As we exited the 5:46 last night, Hawthorne riders were met at the stairs by a fresh-faced young lady handing out equally fresh copies of The Examiner. The Examiner is a weekly paper that launched last fall, covering Pleasantville and Mount Kisco. The paper has since commenced coverage of Chappaqua and, as we saw in the issue the young lady was handing out yesterday, has recently begun covering the Thorns–Thornwood and Hawthorne–as well.

We think this is excellent. Maybe we just love the smell of newsprint, but in an era when large dailies are sacking people by the hundreds and someone’s actually running a Newspaper Death Watch, some crazy folks are actually expanding their newspaper’s reach.

As publisher Adam Stone said in his introductory editorial:  “We’re here to photograph your triumphs, to chronicle your tragedies, pay tribute to your good deeds, and capture your misdeeds. Newspapers aren’t dead. They’ll only perish if those who run them suffocate them.”

None of this would’ve happened if the 6:10 hadn’t been five minutes late pulling in to Hummerville.

For the second time in three days, I studied the darkening sky as the train lumbered through White Plains, North White, Valhalla. I prayed we’d get to Hummerville before the skies opened up and soaked my sorry ass as I pedaled home.

The moment we pulled into Hawthorne–several minutes after the scheduled time  after much too much dawdling amidst the South Bronx rubble–the rains fell like God’s swimming pool had sprung a massive leak.

I gingerly made my way up and down the stairs and over to the shell of our former station house, finding an overhang that afforded me a glimpse of my sorry cycle. I waited for a slight break in the downpour, and even found a positive–unlike Monday, I was not wearing a suit. (Rocking the suit while riding the bike…a.k.a. pulling a “John John.”)

A man of about 50 took a spot next to me, eyeing a car that was parked over by the overpass, a couple hundred feet away. We made small talk, a few jokes: Why did I think riding was a good idea, where’s The Missus to pick us up, with a fresh martini in hand.

The rain showed no sign of subsiding.

Five minutes passed. I called The Missus to see it it was Code Red on the homestead. It was, for once, not. She said the rain was slowing up at the homestead, all of 9/10ths of a mile from the station.

Sure enough, by the end of the call, the rain occupied a much tamer volume level.

“I can give you a ride,” said the man next to me.

I stammered…No, really, I’m fine, it’s OK.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he insisted.

As if that wasn’t a grand enough gesture of kindness, he then said he’d run to his car, and swing back to pick me up. I stammered some more: Not really necessary, I don’t mind getting wet, OK.

Sure enough, he sprinted off, then pulled in two minutes later. The rain was merely a steady drizzle now, but my spongy bike seat held enough water to sate a third world nation. I left the bike on the rack.

We made some more small talk as he drove me home. He lived in Briarcliff, he was a mile from the Pleasantville station, but there was no sidewalk and the route is perilous for pedestrians.

We pulled up to my house. I offered my name and my hand. We shook. He was Bill or Jim or something with three letters. If only for a moment, he reinforced my faith in humanity.

A martini would’ve been nice though.

I just drove by Hawthorne train station and saw a News 12 van in the parking lot, its microwave dish out. I pulled in and waited for a crew member to surface, then asked him what the deal was.

The News 12 guy said a cab driver with Mount Pleasant Taxi, which is based out of the (otherwise) closed Hawthorne station house, left a dead rabbit on the front step of the cab depot today. The guy said the disgruntled cabbie was a Vietnam vet who, presumably, went a little nuts.

News 12 will have the story at 5 today.

And to think–the past few weeks, I’ve been walking around with a Mt. Pleasant Taxi business card in my pocket in case The Missus went into labor while I was working in the city. Mr. Dead Rabbit could’ve been the guy driving me to Phelps to witness the arrival of Little Miss C!

UPDATE: There’s more on–and we stress the word “moron”–rabbit slayer Gerard Skills in the Journal News. Skills had also put the knife to the tires of several cars at Hawthorne station and around Mount Pleasant.

Those patronizing the Hawthorne train station have one less option for coffee, ice cream and “Wolverine” comic books, as “Great Scoop Ice Cream Parlor & Cafe,” located right next to the station, appears to be closed.

Don’t let the name fool you–Great Scoop wasn’t really a cafe (though there were a few tables) and I don’t recall ever seeing anyone walk out of there with ice cream. Great Scoop was a down and dirty deli (emphasis on ‘dirty), but at least half the space was dedicated to dusty sundries– comic books, Yankee memorabilia, those Kevlar balloons, that sort of thing.

The owner was a portly fellow with a long gray beard — imagine Jerry Garcia as a Hell’s Angel. He’d lurk outside the deli some mornings; over time, he came to recognize me, racing for the train, and said hello. (In a town where you don’t know a soul, that’s actually kind of nice.) Once, I missed the train and went there for an egg and cheese sandwich and coffee, and read the Post at one of the little aluminum tables. (It would’ve felt showy to read the Times or Journal there–Great Scoop was that kind of joint.)

The Jerry Garcia biker guy had a quirky sense of humor that you could pick up on instantly. In a tiny garden outside the deli, he’d erected some cardboard tombstones on which to announce the day’s specials. It must’ve been Halloween season when he put them up, but the tombstones stayed up for some time, often with different sandwiches advertised in chalk. As Christmas approached, one tombstone teased a sandwich called the Three Wise Meats. For better or worse, you just don’t get the Three Wise Meats at your local Subway.

