It was, quite simply, the least amount of time I’ve ever given myself to catch a train.

And I’ve pushed the limits quite a bit.

I had my eye on the 5:46. I’d like to say I had something absolutely crucial to do in Westchester at 6:30–put out a ticking bomb planted by the Russkies (Jack Bauer was, in fact, having a nap), or go over final wedding plans with Bill and Hill up in Clintonville.

In fact, I just wanted to get home to play with the kiddies and give The Missus a breather.

I’d had a 5:15 phone meeting scheduled and figured it wouldn’t go beyond 5:30, which is when I try to leave for the 5:46.

5:15, no call. 5:20, nothing.

Finally, the guy calls at 5:25. Maybe I can make it really short, I thought.

We did our business while I eyed the clock. It was 5:32 when we were winding down. I shut down my computer and loaded my backpack. We made small talk about Mad Men, and I thought of Don Draper rushing to catch the express to Ossining.

I huge up at 5:34; could I actually exit work and sprint to Grand Central, and track 108, in the next 12 minutes?

I hit the elevators, then the street at 28th. It was 5:37. No, I couldn’t sprint it, not even in my lean, mean prime. My only hope was the 6 train.

Just as I entered the station at 28th, I saw just what I hoped to see: a subway at the platform. I ran my card through and bolted for it–then watched the doors shut and the train take off just as I got there.

I’d be on the 6:10, I conceded. Mission failed. Russkies win. Again.

The new-ish electronic scoreboard in the station said the next train would arrive in three minutes. I clung to a distant hope.

Indeed, there it was, three minutes later. The on-train clock said 5:41. Could I go two stops, then bust through the rush-hour crush in Grand Central to make the 5:46?

I was sure as hell going to try.

We made it to 33rd in a flash, while the run to 42nd snaked slowly through the dark tunnel. I moved closer to the door for pole position and stretched my legs for the sprint.

I looked at my new Timex Iron Man: 5:44:20 as the doors opened. I had less than two minutes to navigate the GCT obstacle course.

I bolted out of the train, pushed through the human morass at the stairs, climbed the steps, bumped off an old man as I headed through the turnstiles, and headed up the stairs to Grand Central.

5:45.

I prayed for the typical 40-seconds late Metro-North train as I galloped down the GCT corridor to the concourse. Then it was down the way-too-narrow escalator  to track 108 (Going up the stairs, only to go down the escalator. Must it be that way?)

I committed the faux pas of actually passing people on the one-person-width escalator, earning me a few stink-eyes. Still, I soldiered on.

It was a straight sprint across the basement level to 108, cutting through a Hudson News to shave off a few seconds (”Crossing the Hudson,” in commuter parlance.). I hit the ramp at 5:45:40 and the lights of my train were flashing. The conductor’s head was out of the window like a Whack-A-Mole. He spied me and offered a faint mask of disgust.

I stepped onto the train just as the doors shut.

A new NYC commuter record. My fellow riders toasted me with a gold medal, a crown made of an olive branch, and a seat on the aisle.

The delightful commuter blog IRideTheHarlemLine has a fun little visit to Chappaqua station, with some eye-catching photos from IRTHL’s Emily, including some trippy fish-eye lens pics.

She writes:

When I started visiting stations I will admit that there were quite a few of them I was unfamiliar with, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Chappaqua, and the gorgeously restored wood in the station was quite a pleasant find. Enjoy the photos: and if you get a moment, be sure to visit this gem of a station, rich with history.

Chappaqua’s close-up comes on the heels of a similar station visit to Pleasantville, with a special nod to the Pleasantville station’s quirky-yet-useful “Almost Home” art installation.

Emily notes:

The little station in the middle of the Harlem Line has character – a lot of which has to do with the Arts for Transit piece there. The station is easily accessible from the attractive green area in the center of the village. Part of the reason it differs from many of the other area stations is the fact that the platform is lower than the neighboring streets. As opposed to walking up a set of stairs to a vestibule above the tracks, the larger than usual vestibule and waiting area sits at street level, and you instead descend a set of stairs to the platform.

