That’s a Post-worthy headline, eh?

I wheeled my bike up to the Hummerville station this morning and made my way to the bike rack. The man who runs the taxi stand at the station was smoking a butt up against the station house.

I recognized the guy from News 12 a few months ago, when he commented on one of his employees sacrificing a rabbit on the front step of the cab stand. With shaggy gray hair and a few days’ worth of stubble, he looks like the kind of guy who used to go see Jimmy Buffett each year, then stopped going about 10 years ago.

“Thank God it’s Friday, huh?” he said.

“Yeah, looking forward to the weekend,” I said as I locked my bike.

“Of course, it’s only Thursday,” he added, “but it feels like a Friday.”

It was quiet as I walked toward the stairs.

“I gotta say,” he added. “You’ve got some serious gonads–”

At this point, he held his hands about a foot apart, as if to display gonads the size of volleyballs.

“–to ride your bike around here.”

“I hope for the best,” I said, hustling off to catch the 8:16. “I wear my helmet and hope for the best.”

[image: dailyhamster.com]

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.

Today, I became the Man I mocked for so many years in Manhattan. You know that Man — bitter soul cursing the extreme weather as he chips the ice off his windshield and prepares for his perilous commute, as his Manhattan brethren gambol about on snowshoes.

Yes, compounding the excitement of my first commute in extreme weather, I had a rental car to return (Car in shop after the Missus hit a deer. Long story.) I turned on News 12, which had its every reporter freezing alongside some Westchester highway, dodging skidding cars. “Stay home,” they said in unison. “Drink hot chocolate. Watch DVDs.”

But when Enterprise turned down our request for a foul-weather grace period, I chipped off the ice, put the Taurus in low gear, and hit the road around 8, wending through the byways north of Westchester. We’d opted for no insurance (though I later found out the Missus called Enterprise after I’d left and tried to buy insurance on the fly), so I took it extra slow.

The ride was blissfully uneventful, and the staff at Enterprise — they’re all ridiculously nice — said they’d provide a ride to the train. I must admit to a little excitement; different train station, different train. Fresh material for Trainjotting, dear reader!

A staffer drove me to the White Plains station. He grew up in White Plains and said it’s grown too much, there’s too much traffic, parking is too expensive. He would through the maze that surrounds the station and dropped me off. 

I headed up the stairs, just as the conductor barked out, “8:29 Express.”

I hustled along the platform, careful not to become that other Man — the Man who slips on the platform while running in extreme weather (close cousin to the Man who curses extreme weather while scraping off his windshield). As I boarded, I did the math. 8:29 from White Plains. That’s 12 minutes after the 8:17 from Hawthorne. I looked around the train. Familiar faces. My same damn train.

She got in just before 9:07, two minutes past the scheduled time. Well done, Metro North.