Movemint Bike Cab took a road trip to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2012 to pedicab the Democratic National Convention.
On the night of Wednesday, August 29th, the Movemint road crew returned home to Austin after working a challenging twelve-game stint in Arlington: ten Texas Rangers baseball games, and two Dallas Cowboys games. Then, only thirty-six hours later, on the morning of Friday, August 31st, 11 riders met up to prepare for their next trip.
They loaded 5 pedicabs onto 2 vehicles. Their next destination was Arlington, where they claimed 9 pedicabs and many supplies from their storage unit. After that, five more riders needed to be picked up in four cities across three states. The fleet we brought with us more than doubled the entire number of cabs working the Democratic National Convention.
We arrived the night of Saturday, September 1st, and worked from Sunday evening until the early hours of the morning on Friday, September 7th. We separated and stayed in three different residences within Charlotte itself. We met and saw politicians and celebrities ranging from state representatives (including north Austin’s very own Mark Strama) to federal Senators and Jessica Alba to MC Hammer, and other persons of interest like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vermin Supreme. We encountered police officers from across the state of North Carolina and as far away as Fort Worth, Texas. We drove through nine states total: Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
To say this was an awesome undertaking is… apt.
A lot of people have been in my pedicab, but only one presidential candidate ever. Free ponies for all Americans! Brush your teeth!
(Author’s note: The Convention itself was actually scheduled only from September 4th through 6th, but we knew there was action awaiting us. As it turned out, there were fewer than 20 pedicabs in the entire city, almost all motor vehicle traffic was prohibited from entering downtown, and there were 56,000 attendees. It was about as perfect a scenario as I could have imagined. We got familiarized with the law enforcement agencies the first day and effectively had free rein after that. It was honestly liberating. I’ve got a few memories from those nights jotted down elsewhere, but I don’t know their appropriateness for this venue.)