Had a rare early a.m. meeting today atop some midtown skyscraper, and had to take the dreaded 7:52 with that peculiar stop in Mount Vernon West.

I’ve had some difficult times of late with not quite making trains that are not the 8:16, so I climbed on my bike with a bite of trepidation. [Editor’s Note: I actually wrote “bite” of trepidation. Think it’s time for a Snickers bar from the machine.]

There’s a different vibe on the road at 7:40 than there is at 8:10: more cars, more school buses, more hurrying.

I approached Bradhurst and hoped for smooth passage past the cars heading to the Medical Center, or every damn highway in Westchester that seems to pass through little Hawthorne.

In fact, what I saw was a tractor–a freakin’ tractor 25 miles from the Triboro Robert F. Kennedy Bridge–taking its sweet time as it headed toward me, south on the slight incline on Bradhurst.

The driver wore an orange vest and a blank expression and was doing around 20 miles an hour, with, of course, a line of cars behind it, traffic more packed up than air travel in Iceland these days.

A tractor!

I gritted my teeth and scanned the vista for a break in the auto parade. Nothing doing. If I missed the 7:52, I’d miss my morning meeting. I’d also miss the dreaded Mount Vernon West stop–I mean, what’s better than going from White Plains to 125th?–but I had to be on that early train.

I caught a break when a lady in some faceless OldsmoBuick, situated four cars past Farmer Ted, stopped and waved me across Bradhurst.

Thanks to her, I made my train.

Whoever you are, woman in OldsmoBuick on Bradhurst at 7:47 this morning, thank you for your kindness.

[image: familybooksandcds.com]

The man who works the security desk at my office.

You’re the last man I see as my daily commute concludes and my workday begins.

You’re a pleasant man, always with a warm smile and a good morning over the almost five years I’ve worked here. Some people engage you in small talk, and some ignore you, wrapped up in their Blackberrys and thoughts. I’m somewhere in the middle: always a good morning, occasionally a little baseball talk in the post-season–you like the Yankees–but not typically conversation. I was pretty sure I knew your name before we got the memo last week.

The memo.

The memo was just awful. It mentioned the terrible tragedy you suffered; multiple family members killed down south. Your children, murdered. I asked another front-desk man how you were faring the next day, and the man shook his head for a long, long time.

Late last week, someone posted a flyer about a memorial service, up in Harlem, for your family members.

I saw you back at work for the first time today. You had the smile on, but your eyes gave you away. I stopped and shook your hand, and tried to express my condolences in some meaningful way. You were gracious and told me you were taking it one day at a time. I nodded and gave a slight smile and headed over to the elevators, feeling I hadn’t said or done enough, but unsure as to what else could be said or done.

I hope you find peace. I thank you for putting on your suit and your smile and coming back to work, and for reminding me–us–that the things we complain about, the annoying train passengers and flight delays and fare hikes, are downright silly when someone else is dealing with a tragedy as deep and unthinkable as the one you’re working through.

I didn’t say enough to your face, and I’m not saying enough in this letter. There is no enough in the face of what you’re going through. I barely know you but I feel deeply for you. One day at a time, you said. I hope tomorrow is a tiny bit better than today, and so on.

Respectfully,

Trainjotting

I was chatting with Saugatucker about the merits of biking to the train recently. Sure, it’s a few minutes of misery on those 20 degree mornings. But we agreed there’s something about driving to the train that just feels like the ultimate suburban cliche…wait, the image of the angry commuter chipping ice off his windshield before driving to the train would be the ultimate suburban cliche.

Saugatucker carves almost three miles through the Westport terrain each morning on his bike, a much lengthier jaunt than mine. We mentioned the quiet delight we experience when seeing neighbors climb into their cars around the same time we set out on our bikes, both looking to make the same train, but only one of us having to navigate the labyrinthian misery of the commuter parking lot.

Of course, on those bleak wintry-mix mornings when I set out on foot, I’m all too happy to have those neighbors give my sorry ass a ride to the station.

So I was torn between walking to the train and riding the trusty steed this morning, with all the precipitation nonsense that fell yesterday. I was fearful of the dreaded black ice this morning, but also tired of all the walking to the station I’ve done of late due to all the snow. So I decided to set out a few minutes early and bike cautiously.

