Snowmapacolypsegedden

Quite a bit of snow fell this weekend.  Too much for some of my friends who got stuck in Minneapolis when the buses stopped running and they pulled the plows off the road, but I loved every minute of it, except maybe shoveling out my mailbox at 11:00 Sunday night.  Saturday morning I wandered out to shovel and saw a yellow sign with only an arrow on it sitting on my corner.  I couldn't figure out what it was for, but didn't much mind it being there. 
Then just as I was finishing shoveling I saw a couple runners go by.  I thought it a bit odd people were out running in this snow storm, but seeing as how I planned to go ski in it not really all that strange.  Then a few more trickled by and turned where that arrow on the sign was pointing and I quickly figured out it was the Reindeer run going by.  I went in and quickly strapped on some old Fischer touring skis I have around and went double poling down the road along with the runners that were still streaming by.  These were slower runners obviously, and I'm getting to be not a horrible double poler finally (I averaged 237 watts for 2 minutes on the ski erg after 5 hours of skiing, so wherever that puts me on the double poling spectrum I guess).  Anyway, I was cruising past these racers and I'm sure they were jealous of my superior mode of transportation.  I was on the race course for about a mile cruising along and cheering on runners as I went before dropping into the arb where I broke trail or followed the single set of tracks that had been skied in before me. 
I went for about an hour and a half and would have gone further but I had no water with me and the NNN boots that I have start to rip the skin off my heels after about an hour of skiing, so I didn't want to do any more damage to my feet than I had too.
It continued to snow all day Saturday; I'm guessing about 16" all told, although it was so windy it was hard to gauge accurately.  I started to shovel my way out Saturday night, and finished Sunday morning just in time to get to church.  It was well over 2 hours of shoveling, and when I was done some of the piles were close to 6' tall and hard to toss snow over the top of.  When I got back Sunday night the plow had been through again and I had to excavate my mailbox out of a snow bank and shovel my way to the curb so the mailman could reach the mailbox.  I don't have pictures right now, but I'll take some this evening and post them.
I skied at Hyland on Sunday, about 2 -1/2 hours of very easy classic.  I ran into a guy named Steve Carmazan (sp?) and chatted with him for a good portion of the ski.  Then it was off to Emily's tree decorating party which involved much eating of good food and shooting a tinsel cannon in the name of gaudy tree decorations. 
The Hyland trails were in decent shape, and I found out today that the arb trails are OK too, much better than I expected considering the equiptment available here.  The downhill along Hwy 19 had some good snow drifts that the groomer went right over leaving some cool moguls that I was able to get a bit of air jumping off of.