With snow still being removed from many neighborhoods in the Capital Region after last Thursday’s massive nor’easter, which dumped more than two feet of snow on the area, our first big snowstorm of the season is still very much front of mind. And for one local plowman, last week’s storm came with a special, unexpected treat.
Cody Bryan, who lives in Greenville and works for the State of New York as a snowplow operator, was out making the rounds, around mid-afternoon on December 17. Because there were so few cars out and the snow was just beginning to let up, he says that he and three other plowmen were lined up along the road, his plow removing snow from the shoulder. Then, something funny happened. “I had a car go by me,” says Bryan, “and I noticed it slow down, and they were beeping the horn, and I was like, ‘What the heck?’ So I look over, and there’s someone waving at me. I recognized that it was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.” Bryan says that the governor gave him the thumbs up and mouthed “thank you,” and then drove off down the road. “That’s pretty neat,” says Bryan of the interaction. “I thought it was pretty cool to see him.”
All told, Bryan and the rest of the crew worked a 17-and-a-half hour shift that day to make sure the thruway was clear for New Yorkers. Bryan doesn’t know where the governor was headed that day, but it’s possible he was coming from Kingston, where he’d held a press conference earlier that day, declaring a state of emergency in 18 counties, due to the snowstorm.
