Bike racks: Pleasantville 1, Hawthorne 0
I shook up my commuting routine a bit today, accompanying Little G up the road a bit to school in Priusville, where I was the guest reader and read G and his classmates a book on dinosaurs.
I then walked over to the Pleasantville train station, and appreciated some of the pedestrian action–actual signs of life–going on in Pleasantville. The station is of course smack in the middle of a lively little town. I had about 20 minutes to kill–thought there might be a bit of question-and-answer after Dinosaur Stomp, but no dice, and I was cut loose.
I got a cup of java over at Starbucks and read the paper.
I admired Pleasantville’s bike rack, which Hawthorne is still waiting on over at its train station, after our rack was felled by a snowplow back in the winter. I will address that in these cyber-pages if the rack is not in place in the morning. (My sources tell me the recently refurb’d Scarborough station has a gleaming new bike rack.)
Hawthorne will of course never be Pleasantville–we don’t really have cross streets in our little downtown, just Elwood/Commerce snaking along aside the tracks and the highway. But Mount Pleasant Today is about to circulate a commuter questionnaire regarding what to do with the delinquent–and soon to be freed up–Hawthorne station house, with a number of favorable options out there, including an eatery, a coffee shop, and other useful services. The questionnaire landed in Town Supervisor Maybury’s e-box today, and will reach commuters in the coming days. Fill the thing out and make your opinions on what to do with the space heard.
As I boarded the 9:49, a fat guy tried to sneak past me on my left flank. I see the guy on the train home a lot–always with the short-sleeve Det. Sipowiz shirts, always, always on the cellphone. It seemed as though the guy had a case of O.Seat.D.–clearly he wanted to squeeze in quickly and claim his seat so he could conduct his important phone business.
I got a shoulder in his way and grabbed a two-seater.
Cipowicz took the seat across the aisle from me and immediately started in on his all-important cellphone business.
I gave up my seat and headed through the train. Disoriented from entering at a different station, I headed to the front instead of the back, and had to settle for a folding seat, squeezed in across from a beefy guy reading the Daily News.
On to Gotham, four minutes tacked onto my daily routine.