Coldest you've ever been?

Well, THAT was a nippy little jaunt to get the paper out of the front yard at 6 this morning. It got down to 18 in Charlotte and 16 in a couple other towns in the area.

I'm a Southern boy -- we played softball Christmas Day one year -- so I don't have that much experience with really cold days. But I do remember one.

Ten years ago I was headed to Chicago for a story and I stopped somewhere in Indiana farm country to get gas. The next day, in Chicago, the wind chill would be 18 below. This night was something like that.

But I thought: I'm just gonna be out of the car for five minutes. No need for a hat or gloves or anything.

Why yes, I am a moron.

In that five minutes my eyeballs almost iced over and my ears almost fell off and my hand just about stuck to the gas nozzle.

It took a while for me to get warm again. Like, April.

So: What's the coldest you've ever been? Add your deep-freeze stories below. I fully expect to hear from the Minnesotans in the house. Try not to start every post with "That was nothing..."