The Sandy-Muddy-Snowy-Icy Climbs of Minnesota turn me* on.

Me*: also known as my heart rate. Ugh, those are really tough!
I did not go cross country skiing the other day, because after I got home from my ride, I felt kinda sick, and spent all yesterday at home with a fever.
I woke up this morning, took my temperature, saw that it was over a hundred, and looked outside. It was absolutely gorgeous!
At this point, two things ran through my head. The first one had to do with allergies. what makes allergy medicine work is that it has cells from the allergen that the medicine is fighting. Since I was probably made sick by riding my bike in the snow, I figured it might be an OK idea to use the allergy medicine approach, and go for another ride.
The second thing was about my fever. Any idiot knows that a fever is when you are too warm, and outside is really cold, put hot and cold together, get normal, and in about 20 minutes I had all my bike stuff together and was out the door.
Rode for about 90 minutes of beautiful Minnesota fields and wilderness, had some really entertaining falls into the snow, some super-sketchy skidding on ice, really good feeling climbs up these hills, which though neither tall nor long, the surface is really difficult, and it just made me feel really good. I wish I had a smaller camera to have taken with me, because there were some really pretty scenes. One of my favorites was the impact that my bike and I made riding down this hill. There was this point on the hill, which I had noway of knowing about, where the depth of snow reached WAAAAY higher than where a bike can ride, my front wheel went under into the snow, and I went over the handlebars into like 2-foot deep snow. I had to dig my bike out from under the snow.
Jed-I am in the Morris area (AKA. Middle of Nowharea), and was wondering if you had any tips on how to get snow, ice, and frozen mud off of a bike?

Here is kinda the scoop with my living situations.
While I was in Japan, my family moved from Portland to Morris, Minnesota. However, I have plans on going back to Portland. I have thought about going back to school (graduating from high school is apparently a good idea), and maybe going to PSU part-time as well. I think I can still work for PDOT, so might actually be able to come back to Portland!

I am planning on coming back in the middle to end of May.

To all of my librarian friends: I think I missed the training, but can I still volunteer this summer?