It was like "Waiting for Godot" – or waiting for some tourists, at the very least – for a pair of Super Bowl volunteers stationed in front of a shuttered coffee shop in the Ameriprise building.
Volunteers manning the skyways of downtown Minneapolis saw a lunch rush but little other action Monday, with most out-of-town visitors not yet making their way into the snaking bridges between office buildings.
"It's been quiet," said Stephen Ogren of Minneapolis.
"It's ordinary downtown worker traffic," said Ogren's volunteer partner Kenneth Hudoba of Oak Grove.
Most inquiries have been for directions to the Convention Center, but "if they're coming here to find their way, they're really lost," Hudoba said. "This is absolutely the desert."
Eventually, their captain, Linda Munson of Fridley, stopped by. She was making the rounds among all her teams. By mid-day, she'd already clocked 14,000 steps. Then she was off to the next skyway. "See you in about 15 minutes," Munson said, high-fiving the volunteers as she left.
Hudoba and Ogren had only just met at the start of their four-hour shift and entertained each other with stories to pass the time.
"We're just lying to each other about how great things are," Hudoba said.
"The good news," said Ogren, "is we haven't started repeating ourselves yet."
They were only a half-hour into their shift.