Snow days can be a nice break from classes and studying, deadlines and hurrying and personal hygiene and abstract thinking, but I find them great for another reason.

They remind me why we live here in the first place — not for the blizzards or the floods or even the snow days. We live here because the people are awesome, and there’s no better way to find that out than when your car is buried in three feet of snow on the train tracks, which is exactly where I found myself and some friends this Monday on our day off.

Our first reaction when we realized we were stuck at the intersection of 6th Avenue and 42nd Street was to let it ruin our plans and put us in a bad mood. But you just can’t stay upset when six different carloads of strangers pull themselves over into the same treacherous snowdrift you’re trapped in to see if they can help.

In the end, it was a city plow driver who saved the day. Instead of bulldozing on by us (or over us), he stopped his massive tractor plow, reversed, lowered the plow head within an inch of our front bumper, hit the gas and cleared a path for us to escape.

He didn’t ask for praise. He didn’t expect to be tipped. He just waved “good luck” and continued along his way down 42nd Street.

And that wasn’t even the coolest thing I saw that day.

Later in the evening, we hopped into another buddy’s truck and trolled campus looking for people to help dig out of the snow on our way to find food. After stopping to tow a car out of the gutter, we realized we weren’t the only ones out helping.

In one of the most surreal sights I’ve even witnessed here in my hometown, I saw two neon-clad figures ripping over the sidewalk snow drifts on motorbikes. They were armed with shovels and ropes and I don’t know what else, cruising around town looking for people who could use some help.

In every big city I’ve been to, I’ve noticed you have to be an attractive, outwardly wealthy white person to get anyone to acknowledge you on the street or hold a door open for you. Here, it was everyone from college kids and young couples to dads and grandmas rolling down their windows in the nightmarish wind to make sure we few, scruffy college kids were okay.

So thank you, snow days, for helping me forget about the wind and focus on the people who live in it.

If you guys on the motorcycles read this article, please email the paper; I’d love to say hello and — even though you’d never ask for it — put your faces on the front page to give you a little well-deserved recognition.

Will Beaton is the editor-in-chief for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].