For most of you, the term hitchhiker has some negative connotations. Hitchhikers are normally outcasts of society who are smelly, often dangerous people who need a ride because they don't work and have to depend on your generosity to get where they want to go. However, back in the late sixties and early seventies, it was a standard mode of transportation for young people, usually the hippies. My Trip to Mardi Gras is the story of an average, unremarkable guy who grew up in an average midsize Midwestern town in the sixties and early seventies. As he was approaching his high school graduation, he decided that he didn't want to go to college as he was expected to do. He wanted to travel and see what was out there. How he came to be a bum and hitchhiking across the country was an evolutionary process. It is a story of where he went, what he was thinking and experiencing, how he survived, and how he changed. And he did change. A big part of who he is now and how he looks at life was framed by this eight-month journey into a world that most people can't understand. The person he became late in life is demonstrated in two short stories included in this book. At the tender age of thirty-six, he completed his college training in only seven years to become a high school math teacher. (Go figure!) The story " Rise and Fall of a Dictator" is sort of Peter's principal tale of how a new principal in school was not prepared for the job. The story "My Affair with Katrina" is about some of the things to be thought about and experienced after a natural disaster. This story is not remarkable, which seems to be something a lot of people with varying lives and circumstances go through. I hope this book is worth the read.