Rickshaw Run

From the Rickshaw Run web site...

The mighty Winter Rickshaw Run 09 is waiting with baited breath to find out who will be stupid enough to take part. With a shiny new finish point up in the Far far east it will be completely ridiculous.

What's this all about then?
The Rickshaw Run is pretty simple. With no preparation and less luggage one flies to the Indian Subcontinent and does one's damndest to force 150cc of Indian engineering over thousands of miles of questionable terrain in around two weeks.

Upon arrival we pause briefly for a game of cricket followed by tea and cakes before revving our engines and setting off. We stop only to wet our whistles on the occasional gin and tonic at specially selected refreshment points.

When does it take place?
The Rickshaw Run happens but twice a year. Once in the Summer and once in the Winter just after Christmas. The Summer event launches on the 1st June 2008. The Winter event will launch on 1st January 2009.

The Route
The route of the mighty Rickshaw Run changes every time to make sure it remains a challenge. Once we get the odd team surviving one route we'll move it to somewhere harder. Huge mountains, dirt tracks, tropical jungle, monsoons are just some of the things we seek out to make sure you get some real adventure.

We vaguely plan the routes to take two weeks but don't blame us if it takes you two years and half a limb. We don't have specific route plans because it's an adventure. You want to get stuck in with the maps and figure out where you want to go, not let us take you on a guided tour.

Have a gander at the route page for details of this Run's route.

The Machines
Three wheels, half a horse power and more fun than any other vehicle on planet earth the humble Rickshaw is undoubtedly the ultimate long distance, off road machine, despite being designed for short distances on road. Marvel at our rickshaw page for more details.

The Charity
The Rickshaw Run is all about raising huge amounts of wedge for a great cause or two, so each team has to raise a measly £1000 for charity. Have a peak at the charity page for more details.

The Backup!?
Support? Of course we don't provide any support. The Rickshaw Run is supposed to be an adventure. What sort of adventure would you have if we were following you in a truck with spare parts and a comfy bed. No, no we must get out there into the world and get stuck in. When you're stuck, lost, and up a certain creek without a rowing implement is when you start to have fun - and the last thing we want to do is stop you having fun! If you want a full support crew there's a very nice place called Butlins based in Bognor Regis.

The Finish Line
Once the finish is reached by all, a winner will be decided by arbitrary means and much pomp and hand shaking will commence. After this wondrous occasion, the closing game of cricket will be played followed by tea and cakes. We then all wend our merry ways back from whence we have come.

Granted, they aren't what we would call rickshaws; more like tuk-tuks. Are you brave, crazy or adventurous enough to do it? Visit the web site and find out more about it.

Care Bears in a Pedicab

WARNING! Not for the faint of heart or stomach! You and Tenderheart Bear ride a pedicab around Times Square and end up at Toys-R-Us. The view kinda sucks since most of what you see is the left side of a brown bear head. This is very very long, so you probably won't watch the entire thing. Be ready to hit the mute button.

People love to hear stories about Pedicabbin

During my travels and training of new drivers the one part everyone seems to enjoy the pedicab stories. The business is full of funny, crazy, heart wrenching and just stupid stories. Doing this for almost 4 years I am full of them. But I like hearing other driver’s stories too. Here are some of the categories that they can fall into. We have a few from when we did this before. But there seems to be a whole new batch of readers and riders out there. I have some new ones too.

1. Stupidest ride. (What was I thinking)?
2. Craziest ride?
3. Longest ride?
4. Strangest people on the cab?
5. Any others you want to add?

Please comment with all the juicy detail of yours.

Worth1000: Rickshaws

At Worth1000.com, visitors are allowed to photoshop an image anyway they like, as creatively as they like. The original photo was of 2 velotaxis. Below is one of 38 entries. Check out the rest and choose your favorite!

Mermaids in Pedicab

This photo comes from the Mermaid Parade in NYC, courtesy of LarimdaME on flickr.

The future of transportation

The future of transportation is here! This innovative street/air design is available now. If you can't get around traffic, simply go over it. We know you'll want to add several of these to your fleet, so put your orders in right away. The production cycle is a bit long to allow plenty of time for custom artwork, so don't wait. Comes in multiple colors.

