An open letter to Minnesota: More snow, please

Oh Minnesota, why have you forsaken me?!

Dear Minnesota,

In my 27 years of existence, I like to think we've grown to know each other pretty well. I've camped in your parks, I've fished in your lakes, I've biked on your trails and -- begrudgingly -- rooted for your Vikings in good times and bad. While others clamor for the big cities, big mountains and ocean views, I've remained loyal to your river valleys, rolling hills and abundance of lakes.

I've stuck by you through thick and thin. I toughed out the Halloween blizzard of '91, pressing on for more candy in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume while other trick-or-treaters cowered in your snowy wake. I've also endured your hot n humid summers year after year by keeping myself cool with regular trips to the lake and icy cold beverages in the malted hops variety.

Like a spouse in a marriage, I've grown to appreciate you for both your strengths and your shortcomings. I don't ask you to be perfect; I only ask you to be yourself

It is with that in mind that I come to you with this simple request: Enough with the wimpy weather, send some snow this way.

Most would agree that you've been pretty easy on us this winter, more so than most even. There's been an occasional cold day from time to time, but those have been lost amid a steady stream of days in the "sunny and upper '30s" variety.

Even worse, the snowfall has been substandard. In Faribault, it's been downright abysmal. My sled hasn't come out of my closet all winter and the snowshoes I got for Christmas have yet to be used. Meanwhile, friends of mine in more southern locales have been posting Tweets about snowstorms and photos of snowmen on Facebook. I even saw a post about a sizable snowstorm in -- gasp! -- Texas.

This is unacceptable, Minnesota. One of the things I've always appreciated about you is your tough-love approach to winter. While other states baby their residents with mild temperatures and brown landscapes, you barrage us with sub-zero temps and white-out conditions to toughen us up. Instead of shying away from you wintertime fury, we've learned to embrace it with activities like ice fishing, skiing, curling and polar plunges.

Heck, Paul Bunyan never complained about it being too cold in the winter. He just put on a flannel, grew a beard and started chopping wood to keep warm. If he tried to do that this winter, he'd probably die of heat stroke.

Minnesota, the fact of the matter is that we've come to expect a certain level of performance from you in the winter and you simply haven't been delivering the goods this year. Texas, Oklahoma and other wimpy southern states should not be stealing headlines for their massive snowstorms. You're supposed to be the top dog for harsh winters and even got recognized for it in a Leslie Nielsen movie.

In my opinion, your title as heavyweight champion of winter weather is in jeopardy. You're also running out of time to turn this wimpiness around. Temperatures are expected to be in the 40s and 50s this week and we're drifting closer and closer to those spring/summer months, when the expected norm switches to hot, humid temps, swarms of mosquitoes and the occasional rainstorm.

You made a solid effort to buck that trend last week with a snowstorm that blanketed parts of the state with close to 10 inches of white, powdery goodness. However, the effort wasn't consistent as Faribault got nothing but rain for those days. Instead of breaking out my snowshoes for a long-awaited maiden voyage, I went running in a long-sleeve shirt and shorts and skipped a rock across the near-flooded ditch by my apartment.

The ball is in your court, Minnesota. I know you have at least one more big snowstorm in you.

Sincerely,

The frustrated guy in Faribault who wants to go snowshoeing

Christmas shoveling ambition

Like any other Minnesotan, I endured the "Christmas blizzard of '09."

My car required 20 minutes of shoveling to dig it out from the snowy abyss that was the parking lot at my apartment Christmas Eve morning. The drive to my parent's house in St. Cloud that day was a three-hour adventure complete with ice, snow and bad drivers on Highway 169. And Christmas morning at my parent's house, I woke up to -- surprise, surprise -- another round of snow, as the storm from the night before forced my step dad to take a snow blower to our driveway for the third straight day.

Needless to say, Mother Nature certainly added a bit of gloom to the holiday season. But after staying inside Christmas morning and avoiding the snow, like many Minnesotans probably did that day, I decided to make the most out of the weather. I put on my winter clothes, grabbed a shovel, reached into my inner 4th grader and took a few hours out of the holiday to build a snow fort.

I'm still not sure what exactly motivated me to do so. Maybe I wanted to negate the onslaught of Christmas cookies my mom had made with a little exercise. Maybe I wanted to tap into the nostalgia of my days as a Boy Scout, where we once built a snow fort big enough to sleep six comfortably during a winter camping trip. Or maybe, just maybe, I came to conclude that there was nothing new I could derive from watching "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" for the umpteenth time on TNT.

Whatever the case, I decided that I'd had enough with being inside and attacked the snow with vigor. It started as a mound at first, gradually building up to a hill large enough to require a ladder to apply additional "substance" to. After burrowing into the hill with my trusty shovel, I managed to hallow out a fort area with about a 5 ft. ceiling and enough space to sleep two comfortably.

By the time I had another family holiday function to attend to, the fort was completed, my shoveling muscles were aching and my appetite for Christmas dinner had been created. I had also exerted enough energy in the building process to burn roughly 1,500 calories according to the exercise calorie counter on my blog (take THAT, holiday eating habits!).

But most importantly, my worries about the bad traffic, weather and other stresses of the holiday season had been set aside for a few hours in favor of some innocent wintertime fun.