If you've been keeping up with the news, you know that the climate has already started to change because of our over-reliance on the burning of fossil fuels. Coral reefs are dying. Forest fires are ruining wheat crops. Rivers are flooding. And we can help stop it by making some simple changes in our day to day lives, such as biking to our jobs at the spa in Edmonton. The city of Red Deer, Alberta recognizes that biking to work is both a health and environmental benefit, and has created Bike to Work Breakfasts to encourage it. You can learn all about it here.

The Bike to Work Breakfast is an annual event, held every year on the third Thursday of May. From 7am to 9am, anyone who comes to the event from their Avoca condos under their own power gets free pancakes. Though the event is known as the Bike to Work Breakfast, you can walk, skateboard, roller blade, jog, or use any other method that's self powered. So come on a unicycle or a street luge just to be interesting.

The point of holding the annual Bike to Work Breakfast is to encourage more people to use active and environmentally friendly modes of transportation. (Studies show that people will go to great lengths for free food). Even if your job at the metal shear factory it too demanding for you to bike to work as well, you can still help the initiative by taking public transit, carpooling, or even by driving a fuel efficient hybrid car. You also shouldn't let any physical disabilities stop you from using active transit, as there are plenty of bikes and boards modified for people with different abilities.

If you attend the breakfast this year, you might see people from the Red Deer branch of Photography Ottawa there to cover the event for the local paper or an environmental newsletter. This is because the Bike to Work Breakfast is actually the kickoff of a weeklong summer active challenge that pits Red Deer against neighboring Grand Prairie to see which city's citizens can long more fitness hours. You have to go to the breakfast to sign up, but if you're part of a group you can register at the Be Fit for Life center.

The breakfast and the activity week are jointly hosted by the City of Red Deer and a group called Better Biking Red Deer, whose job is to encourage people who sit around all day working through telecom expense management figures on a computer to get out there and be active.