May Day! May Day! If you live in Denver or Minnesota

All I can say is thank God we don't live in Minnesota.

If you missed it, it is snowing in many parts of the middle of the country.

Yes, on the first of May.

I used to live in Denver. I was warned when I first got out there that it could snow any time from Labor Day to Memorial Day. I soon found out they weren't kidding. They were getting several inches of snow out there yesterday.

Here's the snow report from our sister paper, The Denver Post.

Seeing it snow out there reminded me of one of the wildest things I did in Colorado.

I had never been on skis before I went to Colorado. Of course I hit the slopes just about every week in the three years I lived out there.

But nothing quite prepared for me for what was lovingly referred to as 'spring fling' at a resort called A-Basin. The parking lot there was above the tree line. I tried to explain this phenomenon to my skiing friends back here who frequented the Poconos, but they couldn't quite grasp it. I remember being home one Christmas. They wanted to take the "big Colorado skier" to the slopes of Pennsylvania. We had been driving for what seemed like forever, when I casually commented, "Uh, guys, when are we going to get to the mountains?" Their response? "The parking lot is right up here on the right."

These were hills.

A-Basin was always the first resort to open and the last to close in Colorado Ski Country. Looks like things are still going strong out there.

For 'Spring Fling,' tons of kids from the University of Colorado head to A-Basic in shorts, T-shirts and even bikinis to salute the final skiing blowout of the season. I'll never forget some of those sights.

I always explain to people here that one of the worst sunburns I've had in my life was a sunny weekend I spent in Vail in the middle of winter. My face got scorched.

You've got to load up on the sunblock out there, that's how powerful the sun is, especially when you're wearing a bikini!

It doesn't look like Denver was getting hit as bad as some other places in the heartland, such as Minnesota yesterday. Even in the worst storms of the winter, I was never cold out there the way I get cold here. It's hard to explain. It has something to do with the altitude, how dry it is, and the fact that the sun still comes out most days.

The snow is really dry, almost like soap flakes. The region doesn't usually get paralyzed by snow because the sun melts most of it away by the middle of the day.

That would not help my psyche if I was still dealing with snow in May. And I think I have it bad here with some cool temperatures and rain.

Too bad it wasn't snowing last night in Cleveland. Instead the Phils were getting snowed under.

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