In Portland, Ben & Jerry’s annual Free Cone Day is a serious holiday that is not to be missed.
And what better way to justify the calories than by riding your bike to as many Ben & Jerry’s locations as you can (before toppling over)? That’s just what Carl Larson has planned for his Free Cone Day Ride.
Carl and his dessert-loving cohorts plan to meet at the downtown location (524 SW Yamhill, near Pioneer Courthouse Square) at 5:00 pm and then “continue our tradition of riding our bicycles to every Portland Ben and Jerry’s and eating lots of ice cream.”
If you’d rather relax while you lick, take in the sights, and let someone else do the pedaling, PDX Pedicab is offering free rides from noon to 8:00pm in honor of Free Cone Day. Jonathan Magnus from PDX Pedicab says “Simply call 503-Pedicab from within the city limits to be picked up and swept away to ice cream delight.”
Magnus’ pedicabs will be serving both downtown Ben & Jerry’s locations (301 NW 10th and 524 SW Yamhill).
To plan your two-wheeled dairy feast, here are all the Portland locations participating in Free Cone Day:
- Downtown (across from Pioneer Courthouse Square)
524 SW Yamhill
Uptown
39 NW 23rd Place
Pearl District
301 NW 10th Street
Hawthorne
1428 S.E. 36th Avenue
The pedicabs bother me for several reasons. A recent NY Times article ran the numbers and found that the people who pedal them require enough extra calorie intake per day to outweigh all \’benefits\’ of riding, rather than taking a car. Farming and livestock create a lot of C02 as well, remember.
Additionally, they are extremely slow, especially when filled with passengers, and thus cause backup of traffic. Idling cars are still puffing out pollution, but for longer. Not tom neiton the time wasted sitting behind them.
I saw Cirque du Soleil last month, and the pedicabs were out in full force, some of them moseying along with blocks of cars stuck behind them.
If the idea is to prevent emissions, this is the worst way to go about it.
Wait, what? Pedicab operators may as well be driving a car? Even if they burn 3000 EXTRA calories a day, that\’s a little over two pounds of wheat. Do you really think growing a pound of wheat has a greater carbon impact than burning fifteen gallons of gas? That\’s crazy talk.
I found the John Tierny article you cite (and please recognize that he\’s essentially a conservative agitator at the NY Times) — it says that if you walk 1.5 miles, then replace the calories you burned by drinking milk, your carbon footprint is the same as if you had driven that 1.5 miles. This is junk science at its finest. If we assume the driver gets all his calories by eating filet mignon, and throwing out the rest of the cow, I\’ll bet we can demonstrate that cars are actually many times more efficient than cyclists.
I love pedicabs AND ice cream shamelessly trucked in from Vermont!
This ride has nothing to do about saving weight or the environment…in other words, it\’ll be a lot of fun.
Pray for bad weather. It keeps the lines down.
The line for downtown N&J is already around the corner. Is everyon planning on waiting a hour per location?
Huge lines are nothing new for this ride, Spencer (this is its third year).
What IS new is the fourth location in the Pearl District. Can we make all four? Again, pray for rain.
Rasputin is ridiculous and probably just a troll.
Bicycles are very efficient at moving mass, and they are moving 200 pounds of mass as opposed to 3000 pounds. There is no way a similar amount of energy is used cycling as in driving.
Furthermore, you have to account for the energy that goes into manufacturing that 3000 pound vehicle, as opposed to that 25 pound bike.