The Cheez-It Tour

I was asked to help promote Cheez-It Crackers with their "BIG CHEESE" taste this weekend. My gig was to talk about the amazing 700 pound block of cheddar cheese that was carved by a Wisconsin cheese carver, Troy Landwehr into Mt. Rushmore. The carving is on a 15 day road trip in a brightly colored semi that has clear side walls.

Simple gig, talk the Cheez It talk and hand out samples. Like in life, things don't always run smoothly. My samples didn't arrive as well as my Cheez It t-shirt. So out to get bulk snack packs of Cheez It's - 500 packages. Another call, one of the walls of 1 lb Cheez Its on the truck had fallen down, could I, would I, go buy 100 boxes of Cheez Its and meet the touring truck at the Baltimore Farmer's market at 6:30 a.m. and rebuild the wall.

I had no problem with the snack packs but that warehouse store didn't carry the 1 lb boxes so off to Giant Food. I went to the service desk to see if they had cases of the 1 lb boxes. I heard her tell the other staff on the phone 1 lb boxes...so off course they came out with the wrong size.
Okay, so now I went to the shelf and took every box that was in good shape off their shelves, 62--I counted them. I went to the service desk thinking it wise with such an unusual check out. The original young lady wasn't there and I was directed to take it through the regular check out line.

I proceeded to tell them I have 62 boxes. I was ask to put all the boxes on the conveyor belt where she scanned each box and more. They had charged me for 65 boxes. I told them to take 3 boxes off. No, they credited the whole thing and the supervisor with one box kept going by the scanner 62 times. What a chore and what an inane situation. Later that day I went to Shoppers where I picked up the 38 boxes. The checker counted the boxes and enter 38 times the price. Simple. Meantime Shoppers was having a sale at $2.50 and I paid $4.19 at Giant. If this is tedious reading you should have lived it. Now getting everything in my car and out of my little Corolla.

Out the door at 6:15 a.m to meet the truck at the Farmers Market. They ask him to move from the Saratoga street entrance to the Fallways entrance where he couldn't go because the truck was too tall. So everyone was staring at each other and I finally said, let's go back to Saratoga Street. Then once there to back in and then to move because the motor of the truck was driving the flower vendor crazy.

As Kenneth, the driver, and I tore down the wall of Cheez Its we had to store them and then load the 100 boxes. Kenneth and I both worked on gluing the boxes. When Kenneth had everything under control I went home for a bit and then off to meet the truck at the Bowie Walmart and then on to the Glen Burnie Walmart.

Pour Abe Lincoln's face was melting, or let's say compressing...he actually reminded me of a friend of mine.

We went through 1/2 the samples in no time flat but Kenneth had found some extra in storage. It was fun interacting with most the people, money was earned and I picked up some steamed crabs as my reward. Always a foodie ending.

You can see a picture of the Cheese Mt. Rushmore at this link http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070701/APC0101/706300578/1979