by Larry Lagarde

Yesterday was the last day to enter the free folding bike giveaway so I created the voting ballot this morning and just mailed the ballots to everyone that registered to vote. Now, we'll wait for the votes to begin trickling back.

Since there are only 12 entrants, the odds of winning are 1 in 12 which is pretty exceptional. No doubt, the entrants will be very excited by this but with each story entry running well under the 1500 word limit, the judges are breathing a sigh of relief too. As a result, voting could proceed quickly.

Given the daily barrage of negative economic news on television, radio and in print, if participation in this contest is any gauge of the economy, I have to wonder whether the media has been hyping the downturn in a disgusting attempt to recapture market share.

Think about it.
Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Hulu and more are making mainstream media irrelevant. Newspapers are closing because their circulations are in free fall. Why take the time to post a classified ad in print when Craigslist is free, immediate and viewed by far more people? So many television viewers are flocking to Hulu that the broadcasting industry estimates that add revenue will be insufficient to support programming within 10 years...

No doubt, this recession has resulted in a lot of pain and fear - a fact that must be addressed seriously and considerately (and is the reason why I did the contest in the first place). All the same, this is no Great Depression. The world is a far different place than it was almost 100 years ago.

So perhaps it's time to focus more on the simple pleasures of life and less on the news. Take my advice. Walk away from your computer screen. Go outside. Soak up that wonderful Spring air and go for a bike ride! You owe it to you.
;-)

Labels: Free-folding-bike-giveaway, olding-bike-giveaway