do you have your towel on you?

yay! Douglas Adams wrote the hitchikers guide to the galaxy and other cool stuff.

here's the website for doug's mountain-climb-in-a-rino-suit.
http://www.rhinoclimb2006.com/

here are a few quotes for you.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't

the following is from the website that immediately follows it. it's from a company that Doug's helped found, and the last part could have put in for fun. (note: on the website has an interesting rant about Doug's nose. and don't expect him to answer emails from the email address that's on the page: Doug's been dead since 2001)
"Douglas has also written the Dirk Gently novels, a non-fiction book (Last Chance to See) on endangered species, worked as a chicken shed cleaner, a bodyguard for an Arab royal family, and played guitar for Pink Floyd. "

www.tdv.com/html/douglas_a.html

when dad and i were on a hike we despirately missed our towels. i tried to paraphrase this quote but i muddeled it up badley. here's the real thing:
"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"

Advise for children
"For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It's quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn't quite that simple. The fried egg isn't properly a fried egg until it's been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn't do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It's all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while. "

in conclusion (and i think we'll all agree) :
"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."