Just another Independent who doesn't know how to get rides

I have posted an archived pedicab photo of one of our "indy" Drivers who thinks he is above the rules and obviously above knowing how to sell a ride. This is the kind of lacksidaisical attitude we deal with- FYI, at time of this photo, he was just new to the pedicab world, about 3-4 months. During that 3-4 month period, he wrecked a wheel, alienated all of the drivers of a certain company, and pretty much told me that he was so accomplished that he didn't need someone to help him make more money and learn the ropes. I guess it goes to show that he knows what he is doing- so much he is sleeping in his undersized cab. This job is not an easy job by any means. This photo was not staged, it was truly a cabbie waiting around for a ride to find him. I hope he doesn't last. Many don't. A shining example of unwillingness to be trained and immature indy-emo attitude of someone who thinks they know what they are doing and they do not. Let it be known he crashed his cab the first night. One bad apple...

Work to Get Well Rickshaw Initiative

Rickshaws: Decorah’s cure-all

The public transportation woes of Decorah’s incontinent and socially awkward will be cured thanks to the mayor’s new “Work to Get Well” program. Starting June 20, the city will initiate the first ever rickshaw agenda in the nation.

The program will use some of the town’s more obese citizens and give them rickshaws to pull around. It will be used to combat the ever more prevalent obesity problem in the city.

“It’s the simplest, yet most ingenious plan I’ve ever had in my life,” said Decorah Mayor John “Col. Crud” Fogerty. “We get a bunch of fat people, hook them up to rickshaws and BAM! You got yourself public transportation and weight loss control.”

The program has been in the works for nearly one hundred years of solitude but was not initiated until the city council approved it last Monday. This was the third time it was proposed to the council and the first time it was passed. It had been defeated 2-20, 2-10, then finally won 2-0.

“It’s unfortunate that 20 members of the city council contracted SARS in order for the rickshaw program to be passed, but you can’t stand in the way of innovative ideas, cause if you do ...” said Fogerty, flashing a syringe labeled “Not SARS.”

The mayor is hopeful that the rickshaw program will cure all of the city’s problems. He is so optimistic that he has allotted 90 percent of the budget to it, leaving the other 10 percent for canned ravioli and Def Leppard albums.

“There is literally no way this program won’t work. The ingenuity is in the simplicity,” said Fogerty. “You pay a fat guy $10 and he’ll take you anywhere in Decorah in under four hours with three standard ‘hot dog breaks.’”

Some Decorah residents are less optimistic about this program. Local lardo Dave McDonuteater feels the mayor is impeding upon his basic human rights.

“I’m cool with carrying people around all day to different places for meager wages, but I do not want to be thin like all those other sad saps, what with their one chin and low cholesterol — that is just no fun at all,” said McDonuteater while munching on a stick of butter.

Others are optimistic about the rickshaws, hoping it will bring revenue to the town.

“Right now all we have is Nordic Fest and the McDonald’s with the flat screens,” said Josh Dansdill (‘09), Luther student and Decorah resident. “Now don’t get me wrong, that McDonald’s is pretty great, but not rickshaw great.”

The mayor thinks this program will give Decorah national recognition.

“Though I’ve never driven outside of Decorah, I can only guess that these rickshaws will make it the greatest town in America. Well, second only to Gary, Indiana,” said Dansdill.

The mayor has other ambitious plans to improve Decorah.

“Some other things I hope to initiate include a Hall & Oates memorial cricket stadium, a road paved with old Bart Simpson dolls and, last but not least, I want to bring in a Waffle House,” said Fogerty. “If I can get all these things going, then I know everybody in America will want to come — unless you’re a terrorist. Or a Yankee’s fan.”

--

Giblet Mcniblet
Staff burrito eater

Thanks Gerald (Trixi) at RickshawForum.com for finding this one for us.

No screaming allowed on the Screamer

Ride the Screamer! (But no shrieking please)

Neighbors’ complaints spur amusement park to institute a no-noise rule

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - No screaming on the Screamer!

A suburban amusement park has gotten so many complaints from neighbors about bloodcurdling screams that it has instituted a no-shrieking rule for its scary new thrill ride, the Scandia Screamer, a gigantic, windmill-like contraption that sends people plunging 16 stories to Earth at nearly 60 mph.

