They say Brrrrrr.....

People from home ask me "how can you drive a SCHOOL BUS down in that Minneapolos traffic?"......I usually just have to chuckle....because more often than not, I'm out in the country with my bus, looking at scenes like the above one. Actually, those fish houses are on Lake Riley, right in Eden Prairie.... It's one of my favorite lakes to head to in the summer. Everyone in the Twin Cities area is freakin' out cuz it got a few degrees below zero... and the wind might blow from the north ! ! ! ! A northern girl like me woulda thought the blizzard of the century was coming. I just have to shake my head and smile... these folks have NO idea what cold is...or what stormy is. The biggest surprise to me in my nearly 4 yrs. of living here is how much warmer the winters are. There's just no wind like there is in Fargo....There's no blowing snow so bad you can hardly shut your car door, no blow ice on the roads, no just trying to keep it between the telephone poles and barely being able to see the hood ornament of your car. They pre-treat the roads if there's even a forecast of snow. That's why it bothers me when I'm back up near PR and see how bad the roads are. They spend all the road money down here in the Metro area....I always smiled back in December when doing my paper route Mike Lynch would get on WCCO at the start of his 5AM shift and excitedly exclaim "this is the 14th day in a row it's been below 32 degrees...we're in a major cold wave!".... and it's still 21 above zero....That's what I mean...below 32 degrees to these people is suffering. To me, when it's been 14 days below zero...well then, that's winter! I'm one of the few down here with an auto-start on my car....you just don't see them here like you do at home. BUT, everyone is curious about mine! These people don't warm up their cars, cuz it's rarely that cold. Richard drove me crazy yesterday worrying about exactly what clothes he should wear out on his pizza route and then onto his midnight paper route...he had every boot he owned out and lined up along with different thicknesses of socks.....uff-dah! Every single newscast yesterday and even this morning has features on frost-bite, how to layer, how to warm your vehicle...it's downright amusing.... I see we even made Good Morning America :-)