Intermissions and Violent Plagiarisms:Not Getting Anywhere Slowly, New Orleans Diaries Part 3

The shuttle driver, this big smooth black man being entirely too nice to the curly headed dim wit from L.A. (who, to my immense surprise, had a face blatantly and brutally plagiarized from Picassos’ Guernica)—he maneuvered wildly, took quick turns and sprints down clustered and ancient alleyways, careening and jerking to grinding halts throughout our mad dash through the streets of downtown Nola, desperately trying to avoid the looming parade routs. The mounting pressure was palpable,—the streets were packed with cars and we were nowhere close. Seven pairs of beleagured and expectant travelers plus yours truly needed to be dropped off at eight different hotels in the Quarter, and if the parade arrived before we made it through we’ve agreed to a mass suicide. At that very moment the parade was very slowly moving along St. Charles. . .the minute it hit Decatur we’d be hopelessly screwed, paralyzed and buried by festivities, trapped and sober like convicts awaiting our last meal. . . I would have hopped out of the van and made a run for it if I wasn’t burdened with a cunningly arranged mountain of crap struggling to burst from my tortured and sagging suitcase.

What I brought:
3 pairs of pants.
6 long sleeve shirts/sweater things (what to wear? I had been beating my head over this very question for weeks—though mostly over the most difficult problem of the costume—Something Lee had insisted was of crucial importance. “Don’t be a goddamn spectator man.” I bought the damn costume, and for good measure picked up a couple of shirts incorporating colors, purple and purple-like--the official colors of Mardi Gras are purple, gold, and green, gold being a terrible, evil color, and green being too easy.)
A Hoodie. (Brown, Cozy.)
Many short sleeve shirts
Many socks, underwears
Toiletries
FLANNEL UNDERWEAR, AKA LONGJOHNS (for extraordinary protection in extraordinary conditions!--I should be an ad man.)
A TENT (A Coleman 3 person tent: the thing is packed tight in a rectangular box with a handle popping out the top. . .Amazingly, they let me check it like a piece of luggage.)
A SLEEPING BAG (almost unbearably warm, tight, and comfortable. In Portland, freezing and terrible Portland—California boys often die in temperatures like these—the air freezing and cracking, breath inflating the space like miniature gas explosions, I opened my bedroom window and climbed inside the bag, just to make sure it would keep me toasty in Nola. It was too warm, halfway through the night I had to unzip it a little, then more and more, until finally I shut the damn window and crawled beneath the blankets. But at least I knew I wouldn’t freeze to death)
A SELF INFLATING MATRESS THING
A HEADLAMP (yes, like a coal miner, but sportier)
A FREAKING CAPE (for the rest of my life, anytime anybody asks if I have a costume, I will, say, “Why yes! I do!” and I will be referring to The Cape.)
A MASK, EYES WIDE SHUT STYLE, GLITTER AND BLACK FEATHERS (Yes, we was ready to rock.)

And, perhaps most crucially,
A TOWEL
(from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)--A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.