Bike rides and rubber bracelets

Over the weekend there were several discussions about how there are trends for everything; clothing, hair, music, even food. I have also noticed trends in how organizations raise awareness for various causes, and they both come back to Lance Armstrong.

First is the rubber bracelet. First there were the yellow 'livestrong' bracelets showing up on famous wrists, then every third person on the street wore one to help raise money for cancer research. Now these come in every colour of the rainbow, for every cause imaginable. I've seen red (for AIDS), green (for Darfur), lime green (for transplant research), pink (breast cancer) and every other colour imaginable for unknown causes. Bracelets have apparently replaced the once ubiquitous button, pin, or ribbon. I've never been one to wear my cause on my chest, bag or wrist but I was given one of these bracelets and tried to wear it. It was hot and uncomfortable so it now sits on my desk, so I can't imagine wearing one all day let alone several different bracelets as I have seen. You can order them custom made on the internet by literally Googleing rubber bracelets.

The other trend in awareness raising is the bike rally. I have covered four bike rallies to raise money/awarenes for various causes, and there has been the possibility to cover more. I'm still not sure how well a lot of these work but the thing to do is to get a whole bunch of people to bike from one city to another and get the word out. Most of these bike rallies are long, from Montreal to London, ON, from Vancouver to Halifax and the list on, sure these are no Tour de France, but contrary to the belief of these trends, not everyone is Lance Armstrong.

It is highly recommended that during the bike rally participants wear rubber bracelets.

If this is the case I think we should all get together to support the locked out CBC staff. We'll get the bracelets and we'll get onto bikes and ride from say the CBC building in Toronto to the nearest bar. When we get to the bar we can tell people how much we miss CBC personalities like Peter Mansbridge and Evan Soloman. Then we'll buy a round of drinks for our friends who are locked out then we'll forget our bikes, lose the bracelets and go home. The really important question is, what colour should the bracelets be?