At the end of my driveway, I saw a neighbor climbing into the passenger seat of her car, with her husband at the wheel. Their kid was in tow too–heading to the city with mom due to winter break from school.

The roads were fine and I resumed my normal speed after descending Heartbreak Hill to Memorial Drive. I pulled into the station parking lot just as the stone-faced D was dropping off T and Little V–chalk another one up for the bike guys.

My morning momentum was short-lived, however, as the 8:16 was late. At 8:22, the loudspeaker crackled to life.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the 8:16 is running 10 to 15 minutes late,” it said.

Us platform pigeons performed a collective exhale to show Metro-North our displeasure, and sought refuge from the morning chill in the plexiglass shelter.

At 8:29, the 8:16 rolled in. No explanation for the delay was forthcoming, and the 8:16 pulled into Grand Central at 9:13, a full nine minutes late. That’s even late by Metro-North’s generous 5:59 rule, which says trains arriving up to six minutes late are, in fact, on time by the railroad’s standards. In fact, the latest issue of MNR mouthpiece Mileposts said the Harlem Line was “on time” 98.6% of the time in 2009–meaning us poor suckers on the so called “8:16″ this morning were privy to something that only happens 1.4% of the time.

How special! Perhaps I was better off riding the bike to the city.  

I generally have no qualms with the taxi guys based out of the old Hawthorne station house. I mean, I was OK with it that night when they took the drunk ass to the far end of Thornwood before bringing me and another Hawthorner to our homes first.

I don’t really mind the landfill of cigarette butts the dispatchers create outside their window.

And I’m really perfectly fine with the fact that the old station house is used as storage for the cab company’s junk, instead of something useful and attractive like the Starbucks over at Hartsdale station, and I don’t hold them responsible for the time the disgruntled cabbie slaughtered the rabbit on the cab station steps. 

Not their fault.

But geez, are they making a mess where they park over by the bike rack. Earlier this week, I noticed a giant brown puddle of something that looked like milk chocolate but surely doesn’t taste like it. The puddle was about the size of an inflatable kiddie pool, and sat underneath a taxi that looked like it was out of commission. The puddle had oozed its way to a storm drain about 40 feet away, an ugly river of brown and weird toxic rainbow colors. Some unidentified car part–some sort of liquid holding vessel the same color as the ooze–has been sitting next to the bike rack all week.

The dioxin puddle has subsided a bit, but it’s still there.

Then, this morning, I spied a porno mag open spread-eagle, if you will, next to the bike rack. The fold revealed several pics of a woman named “Gianna”–hey, it’s an Italian neighborhood–and the bold type stated that Gianna is, indeed, “100% Genuine.” 100% Genuine as she sat perched upon a Harley, 100% Genuine as she did a little gardening in the buff.

I would’ve turned the page to see what other fleshy treasures the mag held, but a full platform of 8:16ers were looking down on me.

I’m a grown-up and I’m not offended by the smut. But hey–there’s a kid’s dirt bike locked to the rack…there are kids present!!

Jeez, what a morning. I was cutting it close this morning, and had to park the steel chariot (I’ve rebranded my bicycle) in the usual bike rack, not against the fence under the overpass, which provides a bit of protection in the rain.

Turns out I had more time than I thought. Way more.

Right around 8:16, the would-be 8:16 could be seen on the horizon beyond Gordo’s, but it never let up its pace and blasted right by the anxious commuters.

So we waited. I grabbed a seat on the three-person metal mesh bench. A portly 20-something was yammering on her cell. She had a yellow plastic grocery bag with a box of oatmeal inside. With nothing else to do, and without the energy to take out my Blackberry or newspaper from my bag, I listened in.

“I went to Donnie’s Facebook page, and it was, like, so weird–it was his four year anniversary! I know, weird, huh? And he had all this weird writing on his Wall, like, 40 days to go! I’m like, what happens in 40 days? He’s joining the Air Force! I’m like, what the hell, like, why the hell did you go to college, what a waste! I mean the Air Force is awwwsummm and everything, but still.

And then I was tawkin’ to Shane. Do you know what Shane is doing? The Peace Corps! I’m like, Donnie’s in the Air Force, Shane’s in the Peace Corps, like, what the f***’s wrong with these people!”

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Indeed, serving your country, and the impoverished around the world, is extremely silly–especially if you’re college-educated. Taking the train to some mindless job in the city, however, is noble.]

