(31) Eau Claire, WI and Collegeville, MN

Wednesday, January 14th: We woke up this morning to -25 wind chill temperature. I spent the morning inside the hotel, where it was warm, trying to make phone calls and do paperwork. I walked over to McDonalds, which was right next door, for lunch and on the way back, I stepped into the hotel parking lot, slipped and fell flat on my butt. It was pretty embarrassing but luckily no one was around to see it! At the venue, we had to park in an alley way between the theater and a Gospel Mission Shelter to unload the truck. It was snow covered and a little icey. When I stepped out of the truck, I immediately fell again on my butt. We left the truck running while we unloaded in very cold weather. As we were going through load in, we were getting word that some of the schools planning to attend the show the next morning were closing because it was suppose to be -45 wind chill temperature. That meant they wouldn’t be coming to the show. Our audience was quickly dwindling but we knew there were a handful of homeschooled kids that were most likely coming. There was talk that we might cancel the show, which would mean we set up the show for naught, because the venue didn’t want to put on a show for less than about 20 people. The TD of the venue had a list of the schools coming and was slowly crossing the names off the lift. Unfortunately, we just had to wait until the morning before we could actually cancel the show. We left the venue at around 10:00pm and it was quite frigid outside.

Thursday, January 15th: We pack into the vans and headed to the venue in the -40 wind chill temperature. When we got the venue, the loading doors were locked. Eric and I walked around the building to find another entrance and just in that time, my nose hairs froze and some of the water in my water bottle froze as well. On the news they were saying it only takes a few minutes to get frost bite in weather that cold. Once inside, we found out that we’d have about 35 people for the show. It wasn’t the smallest house that we’ve ever had, but it was a little sad. We had our 10:00am(47) show and immediately started load out. After load out, Eric and I hopped in the truck and drove 178 miles(6088 total miles) to Collegeville, MN. We had to stop at one weight station on the way. Normally we just roll through and we’re on our way. But this time we pulled onto the scales and just sat there. After a minute, a trooper came out and asked for our log books, where we document all the hours we work and drive. He asked about some of the hours we had worked, told us our DOT placard on the truck were too small and sent us on our way. We take so much time to keep our log books up to date and accurate that it’s nice to have them checked every once in a while. Once we arrived at out hotel in St. Cloud, MN, we had an hour or so before having to leave for a load in at St. John’s College. Luckily, it was only in the -30 wind chill temperature when we started load in. The college didn’t have a loading dock, but they did have a very tall set of stairs that we backed the truck up to. They had a long ramp that went from the top of the stairs to the bed of the truck. It was by far the most interesting loading situation that we’ve seen so far. The students had all done it before so they were very good at being careful with our scenery and good at pushing our heavy boxes up the ramp. Load in went well and we were back at the hotel before 11:00pm which was great.

Friday, January 16th: We had two shows at 9:45am(48) and 11:45am(49). After load out, I had a quick lunch before heading out to the Mall of America with Carolyn, Dave, Eric and Lindsay. It took about 1:45 to drive to Minneapolis, which is where the Mall is. Dave was meeting up with a friend from college and Lindsay and I ended up splitting off from Carolyn and Eric to walk around the mall. The Mall of America is a funny thing. It’s a mall with the same stores as every other mall in the country. But it’s huge with 4 floors and a Nickelodeon themed amusement park in the middle, a miniature golf course and an aquarium in the basement. Lindsay and I walked the entire mall going into random shops here and there. We went to Lego Land and played with the legos, America Girl, where Lindsay gave me the short history of the American Girl book series, The Dollar Store, a bead store, the gift shop, an antique shop and we got smoothies and soft pretzels for dinner. It was a lot of fun and about 3 hours later we packed up and drove back to St. Cloud.