Free Chick Fil A for a year

The Chick-Fil-A in our area celebrated their 1 year anniversary with a chance to win free Chick-Fil-A for a year if you were willing to skate all night long around the restaurant. You also had to be one of the first 100 to sign up. So, a couple of friends and I (Shaun) thought it would be kind of fun and definitely worth the free food!

First off, I want to clearify what "Free Chick-Fil-A for a year" means.  It means 52 free meals (so one free meal a week) but definitely still worth the 8 hours of all night skating.  Check-in was from 8 - 9:45pm on Thursday, November 11th and the official skating start time was at 10pm and did not end until 6am the following morning.  It was a brutal yet 100% worth while endeavor.  The bonding experience that I had with my two friends/coworkers was amazing.  There was tears of joy and tears of pain.  There were hilarious gut wrenching times of laughter and there were heated arguments.  I might have exaggerated with the tears part, but it was definately a challenging experience that we will never forget. 

About 2 hours into the skate-a-thon, Hanley (the brown bearded lad) could already feel hotspots from the rental skates on the bottom of his feet.  Andrew (the wispy haired blond) was embarking on a journy that was way above his skill level due to the fact that he had never been skating for more than 8 hours total and now he would be venturing into a world of 8 consecutive hours of skating.  Let's just say the 2 of them were  the slowest skaters there, but did we care?  Not the least bit. We knew what we were in it for and believed firmly that there is great truth in the saying, "slow and steady wins the race"  It was definitely slow, the steady part might have been a bit of a stretch seeing how their skill level wasn't quite what I would call advanced by any means, but none the less it made the experience even more hilarious. 

The weather conditions were nice for an event like this though it might have been a tad bit on the cold side with temperatures staying in the low 20s.  It really wasn't too bad until 4 AM rolled around and we hit a mental and pain threshold block.   The music was motivating and the cheerleaders on the sidelines were really friendly and encouraging which made all the difference.  Once we mustered through the 4 o'clock hour we were in the home stretch, walking/skating like we were on broken glass because our feet hurt so bad, but throwing caution to the wind because we could smell victory in the air.  Once the call came out that the skate-a-thon was officially over, we praised the Lord and did our best to be patient as pictures were taken and prizes were being handed out.  The standing around at the end was probably one of the worst parts out of the whole event because the cold final caught up to you then.  However, once the bounty (52 free meal tickets!) was in hand we fled as swift as angel's wings to Andrew's car. Once home, I took a shower and hit the pillow ultra hard for about and hour until I had to get back up and go to work.  It was one of the worst wake ups I think I have ever had. 

Thank you and may God bless all of you with such an amazing experience.  :)



Here is a picture progression of our fun and exhausting night.....

Standing in line to secure our spot in the top 100...I was #37

Eating our free meal before skating all night

Yum, a peppermint chocolate chip shake!

Eat more Chikin!

Our first try on the skates, we needed moral support

I don't know

Showing off some skills that I aquired as a youngster

Hanley and I being weird

Ready, set, skate.....for the next 8 hours!

Larae stuck around for about 10 minutes to get an action shot as we circled the store