It was 8:25, and still, no sign of the 8:16. No word of the delay either from the MTA advisory service or Clever Commute.

The blabbing went on, loud enough for people within, oh, 15 feet to hear.

“What wuz I gonna say to you…It was good, what was it gonna be. I’ll come down on Thursday, drive in after work. Steve’s going to Montreal–in that case I’m outtie!!! Four-day weekend at Ashley’s house! Oooo-wooooh!”

Mercifully, the loudspeaker broke the cacaphony with an announcement at 8:29:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the next train arriving on Track 2 will be your express, stopping at White Plains, Harlem 125th Street and Grand Central.”

Undaunted, “Ashley” blabbed on: $80 shoes from Nine West that were going back (”awwwsummm, but, like, $80?”), the laptop she forgot to bring, the party at her house this weekend.

Finally, the 8:16 turned up at 8:33. The rain continued to fall, turning the soil company on the other side of the tracks to mud. Ashley kept up her end of the convo.

“It’s such a shitty morning,” she said. “I should’ve slept in.”

Word up, Ash.

There was a peculiar fellow on the 8:16 today. He was a big white guy, around 6′ 3″ and 220. He wore the geeky horn-rimmed glasses one tends to associate with psychos, and he had a blackened tooth on the side of his mouth.

I first spotted him when he stopped in the small alcove near the door that heads to the next car, next to the 1 3/4-seater. He stopped, put his bag down, and searched frantically for something in his wallet–presumbably a ticket. He seemed overly agitated, and I moved him out of the file of Ordinary Commuter into another file marked Person of Interest.

I sort of forgot about him as I lamented my dubious judgement in grabbing a window seat in a four-seater, and my foolhardly thinking in predicting that both the seat next to me and the seat across from me would remain open (seat next filled in North White, seat across filled…tightly…in White Plains).

The nervous guy had left the door alcove area, but then returned, trying the door between cars and failing to successfully get through it. (It was not locked.) He looked more agitated. He spoke hurriedly to the person sitting in the 1-3/4 seater; I don’t know what was said. The man wore a wedding ring, which led me to think he was not psycho. Then again, if we can borrow a hackneyed ’80s sitcom convention, maybe it was married life that pushed him to psychocity.

The man then disappeared down the aisle again.

Around this time, other people too had moved the man into their Person of Interest file; perhaps it’s the glut of terrorism stories in the news these past few weeks. There was the casual glancing around the train, to see who might be a potential ally should the man go crazy. The man cattycorner to me was an older fellow with a bad gimp; he wouldn’t do much good, but his cane, sitting on the seat between him and the woman who’d squeezed in across from me, might come in handy. That’s the way you think when you’re squeezed onto a train with a potential psycho and no way out.  

The man walked past us a third time. Eerily, he’d removed his jacket and was wearing–yes–a long-sleeve camouflage t-shirt. He was murmuring to himself and pacing nervously. He bent down and fished something from his bag. I looked across the aisle and saw three men of about 40 who were friends; they looked healthy and alert–good allies, just in case.

The agitated man stood in the entrance/exit train vestibule as we approached 125th. One of the three men across the aisle trained a careful eye on him. My back turned to the vestibule, I watched my commuter colleague for clues.

Thankfully, the psycho guy jumped off at 125th. A dozen people on our car followed him out, relieved to see his back.

I could see the guy on the platform. He sprinted into an elevator, slamming into a huge black guy who was trying to get out. Once inside, his arm crept outside the elevator, his fingers frantically slapping at the buttons on the outside wall, thinking this was perhaps the first elevator in elevator history where the riders select their floor with buttons placed on the outside of the car.

The doors shut and the psycho man was gone from our sight.

As the rainy weather continues, the region’s outdoor recreational activity has been null.

But the wet and wild Curse of Zeke Marcus did not seem to faze a young woman on the 8:16 this morn. She boarded at White Plains. She was about 22 and Asian, but not in that easily identifiable (at least to me) Chinese or Japanese way. Pretty, hair in a pony tail, green raincoat, blue jeans and almost knee-high yellow Wellingtons.

She plopped a ginormous green backpack on the seat next to her. It was made by Nunatak and had a pouch for a large water bottle; the pouch’s elastic rim was decorated with tiny flags from many nations. She had a stuffed miniature Snoopy hanging from the bag, and a large white Frisbee occupying the front pouch.

