove out there to test the lines that had been installed for us there. We hired a car, and much to my joy, nobody fancied braving the freeway, so I jumped at the chance.

We've got a pretty ropey sat nav that points roughly in the direction you need to go but isn't that accurate, so we had a few missed turnings. The traffic in the city is terrible, it's gridlocked at most times of the day for no reason, just shear volume of traffic.

Some of my favourite signs included.."Wrong way" (How do they know where I want to go?), although I was introduced to this in Australia last year, and "Speed Enforced by aircraft" which countered up many images of traffic being shot down for speeding.

After leaving Washington, it's noticeable that you are travelling South, the landscape changes and the accent does to. Travelling though America in the fall is just stunning, the colour of the foliage is just stunning.

Half way we started passing signs for Delaware which just reminded me of the song featured on the Stephen Fry programme last week, "What did Delaware, Boys". That has stayed in my head all day!

Culpeper is a lovely small American town (The reason BBC News have decided to invade on Monday and Tuesday) so our coverage is not all about the big cities. The kit worked fine and after a coffee, we headed back, we return on Monday.

On the way back into Washington we drove though Georgetown, the place that had been recommended to me as the only place worth visiting. It looks beautiful and I hope to return at leisure before the week is out.

We had a hearty meal not far from the restaurant and to walk it off I thought I'd wander the short distance to the White House as I couldn't see much time for sightseeing this week. The streets were empty on this balmy night. i walked all round the White house and US Treasury (Which is a far more impressive building). I was quite surprised by the openness of the White house and the "jumpable" fence, although I image that once over, you'd be shot pretty quickly! I decided against giving it a go....for tonight at least.