This bit of Westchester commuter humor before I sign off for the week comes from Jimmy Fallon.

A woman who lives a mile from the Clintons in Chappaqua, New York has been charged with prostitution.

The woman said she hates living in Chappaqua but she loves the one-mile commute.

[image: skaneatelesdesign.com]

I actually like my infrequent trips to Julio Bicycles in Chappaqua. The guys are super-friendly, their stellar rapport with their customers is immediately apparent, they know a ton about bikes, and they have a gorgeous flat panel TV; when I was in there yesterday, it showed an Amy Winehouse concert, and a guy behind the counter sang quietly along to “Rehab” while fixing a bike.

I also like venturing into Chappaqua, because I don’t go there very often, the name is fun to say, and a very famous and knowledgable cigar-smoking white-haired man lives there (yes, I’m talking about Bert Sugar).

So I’m back on my trusty Trek after it being out of commission with a flat rear tire for a week. (I should really come up with a nickname for the trusty Trek. If I was Bill Simmons, I’d hold a contest where readers could offer up names for my bicycle, and 82,384 people would send in witty names.)

I’d dropped off the Trek Saturday. My previous visit there a year or so ago saw them change a flat front tire in all of about five minutes; Little G had barely gotten to sit on a new training-wheeled beauty when they yelled out that the trusty Trek was done. The bill was modest–like $15 or so.

That wasn’t the case this time. First off, the guy took one look at my bike and said it would take a few days, and they don’t work Sundays. Mind you, the bike is beat up beyond belief–I bought it off G. Francis in a cramped Lower East Side walk-up around 1997, and it’s a station bike, sitting out in the rain several times a month. He told me he’d call Monday.

I didn’t hear from the guys by late afternoon yesterday, so I gave them a ring.

“Yes, Sir,” the man said cheerily. “Your train bike…Your station bike…It is ready.”

So me and Little G headed over to Chappaqua to pick her up.

I haven’t been amidst car culture long enough to truly understand mechanic protocol, but I always like to know exactly what they’re going to fix and how roughly how much it’s going to cost before I give them the green light to do it. It’s nice to have the right to refuse costly repairs. I guess I feel the same way about bike repairs.

I set the over/under around $50, and missed it by a mile. The man wheeled my bike out and outlined the fixes: new ball bearings in the fork, new brake pads, new tires, new handgrips, a margarita-mixing machine, a bike radio that cranks Journey. (OK, I made up the last two.) It looked pretty sweet for a beat up old Trek.

The bill? $140–probably double what I paid for it way back when. (To be sure, G. Francis was motivated to sell.)

I have absolutely no doubt that every last fix was legit, and done by first-rate bike guys. I just never envisioned a three-figure bill coming my way.

I grimaced as I handed over my credit card, wondering if perhaps the good fellows at Julio Bicycles–and they really are good fellows–had stereotyped me as a Chappaqua guy making big bucks in the city, for whom price is an after-thought.

$140 may not be much in Chappaqua-bucks, but it’s a fair amount where I live.

It still beats keeping a station car though.

It appears the good will on the 6:33 last night carried over until the morn.

A pair of middle-aged white guys (I know, major surprise on Metro-North) sat across from each other. They were dapper in a dress-down Friday kind of way: pressed shirts, sport jackets, shiny shoes.

They didn’t know each other. The train was silent.

Around the time we breezed through Wakefield, the two were engaged in a full-scale conversation about toy trains. I don’t know how it started. “My father and I played with trains when I was a kid!” enthused one. “Now I play trains with my son!”

They discussed old Lionel trains, and the piece-by-piece way that one of them assembled his little train village as a child: the school, the church, the general store, even the plywood that it sat upon.

They discussed a particularly arcane Lionel model from the late ’50s.