I focused on the Frisbee. What prompted this women to haul the Frisbee along with her? Did she plan to get out for lunch today and toss it, despite a forecast that calls for rain every day until August (somewhere, Zeke is laughing!)? Was she a traveling backpacker, and the Frisbee was in the pack every day, in hopes that the next city…White Plains…New York…would offer a bit of greensward for a vigorous toss of the disc?

The Frisbee.

I threw the hippie disc a lot in my prior life. Langorous afternoons in college, when we should’ve been in Creative Writing 101 (thus the slipshod prose you’re reading at this moment). Making the most of newfound daylight savings time after work during those few months of post-college live-at-home, LIRR commuting (we said we’d never become one of Them!) with a few tosses in Heckscher Park. Even a little Ultimate in East River Park many years ago, hopeful that the barefoot guy we were covering didn’t step on a hypodermic.

The woman on the train looked out the window as each stop passed–Scarsdale, Fleetwood, Bronxville. She seemed to gauge the rain, to see if there might be a break in it just long enough to allow her to throw the disc.  

Like the woman across from us, we even hauled the magic orb along in a backpack when we ventured to Europe. There was a friendly toss with a few local grungers on the village green Galway, who saved our bacon when they noticed some no-good street kids (they called them “knackers”) attempting to steal our packs.

Then true adulthood hits, and the Frisbee fails to make the move into the new house.

But wait.

Just yesterday, in fact, I compelled Little G to play outside a bit after work. We tossed around the freebie flippy Frisbee knockoff I’d gotten in some silly press kit, Little G squealing with delight as he chased after the thing.

Then Little Miss C wanted in on the action, howling with laughter every time Little G threw the thing, her peels blanketing the backyard with happiness like only a 13-month old girl can do. She even refused to go to bed for some time, clawing at the back door’s window to get out and Frisbee it up with the boys a bit more.

Yes, the Frisbee.

The rain continues, today, and tomorrow, and likely into the weekend. But perhaps you’ll get that brief window of clear weather, Frisbee Gal on the Train, and you’ll be blessed by a few of those moments of Zen when you and your Frisbee are one with the Earth.

[image: wikipedia]

Not sure if it’s the case with other railroads around the world, but Metro-North has this knack for putting forth truly awful performances on the first day back from holiday breaks.

The 8:16 rolled in at the normal time this morning at Hawthorne, and all was fine until White Plains. Once all the Plainsers boarded at 8:28, the conductor got on the mic and said we had to sit for a bit due to a broken switch, as the train awaited orders as to which track it should proceed on.

We sat for about three minutes, until he got on the P.A. again and said we were ready to roll.

But still we sat for a few more minutes before proceeding toward Gotham.

Still, the ride was painstakingly slow. An older woman who looked like a cross-dressing Nancy Pelosi, bedecked in gold baubles and a silk scarf, applied layer after layer of makeup–the end result resembling a garden fence that’s gotten about eight coats of paint over the years.

The monotony was broken up by a man on a cellphone whose tone (and volume) went from restrained to almost hysterical. He was standing in the vestibule, just behind me in the last row. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him as he argued with someone on his phone. I took off the Bose headphones for a better listen, though I could hear him fine despite Bose’s cutting-edge noise reduction technology.

Far as I could tell, the person he was arguing with is the boyfriend of his baby mama, if we can slip into contemporary ghetto parlance for a split second.

“I was with her for eight years!” he yelled. “That’s my baby’s mother! She don’t even like you!”

The man got hotter and hotter, drawing the attention of most everyone in the car.

Then it got a little more ominous.

“If I catch you, I’m gonna kill you!” he yelled.

“Tell me where you at! I stay strapped too, niggah!”

“You have to die, son, if you around my daughter!”

The man on the other end apparently insisted he was avoiding the daughter; it’s a bit saddening to imagine this domestic scene, a woman’s boyfriend making considerable effort not to interact with a girl living in the same house so as to avoid angering the girl’s father, who lives elsewhere. Leave it to Beaver, it ain’t.

“How you not around my daughter if you livin’ with Mary?” yelled our fellow passenger.

