It's an offer I can't refuse, filling out a St. Thomas Carnival parade dance group's complement of spear carriers. I've chased carnivals across different cultures; this was a chance to pursue one from inside.

I'd sampled the energy the prior morning at the J'orevert, a yearly gathering of calypso bands on trucks, followed by legions of dancing fans, along the harbor and into town, starting before sunrise, for many participants – the finish of a long day, not the start. But now, the finale, the "adults" parade, beckons, even better.

The first step is to get my duds, after a late dinner I join a midnight hunt down warehouse alleyways to find the costume hideaway for our troupe. One alley leads to another, darker and creepier and more isolated. Finally there's light, and an open door with a rack flowing with iridescent color. In the alley, imported Trinidad mercenaries labor assembling and painting the grand "character'" costumes.

Three colleagues - women - were quickly outfitted. Not so, me. I'm not keen to dance like Tarzan in a loin cloth, not next to a carnival showstopper known as "Champagne," voted the best carnival merrymaker the year before and gleefully described to me by a lady as the most flamboyant gent in carnival. I accept my lavender colors with trepidation, but my long pants are missing. As the sun pops up, we stop by the house of the team seamstress, on the winding road through the hills to town. She puts my mind at ease, proudly presenting her work, trousers at last.

Carnival troupes wait for the signal to proceed along a road lined with graveyards. Each troupe has two trucks. One is long flatbed that carries either a calypso band, often with a brass complement, and speakers lined up like artillery, or a pan steel band. The other is the group's hydrator, its lifeblood - parade dancing throughout the day in the Caribbean sun is an endurance event. Juices, waters, the prudent try to add as much as they sweat. For the less prudent majority, the elixir to fixer is rum and cola, more fuel than hydrator.

My group takes refuge among the shade trees and cool stone of a graveyard with crypts above ground so the departed aren't soaked by hurricanes. Pretty young maidens get about the business of adornment, many sisters and cousins of families with a lucky gene pool. Our group theme includes music: the girls' headdresses display musical notes, their long loincloths are keyboards, young men watching contemplate their tunes, seasoned ladies in more restrained traditional festival garb ride shotgun. The girls cut discreet trap doors in their tights to facilitate pit stops, a parade trade secret.

Worried about being cursed for dissing a historic graveyard, some of us venture to a nearby tavern's restroom, mixing with other refugees, some from traditional groups originating in 1952's carnival, the first since 1912. Zulus, Indians, gypsies, witches, red devils, and mocko jumbies - the frightening African entities on 12 foot stilts that eradicate evil spirits - mingle.

There's lots of history from which to draw themes. The Virgin Islands have been under seven flags, including the Knights of Malta, and plenty of pirates. Indians from South America had been there for thousands of years before Columbus "discovered" the islands, naming them for beautiful St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgins. The dark days of slavery lasted until 1848. Though the April/May carnival is not of the pre-Lent variety, its grab-bag mix includes themes of rebirth and renewal.

I watch with dread as ambulances cart off some of the less prudent. The parade has hardly started. What chance have I, paleface in the island sun, for renewal?

My headdress sports a pre-Colombian Indian theme, if Indians hallucinated rainbows, perhaps. I carry a banner with the masks of comedy and tragedy. Everyone begs help from the Trinidadians, whose priorities are the groups' leaders, their primary colors flowing amid peacock feathers and boas inflamed by the sun, contrasting with the island pastels on the weather-beaten wood of the down-and-out structures carnival begins its journey amid. The waiting headdresses spill across the road, shock troops of color against the white graveyard walls.

In the nick, the Trinidadian's arrive with staplers and put our costumes right. Before they spread out, the band trucks put out a cacophony of overlapping beats. Our group's character, an athlete who pumps up the dance pace, balances a heavy headdress in a strong wind. On a skateboard, he could set land speed records. Dancing in formation to our calypso band, we determine that when we pass the town square and reviewing judges, we should pep up with the electric slide, an odd fit but the only step we all know. We practice as the parade moves along. I feel the blisters coming in tennis shoes painted gold, seek rum and cola treatment.

Champagne wonders when I'll shoot him, I appease him and balance a camera with my banner as he entertains a family on their doorstep. His champagne glass slips from his hand and shatters, which really amuses them. I turn out to be the more frequently photographed crowd pleaser. A middle-aged whitebread guy not succumbing to heatstroke who pauses to dance with children can't miss. Hours along, my colleagues and I slip from the group to dash down one street, through a restaurant and into an alley in search of a hidden bathroom Shangri-la we've heard legends of.

We regroup and beverage up, are scolded that no drinks are allowed once we enter the square around the corner. Not wanting to appear lightweight, we chug. One of my colleagues turns green but manages to go into suspended animation until after we pass the judges. Our electric slide is in meltdown, but we rally.

TV and radio mikes find their way to me. Interviewers ask my identity. "Dick Cheney, vice president of the United States, incognito for a secret summit. You can't reveal this until I'm gone or there will be, uh, repercussions you won't like."

"We're live," they snicker.

That night our dinner host informs me he heard the news feed and was impressed with the vice president's attention to this remote corner of empire.

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