Riders who let out a screech — or just about any other noise — are pulled off and sent to the back of the line.

As passengers are strapped into the two metal baskets, the operator recites this warning: "We are required to remove you from this ride if you make any noise. If you feel you might make a noise, please cover your mouth tightly with you hand, like this (The operator then covers mouth with hand). If we hear any noise through your hand, we will remove you from the ride. So please remain silent and enjoy the Screamer."

Read the rest of the story at MSNBC...

Bad traffic

Who wants to drive a pedicab here? And we think our traffic is bad!

Anybody know this guy?

Idiot of the week...

Rickshaw movie - wadaya think?

Check out the movie trailer on YouTube. This is being made in Canada by a retired rickshaw runner, not a pedaller. I hear he's looking for funding for this film. Any takers?

WARNING: This film will NOT be rated G.

Pedicab drivers make more than this guy

Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

It's too long to post the entire story here, but you definately need to read the rest of this one.

I'm sure the pedicabs were fighting for this one

New York couple hail cab for 2,400 mile trip
Cabbie to turn off meter for $3,000 flat fee, plus expenses, for ride to Ariz.
The Associated Press
April 9, 2007

NEW YORK - Betty and Bob Matas have retired and are moving to Arizona, but like many New Yorkers they don’t drive, and they don’t want their cats to travel all that way in an airliner cargo hold.

Their solution: “Hey, cabbie.”

They met taxi driver Douglas Guldeniz when they hailed his cab after a shopping trip several weeks ago.

They got to talking about their upcoming move, and “we said ’Do you want to come?”’ said Bob Matas, 72, a former audio and video engineer for advertising agencies. “And he said ’Sure.”’
It was initially a gag, Matas said, but as they talked over the ensuing weeks it became reality.

$3,000 flat fee
They plan to leave Tuesday on the 2,400-mile trip to Sedona, Ariz., with Guldeniz driving his yellow SUV cab 10 hours a day for a flat fee of $3,000, plus gas, meals and lodging.

They’re getting a break. The standard, metered fare would be about $5,000 — each way, according to David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety, a drivers’ group. But city Taxi and Limousine Commission rules direct drivers and passengers to negotiate a flat fare for trips outside the city and a few suburban areas.

It’s also a good deal for Guldeniz.

“This job is not easy, and I want to do something different,” said Guldeniz, 45, who has been driving a taxi for two years. “I want to have some good memories.”

The Matases will ride in relaxed comfort in Guldeniz’s sport utility vehicle while their cats ride in the back in their travel cases. A mover will haul their belongings.

“It’s a little unusual, but it will be fun,” said Betty Matas, 71, a retired executive administrative assistant.

I'll bet this cabbie was glad there were pedicabs to take the short rides!

Steve's epiphany

In his humorous slightly twisted blog Corporate Hallucinations, Steve Crescenzo describes his experience in a NYC pedicab and his revelation that he'll never complain about his job again. We rarely find such a descriptive recollection of a pedicab ride from a passenger's perspective. If you have time to read the full post and the comments that follow, it's well worth it.

So we meet in the hotel bar, have a martini, then go outside to get a cab. Only it’s pouring rain outside. I mean, pouring. So of course, this being New York, there are no cabs.

But there was a “bike cab” available. You’ve probably seen these; all of the big cities seem to have them these days. They’re like rickshaws . . . only instead of the “driver” pulling the passenger on foot, he rides a bike.

Well, one of these bike cabs pulled up to where we were waiting, and offered to take us wherever we wanted to go. The problem, of course, was that the “cab” on these bike cabs is built for two people.

Specifically, these cabs are built for two very small people who have already been sexually involved, and as such don’t mind if their intimate parts rub up against each other.

They are not built for two big, straight men. Which means they really aren’t built for three straight men. Which mean they really, really aren’t built for three straight men when two of those men (Jim and I) are, how shall I say this nicely . . . fat.

But we had no choice. We had to get to the theater district, and walking in the pouring rain wasn’t an option, and going back into the gift shop to buy umbrellas wasn’t an option, because real men don’t go back into “gift shops” and buy “umbrellas” . . . so we were stuck.

And when the bike-cab guy—who was very, very skinny, and who spoke with some kind of heavy Eastern European accent—kept insisting that he could take us, we finally gave in.