Hawthorne’s tiny downtown had no less than four delis, if you include the lovely Ms. Winzig’s joint (she’s an 85-year old, formerly world renowned opera singer who took a leave of absence to battle cancer last year). Indeed, four delis in the span of about two blocks. So it was probably just a matter of time before it lost one, and Great Scoop was probably the logical choice.

If another food joint goes into that space, I hope they carry on a local tradition and offer the Three Wise Meats.

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.

I’ve seen the future of Hawthorne train station, and it involves a bike rack.

Yes, after my relentless hectoring of the poor folks at Mount Pleasant Town Hall, they’ve not only ordered the rack, but are installing it as we speak! As I waited for the 8:16 this morning, I saw a backhoe, a Mount Pleasant town truck, and no less than three employees ripping a wooden parking barrier out of the ground to make room for the rack, which sat in plastic packaging leaning against the station house.

And Mount Pleasant isn’t burying this thing in the far reaches of the station lot. Not by a longshot–it’s right next to the station house. If you scored this spot with your car, you’d feel good the rest of the week. 

Cheers to Mount Pleasant, and a gigantic boo for me for doubting that this thing would be in place by Labor Day.  

It being MLB All-Star week and all, we came through with a most memorable commute today–in fact, the greatest commute in our nine months of riding the rails. Yes, the elusive 1-hour door to door was a reality today for the first time, as the planets (and trains) were aligned just so, and we cruised through the work doorway a mere 59 minutes after departing the leafy nether regions of Westchester.

Some dozen things had to fall into place perfectly. A few of them:

* No congestion on Rte. 100 delaying my crossing

* No one coming at the stop sign at Elwood, so I didn’t have to break stride on the bike

* Ample space along the lock-your-bike section of the fence (thanks to a forecast of 95 and muggy, for sure)

* Train on time at Hawthorne

* Train two minutes early into GCT (Editor’s Note: Metro-North kicking serious ass in the first-annual Trainjotting Puts Metro-North to the Test arrival time study).

* Minimal congestion on steps descending to 6 train.

* Subway waiting on platform

* Lack of sick passenger on train in front of us.

Fifty-nine freakin’ minutes, folks. It’s mornings like these where I start thinking I might actually be able to do this for the next 30 years.  

Since a small stretch of iron fencing at Hawthorne train has room for all of five bicycles, I called Mount Pleasant’s town hall about getting a bike rack put in. (This, after my frustrating efforts to find out where one could legally park a bicycle when that small space filled up.) Municipalities would typically be in favor of this stuff, one would think. More bikers, less congestion in the parking lot (Hawthorne had to build a supplemental lot some years ago to make room for all the cars), and that general Al Gore/fossil fuels/environment thing.

The woman at Town Hall assured me that Metro-North, not the Town of Mount Pleasant (of which the hamlet of Hawthorne is part) owned the station and the parking lot. I asked her if she was sure, as I didn’t want to call Metro-North, only to have them tell me it’s owned by Mount Pleasant. “They own it,” she told me. “I’m positive.”

So I lob a call into Metro-North. A cheery and helpful spokesperson made three calls with me on the other line before he found someone who knew something. They chatted a bit about their dogs, the spokesperson lamenting that his “great big fat one, so fat he couldn’t lick his own yum-yum section,” had, in fact, died.

Finally, he came back with some information.

“Mount Pleasant is the owner and operator of the Hawthorne station and the parking lot,” the spokesperson told me. “We absolutely do not own or control it.”

Uh, OK.

He said he’d triple check.

The Journal News (a.k.a. Teen Stabbed in Yonkers Today) reports that the Mamaroneck train station is for sale. Among the suggestions for the brick Romanesque revival building are a cafe, a flower shop, and a gourmet takeout place.

But Mamaroneck has all of these. As far as the ‘burbs go, Mamaroneck has a rocking main drag, with several restaurants, coffee shops, a theater and every sort of mom and pop shop one could ever require. I know this because we visited G. Francis and his brood at the Mamaroneck Historic Harbor Fair over the weekend.

My proposal is, how about Metro-North do something with the Hawthorne train station? Right now, half of it is a taxi stand, and the other half is storage space for the hygienically ambiguous gentlemen who run the taxi stand. How about giving us a little coffee shop, especially since our little downtown is so little that you can’t get a gourmet takeout meal, and you can’t get a proper cup of coffee (my apologies to Pop’s Deli), and you can’t get flowers for the missus after like 5 p.m. (And you can’t get a bearclaw at Dunkin’ Donuts, thanks to the Mount Pleasant government.)

So hook us up, Metro-North. Screw Mamaroneck.  

With tomorrow being Bike to Work Day and all, I called Mount Pleasant Town Hall to ask where I might lock my bike up at the train station, in advance of my heroic ride tomorrow morning. The convo went something like this:

Me: “Hi, I’m curious about where I can lock a bike up at Hawthorne train.”

Her: “I have a Metro-North person right here! I’ll ask him!”

Mumbling ensues.

Her: “He says at the bike rack next to the stairs. But I passed by there today, it’s not there.”

I waited for Plan B.

Her: “OK?”

Me, in my head: No, not OK!

Me: “So…I’m on my own?”

Her: “Yup.”

Click.