The Ice Cream Tour Will Not Be Televised

Okay. I finally sat down to look at my calendar. My summer schedule is a mess. The number of days that I can make the Tour de Hard Ice Cream work, is something like one. One day. So dammit, that’s when we’re going to do it.

Saturday, August 19. Save the date.

It’s still too early to announce the stops of the tour. The nomination post is still alive and well somewhere, so when we get closer I’ll put a route together. But there was something else on a related topic that I ran across recently, so I thought I would share it.

But first, a little background.

Thursday, September 7 I’ve agreed to be one of the judges in the 2017 Capital Region Wingfest at Revolution Hall in Troy benefiting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Albany and Troy. I was told one of my co-judges would be from Channel 10, but I don’t watch the TV news.

So I had to Google Jimmy Marlow.

I’ve got to tell you, I still don’t quite know exactly what he does on the station. He might technically be the human interest reporter or something. But leading into the fourth of July weekend, he set out on a herculean task. The segment was called Jimmy Marlow’s Ice Cream Challenge, and thanks to the glories of the Internet, you can catch it all here.

For anyone who has been on a FUSSYlittleTOUR, you know the challenges of eating five different things over the course of an afternoon. Whether they are cider donuts, soft serve cones, or hamburgers is immaterial. Five stops is plenty. The first two are always a piece of cake. You start feeling it at three. Four can be a challenge. At five you are questioning your life choices.

Well, Jimmy Marlow hit eight. Eight local ice cream places. And he did it at a breakneck pace.

Maybe there were some tricks involved. Perhaps he was working with a couple different camera crews who showed up in advance. But to set up, eat, and get to the next spot every thirty minutes is truly a staggering feat.

Oh yeah. And he started it all at 5 o’clock in the morning. My hat is off to the man.

I’d invite him on our next tour, but if I were Jimmy, I wouldn’t want to look at another ice cream cone for a long long time. The funny thing is that even though he visited eight local places, our tour will be including five places that weren’t featured on his broadcast.

Needless to say, I’m even more excited to meet him in September as I am to judge me some wings. And I love wings. More on that in the weeks to come.