Jeni Christopher really digs heavy machinery.
How much? Christopher, a St. Paul mother of two young children, passed up a last-minute pedicure and manicure invite from a friend to instead run a 19-ton, 115-horsepower excavator on a recent rainy Saturday afternoon – all for “fun and the experience.”
“Maybe that’s the tomboy in me,” she said.
Christopher was among the first customers of Extreme Sandbox, a new business in Hastings that gives people the chance to pay to “play” with an excavator, skid steer loader or bulldozer.
The company, which opened April 7, bills itself as being the first of its kind in the Midwest.
Its marketing motto?
“Let the kid in you play!”