When you learn to drive they advise you against certain distractions while operating the vehicle: listening to headphones, giving road head and talking on the phone – to avoid an untimely death. Why should biking be any different? Gabbing it up after your lecture gets dismissed from Campbell Hall is like standing ass-up in the middle of a field during a thunderstorm – you’re gonna die.

As important as it may be to get the latest juice from your roomie on who she did this morning, it is not worth sacrificing yourself, your beloved pink cruiser or the many others you may impale en route. Barring matters of life and death, there is nothing that cannot wait the five minutes until you reach your destination. If you simply must know now, then for heaven’s sake, pull over so the rest of us can get on with our lives without major injury.

It wouldn’t be a typical weekend in the shithole that is I.V. without seeing someone with whom you hooked up and without coming close to death on a bike. I can barely go a day without trying a death-defying maneuver in attempts to avoid the car backing out of the driveway, so why add another dash of danger by talking on your Nokia? Let’s face it, no matter how many years you’ve spent carousing on our bike paths, even the best of us cyclists get caught in an accident at least once a quarter, and I guarantee that number to triple if you talk and bike.

As poor college students, we can barely afford to eat three meals a day, much less pay for expensive hospital bills and bike repairs because your phone-loving friend made you crash into the fence near Student Health. Not to mention the travesty that would be should you drop your $200 flip phone because you just had to know that your crush Ryan told Renee that he wants to hook up with you. Is any piece of gossip really worth the price of life or, worse, replacing your phone?

When you bike on the phone, not only are you a safety and monetary risk for all those around you, you’re also the day’s biggest pain in the ass. Just because you think you’re the center of the universe doesn’t mean you have the right to weave your slow ass in front of me when I’m late for class.

Daily Nexus staff writer Anna Oleson-Wheeler will clothesline anyone she sees biking and dialing.