I piled in first. Then Mark got in behind me. Already, people on the sidewalk were laughing at us. It’s the closest I have ever been to Mark’s [his boss] private parts, and I’ve been kissing his ass for 13 years.

Then Jim got in. Now people on the street were howling with laughter. Jim had to sit fully on top of Mark, and half on top of me. His mustache was tickling my ear. Mark’s hand was dangerously close to my groin. His other hand, as far as I could tell, was buried between Jim’s ass cheeks.

It was like something out of the Three Stooges, if the Stooges had ever had a three-way homosexual orgy.

And off we went. This poor immigrant man could barely set the cart in motion. He was giving it all he had, but he probably weighed about 150 pounds soaking wet . . . which of course he was. And he was pulling 680 pounds of fat man meat through a driving rainstorm so we could get to the theater on time.

He could barely do it. I still can’t believe he didn’t have a hernia. Maybe he did. I could have sworn that at one point I saw one of his testicles roll out the bottom of his pants and skitter to the curb.

That’s when I had my epiphany.

I remember thinking, as I watched this man labor through the rainstorm at about two miles an hour, that I had probably just earned more in one day, for talking, than he earned in a month for pulling fat-ass tourists around New York City.

That’s when I vowed to never complain about my job again.

Just as I had my epiphany, the unthinkable happened. A shot rang out. Or at least it sounded like a shot. And as soon as I heard it, our rolling gay orgy carriage veered sharply to the right. You can guess what had happened: We had blown a tire. Our driver wrestled the cab over to the curb, got off the bike, and let out a cry of anguish.

Of course, by this time we were almost at Broadway, so we hopped out, Mark paid him, and we ran through the rain to shelter. Actually, we ran through the rain to this incredible Italian restaurant where we had duck risotto and Florentine T-bone steaks as big as my ass.

But before we got to the restaurant, I made the mistake of looking back. And I saw this man, this hard-working immigrant man who probably sends most of his money back home to Latvia or wherever he was from, standing in the street, the rain streaming off him, staring at his broken livelihood.

I was barely able to choke my risotto down.

If I ever complain out here again about how hard I have it, someone remind me of this story . . . not that you’ll have to, I hope, but just in case.

What Steve doesn't realize here is that some pedicab drivers think they have the best job in the world. How many people have a job that where they get to ride a bike, meet interesting people, and make decent money?

Corporate Hallucinations: Putting Things in Perspective

Sold! to the highest bidder

Found this story on a blog by Monica Alonzo-Dunsmoor for the Arizona Republic.

What can five bucks get you in downtown Phoenix?

A pedicab ride. (I'm sure that's what you guys were thinking, too.)

Yeah, downtown is riddled with construction, which makes for a bumpy ride. And really, the weather is perfect for a stroll. But take a ride and you can hear some interesting tales of downtown night life.

Here's a quick one from Earl, a pedicab driver:

Earl is riding past a downtown pub just in time to witness a bar fight. Two guys toss (literally) a third man out of the bar and proceed with some throttling. The outnumbered guy jumps into Earl's pedicab and says, “I'll give you 10 bucks, just get me outta here.” Earl starts cranking it when he hears one of the men at the bar yell out, “I'll give you $25 if you bring him back!”

Earl, clearly a virtuous man, only hit the brakes momentarily before continuing his pedaling.

Monty Python -- Bicycle Repair Man

MY HERO!!!

Tonight Show -- The FruitCake Lady Remembered

Some words of wisdom as we close out 2006. RIP!

McDonald's Training Video circa 1972

A lot has changed in 35 years, but the message of "courtesy" is timeless. Check out the slower pace and lower prices! And yes, the clothes and hair are real -- not from some costume shop somewhere. Maybe something you dug out of someone's closet (your own?).

Thanks Seth & Robin.

What pedicabbies do... (part 2)

Hey pedicabbies! Looking for something to do in your off hours that will keep your reflexes sharp and your hand-eye coordination smooth? Try getting a New Delhi rickshaw out of a traffic jam in Rickshaw Jam. Want something to keep you busy while you're waiting for the snow to clear or the airport to open? Give Mayor Hickenlooper a hand at plowing the streets of Denver in Mayor Hick's Snowplow Adventure.