(28) Wausau, WI

Monday, January 5th: Today was a day off in Wausau, Wisconsin. There were lots of small trips planned by different people during the day and I decided to go on all of them! First was a trip to the post office. Lindsey, Dave and I had a fantastic time dealing with a very strong-willed Postal Clerk. She kept yelling “OVER HERE! I CAN TAKE THE NEXT PERSON!” in her loud Wisconsin accent. Then there was a trip to Wal-Mart with the whole tech crew and Jeffrey. We were going to pick up stuff for the cold: wind-shield washer fluid, lock de-icer, etc. We then went to Office Max/Best Buy/The Dollar Store. At the Dollar Store, I bought a bunch of small toys to play with and candy to eat. After that, Caroline, Jeffrey and I went down to the mall which is across the street from the post office that I was at that morning. I walked around the whole mall in about 15 minutes and found a huge book sale, and you all know how I love book sales. Luckily I showed an extreme amount of restraint and only bought one book called “An Idiots Guide to Global Economics.” I know, I know, some nice light reading. After that we walked about 2 blocks to “downtown” Wausau and went to a couple of other small shops before returning to the mall for lunch. Back at the hotel, I relaxed for a bit before working out and watching the Pittsburgh Penguins vs New York Rangers hockey game. Later that night, a bunch of us went bowling because the bowling alley was having one dollar shoes and one dollar games. I bowled a 140 game, a 150 game and a 130 game. I won every game except the last, which I came in second to Eric and that was because I was trying to curve the ball all game.

Tuesday, January 6th: The morning was spent doing paperwork. I called a number of venues but only talked to a few of them. We had a Tech Crew meeting and lunch at Fazoli’s, which is a fast food Italian restaurant, before heading over to the venue for our first load in of this leg. The venue was nice and load in went very well. It was very funny to really unpack everything for the first time since the end of November. Unfortunately, the temperature had been below freezing, and in the negative temperatures at night, for the last couple of days. This caused a number of things to be frozen or very cold. It took almost two hours for the sound computer to warm up. I went to do some paint touch up with the black paint that I had just gotten but my paint was completely frozen! Even the hazer fluid was slush! It was pretty funny and a big eye opener. We knew at that point we’d have to keep a lot more things in the vans as opposed to the truck and bring them in at night to keep them from freezing again. Other than that, the load in went well and we even finished a little early.

Wednesday, January 7th: We woke up bright and early for our first performance of this leg of the tour. We had a 10:00am(41) show and an 1:00pm(42) show. Both went over ok with only minor problems. Between the shows, most of the company went to lunch at this restaurant call Erbert’s and Gerbert’s Clubs and Subs which is a great deli sandwich shop. Load out also went well; smooth with only some minor trips. It took extra time to remember where our ratchet straps clipped in and what we were strapping where. The day was very humorous because the whole company was trying to scrub the rust off. We remembered how everything worked, but we couldn’t remember all the details. Luckily it wasn’t too hard to brush the cobwebs out of our minds. Once we were all packed up, we hopped in the vehicles and drove 149 miles (5587 total miles) to Madison, WI.