i'm too excited to sleep because i actually managed to pull off my elaborate costume idea. in brief, the roomies and i decided to do critical mass for halloween this year, and i wanted my costume to incorporate the bike. we had a thrilling and disturbing emu encounter in the country at the end of summer (they look at you like the raptors in jurassic park while making booming noises in their chests) so emu it was. i whipped out an american-apparel-style dress from an old sheet and used the scraps to make a long tail which drapes over a cardboard box duct-taped to my bike platform. emu feathers look like woolly grey yarn, which i possess in abundance, so i hand-sewed little hanks of yarn all over the tail. barring catastrophic costume failure (like, oh, catching my tail in my spokes) it should be a screaming good time with the bicycle activists. i'm yearning for it. a combination of knee tweaks and twinges (first one knee, then the other, then both) and repeated flats kept me grounded on and off for a couple weeks, which gave me the opportunity to finally start reading a book on bike messengers donated by this blog's cally correspondent. reading about bike messengers while riding to work on the subway is the mental equivalent of taking uppers with downers. i gotta get back on the bike before i wear my teeth down to nubs.