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.