RR is pleased that private chef Carlin Greenstein had a great experience using rickshaw transport to run birthday-party goodies for 50 kids over to Central Park’s Swedish Cottage. Motor weapons can’t access the cottage on weekends, so delivery by rickshaw was the perfect solution!
In other news, RR is once again making deliveries for The Cleaver Company, one of New York City’s finest purveyors of local, organic and seasonal cuisine.
Have food. Will travel.
On Sunday 2/28 RR hit the road for an appearance at Just Food’s CSA Conference at Columbia U’s Teachers College. Gregg rode a trike uptown, executing a catering delivery to Central Park along the way, and I walked. This year’s scrumptious lorganic treat was the ecological thumbprint cookie (its footprint is so tiny we call it a thumbprint) featuring premium ingredients from Farmer Ground Flour, Queens County Farm Museum, Evans Farmhouse Creamery, Deep Mountain Maple, and Norwich Meadows Farm. Can you tell we love lorganic food almost as much as we heart organic transport?
Gregg guards the goodies
Middletown Power in Middletown, CT replaced the vehicle on the right with the vehicle on the left.
Guess which dinosaur is headed for the trash heap of history?
We at RR would like respectfully to suggest that the folks at Hudson River Park make a similar effort to GET WITH THE PROGRAM OF SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT…I mean, investigate pedal-powered alternatives to letting motor weapons (like the two pictured below) loose on one of the city’s most popular and heavily used bike lanes.
Triceratops
Ankylosaurus
Really, HRP poo-bahs, it’ll be better for everyone: Your employees will be healthier, and buzzing with endorphins. You’ll no longer be subject to the screeches of iPodded joggers getting the shit scared out of them by – surprise! – motor weapons whizzing past. To transport tools and materials, you can use a fully weatherproof rickshaw van. To move dirt or plants, you can use a pick-up trike. To treat visiting dignitaries to tours of the park, you can deploy a pedicab (with rain cover, if necessary). As long as the rickshaw rider is properly outfitted with rain gear and a warm coat, there should be no problem. Best of all, you’ll be investing in a transportation strategy as green as the astroturf on Pier 45! Find out more about Revolution’s rickshaw van rentals here.
…is a bit slow. Because the NYC DCA has issued approximately 900 pedicab registration plates, and only about 300 pedicab driver licenses, the pedicab-rental business is, shall we say, glacial. In the long term, it seems that the rule of law will encourage both natives and tourists of New York to accept pedicabs as a safe and legitimate form of transportation; in the short term, the onset of regulation has dramatically thinned the ranks.
Fortunately, Revolution has not been tending a monocrop, these past five years in practice. Hardy drivers for RR’s rickshaw-van rental clients – City Bakery, Spoon Catering, and Pure Food & Wine – have been hitting the road regularly, as have City Harvest’s trio of trike teamsters (City Harvest recently firmed their commitment to organic transport by purchasing three insulated rickshaw vans they’d previously been renting). RR’s own drivers have been faithfully making the rounds for our delivery clients, as well.
Loading cargo at 5:30am, in a snowstorm.
Contrary to popular belief, RR’s heavy-duty work trikes do in fact function in all weather. I’d estimate that a trike can plow pretty easily through a couple inches of snow under all wheels, or up to six or even eight inches of snow under one or two wheels. Yesterday, as I was driving off the curb and into the street at 31st and Lexington, cargo box loaded with 700+ pounds of pizza dough, my trike did get stuck in softening white stuff; however, it only took thirty seconds of shoving by a couple gracious helpers to get the me back on the road. The moral of the story is: Trikes, like all vehicles, are susceptible to the vagaries of foul weather and snow build-up. They’re also a lot easier to rescue from the scrapes they get into as a result of said vagaries.
"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night...."
In other news: As you may have seen on the Revolution home page, RR is teaming with local organic farmer Zaid Kurdieh, of Norwich Meadows Farm, to offer New York City’s first ever (partially) pedal-powered home delivery CSA (food will travel from farm to midtown via truck, from midtown to customers’ doors via rickshaw van). Monthly deliveries for the winter share begin in January and end in April. In June, we expect to commence weekly deliveries for the summer share (more on that later). See http://www.norwichmeadowsfarm.com/homedelivery.htm for details. Deadline to sign up for the winter share – and get scrumptious seasonal delights like eggs, butter, root vegetables and maple syrup – HAS BEEN EXTENDED to January 1, 2010. RR loves New York, and wants to help New Yorkers glow with health – both by promoting non-toxic travel, and purveying the most nutritious vittles money can buy.
Happy Hauling-days, NYC!