Got a call from Town Hall yesterday telling me the bike rack was up and functional. “Tell your bike friends they can park there,” the woman told me. (As if my “bike friends” and I sit around in our free time, sipping Power-Ade, wearing Lycra shorts and discussing our rides to the train station, and the heretofore substandard bike-parking situation there.

I thanked her for helping make the world a slightly better place.

I parked my bike there this morning. It was the only bike on the rack, with three others parked in the old spot along the fence. Perhaps they think the rack is an abstract sculpture.

Trainjotting will now cease writing about bike racks–no subtle digs at Town Hall, no clever pun headlines (Nice Rack!). You’ve heard enough.

The new bike rack is in place! I saw it with my own eyes at Hawthorne station this morning, as two Mount Pleasant workies were jamming it into the ground. It’s black, it’s one of those squiggly-line ones that’s shaped like your lower intestine turned on its side, and it’s beautiful. Hopefully it’s fully functional tomorrow.

Maybe Mount Pleasant can hold an official unveiling of the bike rack tomorrow, with Town Supervisor Robert Meehan joining such Westchester luminaries as Joe Rao from News12 and that Congressman that used to sing for Orleans as they cut the ribbon.

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.  

Honestly, I hate to be a pessimist. I pestered Mount Pleasant Town Hall for a bike rack at Hawthorne Station–indeed, a striking foil to the gigantic SUVs parked in the lot–and after several weeks and “we don’t own the station” declarations, they said it was on order.

All good, right?

I dunno. On Friday, June 15, the town hall clerk told me it would be there in six weeks. But I have this glum feeling the thing’s going to sit in its box in some weed-strewn lot for weeks and weeks, until Town Hall 1. figures out where to put it, and 2. actually puts it.

Six weeks has it arriving in late July. If the thing’s not in place by Labor Day, I’m going to be very unhappy.

It was a tight squeeze along the narrow stretch of fence where people are allowed to lock their bikes at Hawthorne station, and I’d sort of boxed another bike in. (Back story: we’ve been pestering Mount Pleasant Town Hall for a bike rack, and last week they said they’d ordered it.) As I unlocked my bike yesterday evening, the owner of the bike I’d boxed in (mind you, he could still get his bike out, though I’d broken the unwritten role of having my bike touch another bike) approached.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “It was kind of a tight squeeze.”

He was cheery, as most people in and around Hawthorne (duh, it’s part of Mount Pleasant) seem to be.

“No problem,” he said with a smile.

We unlocked our bikes side by side.

“Ya know,” I said like an expectant father, “we’re getting a bike rack in six weeks.”

“No way!” he exclaimed. Honest, he actually exclaimed. “How’d that happen?”

I told him about pestering Town Hall. He asked for names. I gave ‘em. He smiled broadly all the while.

“Now if we can just get them to build a few freakin’ sidewalks,” he said before we rode off in different directions.

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.

Sticking with today’s topic of tasty beverages on the train, residents of Hawthorne were very close to having a brand-new Dunkin’ Donuts two blocks down Commerce Street from the train station. That is, until Mount Pleasant town officials kiboshed the deal, according to local shopkeepers. As they put it, the town board felt a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise would cause parking problems…because you know how those Dunkin’ Donuts customers tend to browse for hours as they debate the merit of cruellers versus muffins.

Of course, having a little commerce on, ya know, Commerce Street, just won’t fly.

It was the first day with the new schedules and all, and anxiety ran a bit high. Would those new Mount Kisco people make for a crowded train? Would we be pulling into strange Grand Central tracks that made our commute a minute or two longer?

The train left Hawthorne and the mechanical narrator said, “Next stop, Mount Pleasant.”

First, some background. The Mount Pleasant stop is at the nexus of a few giant graveyards. The platform is about the size of a surfboard. And I’ve never stopped there. I believe the train makes occasional weekend stops there to accommodate funerals, but otherwise bypasses it entirely.

But just this morning, the disembodied train voice said we were stopping in Mount Pleasant, and the orange electronic ticker indicated same. This was good and bad. On the good side, it’s sort of close to where I live. On the not so good side, I didn’t want the extra two minutes of a stop added on each day.

We rolled into Mount Pleasant, and we rolled out of Mount Pleasant, without even slowing down. Completely disregarding his previous statement, the mechanical voice stated, “Next stop, Valhalla,” same as he does every day.

And that was that.