So Romney decided to visit a different Wawa store instead.

"Why we're at this Wawa, instead of the other Wawa?" Romney said as he paid for a meatball hoagie. "I understand I had a surrogate over there already, so we decided to pick a different place. My surrogate is former Gov. Rendell, who said we could win Pennsylvania."

Instead of making prepared remarks to the crowd gathered outside the first location - Romney's advance team had set up a microphone - the Republican's bus went instead to the second Quakertown Wawa and made a quick tour through the store.

The detour threw Romney off the jobs-and-economy message he had been pushing earlier in the day.

"I think we have to have a very careful review of who's giving a fair shot to the American people," Romney told a crowd of several hundred packed into a warehouse at Weatherly Casting and Machine Co., next to the train tracks that run through Weatherly, Pa., about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia.