Well its been a while since I’ve last posted and figured I’d better get back to a regular schedule here. Not much has happened since the last time on here other than the fact winter is finally back here in good ol Minnesota! Last Saturday (December 1st) the official opening day of snowmobiling, was also the first official day of winter here, we got a Colorado clipper that came in from the South West and dumped anywhere from 6 – 8″ around the twin cities metro area, and all the way up to 20+ inches on the north shore between Two Harbors/Duluth all the way up past Lutsen, Finland, and Grand Marias.

Saturday morning I got up and the flakes were flying, nothing was really accumulating yet. I got up and headed over to my folks place to help my dad work on the snowmobile trailer he had bought earlier that week. We re-wired the lights, added a new tongue jack, replaced the hitch, and added a dome light in the enclosed cover. After a few hours of working on the sled we had to make a trip to Ace Hardware (which turned out to be several trips) we opened the garage door to find over 3 inches already on the ground.

Man was that a spectacle to see, went into the garage with the grass still bare, and the streets still clear. Then a few hours later get out and see it nothing but white, and damn near blizzard conditions. I was just what I needed to see to lift my spirits. Nothing like a Minnesota snow storm to make all your stress go away.

So through out the day the snow fell, accumulating more and more. Saturday comes and goes, Sunday I wake up itching to go for a snowmobile ride, however my dad wasn’t up for such a ride, he is one of those wary guys that has to let everyone else test out the conditions before he will get out and ride, and now that he has a new sled I think it’ll be even worse this year. Anyways Sunday comes and goes no snowmobile ride yet. Now Tuesday rolls around with news of a Canadian clipper coming down and bringing us more snow.

Tuesday I get to work, no snow, Spend all day in the office (one with no windows) and lunch time rolls around, finally it is snowing, but not very hard at all. I’m like “great another disappointers”, however later in the afternoon it starts to pick up and really dump on us. So 3pm rolls around and a good helping of snow is on the ground, traffic is backed up and and it is now really coming down.

3:30pm rolls around, finally time to “get out of dodge” and head home. Sure enough, traffic worse than ever, it took me 3 1/2 hours to get from the Airport to Coon Rapids, Roughly 25 – 30 miles, which that same trip any other day would normally take me 45 minutes even in “bad” rush hour traffic. Gotta love Minnesota Drivers, you’d think that they had never driven in snow before. The first sign of bad weather and the roads turn into parking lots. The ONLY thing I hate about winter/snow is how it affects the traffic, other than that I absolutely LOVE it! So I get to my folks place, get Abbee ready to go home, and I get back out on the roads for Ramsey. I found myself taking the back roads which eased the ride and was relatively traffic free, which was great considering the crap I had just driven through earlier that night. By the time I got home, it was already Abbee’s bed time, Jody wasn’t too happy, and hadn’t eaten dinner yet, generally she wants to have a sit down dinner every night but last night I was on a mission. I put Abbee to bed, then as fast as I could, grabbed all my snowmobile gear, loaded up the sled and trailer and headed out for a last minute ride.

About 3 miles away is a park with designated parking for snowmobiling, on the way I gassed up the sled, putting in 13 gallons, which btw is 2 more than what my car holds, how sad is that? I topped off the oil, and proceeded to get the sled started, warmed up, and off the trailer. Even though I was by myself, in unfamiliar surroundings, and the fact I had only an hour to ride last night, I had a great time. The ditches where plentiful of snow, wide open, and the sled was running great, I couldn’t have asked for better conditions for the first ride of the season. After that long ass commute, getting on that sled took away any reminder of that horrible commute home, it was just pure bliss to get back out on the sled, specially when the sled is new (new to me that is).

Looking at John Dee’s website it looks like we are in for some more snow tomorrow into Friday with 1 to 4+ inches being predicted, and then again Saturday night into Sunday we are looking at another 4+ inches, then again later next week we are looking at another 1 to 4+ inches again. It has been years since I’ve seen it snow back to back to back like this in Minnesota, and all I can say is it is about damn time! So with that, as John Dee says, “Think Snow!”

- Josh