“That one never sold,” said one of them, shaking his head in disbelief. “It never sold.”

They were like a couple of boys discussing their latest Christmas acquisitions. They discussed train shops–a large one in White Plains, a tiny one in Ardsley.

The train (the big one, not some little Lionel) chugged into Grand Central. The man from Purchase pulled out his wallet and fished out a business card. The other, from Chappaqua, did the same, so the two of them could conceivably call each other up and talk about toy trains. They shook hands.

Everyone stood up to exit.

“My wife, she doesn’t understand it,” Chappaqua said. “She wants to throw them away. I tell her, you throw that away, you’re throwing away a piece of me.”

[image: trains.com]

Peter Applebome, who pens the sometimes illuminating Our Towns column in the NY Times, sets his sights on Chappaqua train station today and the financial workers, Bear Stearns and other, who board before the sun comes up each day.

The pilgrims from Chappaqua trudged in from the cold drizzle Wednesday morning and gathered in drowsy silence like crows on the covered overpass above the tracks until 6:11, when someone said, “It’s time to get our heads bashed in.” Thus inspired, they descended to the platform, piled onto the largely empty cars, and then, either asleep, reading a newspaper, or with heads bowed as if in prayer over BlackBerrys, journeyed in silence on the 32.4 miles to Grand Central.

Applebome has written about Chappaqua before, such when he looked at the last time a Chappaqua resident decided to run for president, as newspaper publisher Horace Greeley did back in 1872.

In fact, Applebome is a resident.

A party in Gotham had me on the 6:53 p.m. into the city Saturday night, one of the very rare occasions when I’m on the train outside of typical commuter hours. It’s quite an experience, the train packed with people drunk on anticipation of the night ahead, or simply drunk on the 6-pack they’d been working on since Chappaqua.

Being on the weekend train felt a bit like coming home to your apartment and discovering that your roommate is throwing a not-unlarge party: All these strange people in your place, eating your Cape Cod potato chips, playing your CDs, using your coffee mug as an ashtray, wearing your t-shirt from U2’s ‘85 tour (uh, “Unforgettable Fire”).  You look around, saying, who are these people, and, more importantly, what the f*&% are they doing in my place?

The unspoken rules that govern the commute are out the window on the weekend train: There are the cellphone screamers (with nary a chatterblox in sight!), the multiple-seat occupiers, the aisle-standers, the leavers behind of trash.

Here’s a modest proposal that will never, ever fly: Metro-North should dedicate one car per weekend ride for holders of monthly passes (hard copies or digital ones). The Commuter Club Car, available only to the daily riders. It be a nice perk for buying a monthly Webticket, other than the 18 cents we save for purchasing it online.

The weird thing was, my return train just after midnight was dead quiet. I figured that would be chock-full of drunken louts, but in fact, it seemed nearly everyone on there passed out before the train hit 125th. How many Accidental Tourists were hatched that night?

One non-sleeping young woman offered up a quote to make anyone from the dinky hamlet of Hawthorne smile. As the train headed out of North White Plains, she told her friends with confidence, “It goes, Valhalla, then Pleasantville, then Chappaqua,” completely omitting that little H-Town stop after Valhalla.

Hawthorne. The Peter Brady of the Brady lads. The Abdul Salaam of the New York Sack Exchange. The Jose Carreras of The Three Tenors.

No respect.

MOUNT YEARNIN’ \Mowwnt Yerrnin\ noun: Pangs of envy one feels when passing the stops at Bronxville, Pelham, Mount Vernon, etc., that are within 30 minutes of Grand Central.

Usage: I had a serious case of Mount Yearnin’ as the 7:22 rumbled along to Chappaqua.

ARMANIKE \arMAHNikee\ noun : Dudes who wear sneakers with their suits to facilitate the walk to and from the train.

Usage: This Armanike was yapping on his Razr phone all the way from Chappaqua to Grand Central.