Houston Pedal Party – Let The Good Times Roll!
This past weekend, our brand new group of Houston Bloggers from Hello Houston! Media’s network and Blog Free – Houston and Beyond took to the streets of Houston on our very own, sponsored, Pedal Party! After reading about a friend’s B-Day Pedal Party on Facebook, I decided to reach out to our own local Pedal Party to see if they might be interested in sponsoring our very first meet up of local bloggers, and they were! Yay! Since I work for Little Soya, I decided to let them in on the sponsorship fun as well, and they provided some beer and snacks for our rowdy group! Thanks Little Soya and Pedal Party!
A Pedal Party is newest craze in bar hopping and there is a Pedal Party in almost every major city, although they go by different names in each city. You can find them in Austin, Spokane, Nashville, Knoxville, Boulder, Fort Worth, Grand Rapids, and others, just google it!
From the website: “The Pedal Party, as we call it, is actually called The Fietscafe, and was invented in Amsterdam and each one is hand made there and shipped over. They’ve been making the bikes and running this type of business over there for about 10 years. In 2007, two friends in Minnesota, Eric Olson and Al Boyce, saw these 16 person pedal powered bikes and decided it would be a great idea to bring them to America. They started PedalPub Twin Cities (their sister company) in Minneapolis in 2007 and are currently up to 4 bikes, each running almost constantly in the summer.”
It’s a 16 person contraption the size of a cargo van and weighing in at a whopping 2200 pounds. Of the 16 riders, only 10 actually do the pedaling. There are 6 seats on each side of the Pedal Party, 3 ride on the bench in the back, and one awesome rider is your bartender for the night! There are speakers hooked up and you can bring your own music, or jam to the playlist provided by Pedal Party! According to one of our Party drivers, the entire company has had only 3 accidents, ever, and they all happened the same way, someone jumped from the bike to retrieve something they had dropped, were knocked over by one of the bike seats, and injured their ankle. We were told that if we dropped something, we were to yell “Man Overboard” so our driver could safely bring our Party Bike to a complete stop and retrieve our item! The bikes are very safe and only travel at a speed of 4-6 miles an hour, I think we averaged around 4 miles per hour.
We chose the 2 Hour Heights tour which included three stops along the way. Christians Tailgate, Porchswing Pub and Liberty Station were our three stops of the night.
Top Row: Kristin from Surf And Sunshine, Lisa from Money Saving Parent
Bottom Row: Me , Alba from Independent Mami, , and Lacey from Charm N Sass
Pedal Party’s are great for any kind of social meeting, whether it’s corporate team building, an annual shareholders meeting, your birthday or even a bachelor party! Visit the Pedal Party website to book your own party now! You can also find Pedal Party on Twitter and Facebook, they are everywhere!
You can request a driver when you book your Pedal Party, we highly recommend Nate or Stephanie! They were so much fun and had awesome dance moves!
While Nate and Steph are the best Pedal Party Captains ever, they Are Not photographers, as you can see from the group shot below that Nate took! We still love you guys though!
We had so much fun on our Pedal Party thanks to our awesome sponsors! Can’t wait to see what trouble we get into next month!
A few tips for your next Pedal Party:
1. Wear comfy shoes with socks and some nice cool clothing. The Pedal Party is quite a workout, even with 10 friends pedaling! You will burn some calories!
2. Bring some water! You might be thinking about partying hard, but you will be pedaling your butt off, and you will get thirsty! Bring plenty of cold water for all of your friends who will probably only be bringing beer!
3. Bring some Cash! You only have between 15-20 minutes at each bar stop. Don’t be the guy holding up the line at the bar, using your card to buy one beer! You will also want to tip your awesome bike captain at the end of the night! Don’t be the guy (ahem, ME!) who doesn’t have cash at the end of the night for a tip!
Read our Storify (a mash up of our Tweets before, during, and after our Pedal Party, complete with pics!) HERE!
Check out these other awesome Houston Bloggers who attended the Pedal Party with me, and read their take on it!
