[This was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.]
Say hello — and probably goodbye — to my friend, Globe and Mail writer Jeff Gray, with whom I worked at the Queen’s Journal (a.k.a. “The Urinal”), the official student paper of Crazy Go Nuts University. He BikeBerries — that is, uses his BlackBerry while bicycling:
As a columnist who has suggested that cyclists should wear helmets, and shouldn’t use iPods in downtown traffic, I can’t very well come out in favour of using cellphones and BlackBerrys on the roads. Of course you shouldn’t. And it seems that sensible people have figured this out.
Still, gliding on your bike on a little side street, with no one coming, typing “ok” and pressing send? No harm done.
Dude, it’s even easier to pull over when you’re on a bike. Just do it, or else I’m posting those photos from the Journal staff party. You know, the “tongue” ones.
5 replies on “BikeBerrying”
Hey man. Let’s leave those photos in the vault. (I thought all surviving images had been destroyed! We are married now, anyway.) I promise not to bikeBerry, unless it is for a deadline-related emergency on a sleepy one-way street with no cars. And any more than “ok” and “send” means pull over.
Any added risk is surely cancelled out by my other riding habits: I may be the only cyclist in Toronto to actually use turn signals and stop (or at the very least yield right of way) at lights and stop signs.
Not *those* photos! Please…be kind.
Setting aside the danger factor, what about the “get a life” factor?
If you ever see me quietly gliding down a little side street, typing into a blackberry instead of drinking in that peaceful setting, you have permission to run me over, brake, back up and crush me again — just to be sure.
@Jeff and Alison: Always good to hear from other members of the Queen’s Media Mafia!
And let this be a lesson to you kids considering a college or university. It may be true that in the long run in the working world, where you went doesn’t matter, but it does affect the people you’ll meet — you can blackmail them later in life. At Queen’s, there’s a good chance that your schoolmates will move on to do big things in high-profile places.
(You should see my incriminating Ali Velshi photos from the all-you-can-drink AMS end-of-year party…)