Waiting for Spring Makes Minnesotans do Weird Things

The long, long Minnesota winter is kind of bad for gardening. By the time we can actually dig the soil and plant, it's a mad rush to hurry up and enjoy it. The official last day of frost is May 15th, and the garden's over and dying by September. Super lame!
So perhaps, that's why people here invent crazy winter activities to snap themselves out of the cold, dark funk they're in.

I recently went to a baseball game, played in the snow, in a baseball stadium in St. Paul, MN. They call it Iceball. And to make it worse, it's played old style with old-fashioned uniforms, and no baseball gloves. And it was about 30 degrees outside. The game was a fundraiser for Second Harvest Heartland.

Luckily, they had a host of mind-blowing characters in costume, who come out on the field and do stupid skits to help us forget about our frozen feet...Everybody was having FUN !

I thought it was funny that a path around the bases was shoveled before the game began.

There was a band playing out in the cold: Chris Hawkey (rocked the house) ...have you ever seen base & guitar players with mittens on? And do you know what the cold does to instruments? But they are tough up here in the frozen north.

Other winter torture activities here include a Polar Plunge, where insane people jump into freezing water, and Ice fishing contests, and no one can forget the St. Paul Winter Carnival which is a 2-week long outdoor party for winter fanatics...This is how we survive.