Surely some on the train wondered if they should call the cops, especially if the dude indeed had a gun, as he’d said he did. I heard the conductor behind us and heading our way. The conductor seems like a hardy fellow; pleasant but no-nonsense, and I’d noticed some Go Army branding on his badge-holding neck strap this morning. Perhaps he’d nip this little issue in the bud–throw a little Semper Fi at the strapped straphanger.

“Sir,” I could hear the conductor say. “Sir?”

Alas, he was merely requesting a ticket from a slumbering rider, and walked on by the angry cellphone guy, who had seemed to quiet up a bit.

The man on the other end of the line had either launched a seriously foreboding counterattack, or said the magic words to pacifiy our fellow rider.

“Aiight, aiight,” cooed our friend. “You won’t see me, you won’t see me.”

He and his opponent then seemed to join forces against another man who was not lucky enough to be in on the conversation.

“He been driving my car. He stole my car!”

“He’s a bitch! My niggah, if I catch him, I’m gonna kill him. Every time he see me, he run the other way.”

It got quiet a moment later, and I slipped the Bose headphones back into place.

When we finally pulled into Grand Central at 9:14, a full 10 minutes late, I stood up and tried to get a look at Uneasy Rider. Pardon the racial profiling–I don’t think it was the pasty white 20-something kid in slacks or the doughy middle-aged man in a suit in the vestibule spewing the ghetto-speak–but I think I found the man: bi-racial, perhaps black and Hispanic, corn rows under a do-rag, long black t-shirt, baggy jeans hanging below the ass, a surprisingly preppy black and white checked knapsack over his shoulder.

We got off the train, where three of New York’s finest were walking up the platform, obviously looking for someone. Uneasy Rider put his head down and shuffled along, hit the concourse, and hung a left for the subways.

Back to freakin’ work.
 

I boarded the 8:16 out of Hawthorne today, slightly off my game after a four-day weekend. Seat choices 1, 2 and 3 were taken, so I ventured into the next car.

The car held about 30 middle-aged people with red, white and blue neckerchiefs–bandana-type thingees knotted under their chins. Several held cardboard boxes with handles, like the type that holds your donut holes, on their laps. I spied one and it said Turkey.

 I assumed the whole gang of folks, not quite senior citizens but close, were from Turkey. I wondered if I should grill them about their treatment of the Armenians and that controversial G word. I sat a row behind them and caught sight of another one of the boxes on another lap. This one said “Ham.” Yes, the tourists were bringing their box lunches from the suburbs to the city, to avoid those scary delis with their scary workers making scary mile-high sandwiches.

The people were English and had every last trapping of Tourists: the sensible shoes, the guidebook on the lap, the fanny pack. They wondered the best way to get downtown safely, and debated whether they had time to visit Ground Zero.

A bunch of people got on in White Plains, and some attempted to infiltrate the Brits’ partial occupation of a six-seater. A middle-aged man, glasses, suit, a bit fey, sat in the middle. He looked around to size up the sash-wearing tourists.

“You guys spies or scouts?” he deadpanned.

“A bit of both,” responded one of the women, keeping that trademark British upper lip stiff.

A few minutes later, the ticket-taking conductor got in on the action.

“You guys are that English motorcycle gang, right?” he said. “The Flaming Skulls?”

The group smiled.

“Our bikes are in the back,” responded one of the men.

The White Plains guy in the middle of the six-seater jokingly suggested the group skip the city and check out White Plains instead, and regaled them about the history of White Plains–something about low-lying land and a perpetual shroud of fog that made it seem white.

On we went to the city–another day of work for most of us, a fun day of sightseeing and tasty box lunches for others.

A woman on the 8:16 into Gotham had quite a fright this morning. Just as we pulled into the Grand Central tunnel, the poster hanging inches from her face to the left fell off its moorings and crashed upon her. It was only made of cardboard and surely didn’t hurt her, but the poster’s content did give her quite a startle.

The poster advertised “Jesse James is a Dead Man”–a new reality show on Spike where some hipster doofus named Jesse James attempts to kill himself each week in some Nielsen-appealing manner. The poster itself featured the words “DEATH DEFIED” writ large, along with a creepy shot of James’ visage that’s half man, half cyborg, and about a third ghost. [Editor’s Note: We will refrain from making mean jokes about the face-transplant woman here.]

Even after the woman got the poster back in place, she couldn’t help but stare at it for several seconds–perhaps witnessing her life flash before her during that time.