The latest edition of Westchester Magazine offers a fairly perfunctory piece on the behaviors that irk Metro-North riders, not unlike what we do here at Trainjotting every damn day.

Writer Sabina Cieszynski hits on all the obvious points: loud talkers, stankin’ foods, people who fail to have their ticket ready for the conductor.

She does raise one point that bears repeating. The tyranny of the Sad Sack.

[Those who] …treat their bags as an imaginary companion.
Yes, we all know that commuting requires that you occasionally carry a wardrobe change or a small portable office with you, but, please, keep those extra seats free, especially during rush hour. Bags do not have feelings; they’ll enjoy the ride just as much on the overhead rack.
 

Our dear friend, colleague and Stamford commuter ConnecticEnergy once told me about a guy on his train who always made a seat for “Mr. Briefcase”–a satchel of such elevated status that it always got its own seat, standing riders be damned.

NYU journalism prof Mitchell Stephens embarks on a bike commute from Ossining to Greenwich Village in the latest issue of Westchester Magazine (this is not to be confused with the psychotherapist who bikes from Pound Ridge to the Upper West Side in the January edition of Westchester Magazine).

Stephens has about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to his office to meet some dubious Norwegians, and encounters no shortage of bumps in the road as he follows the North and South County Trailway rail-trails into Gotham. Among them: a dead end in Tarrytown, onerous hills in Yonkers, and finding a suitable bridge into Manhattan.

There comes a point in every great bike ride when thoughts turn to Lance Armstrong. It had arrived. Lacking only a motorcycle escort, a cheering crowd, and allegations of drug use, I flew ahead. Not a soul, of either sex, passed me. (True, I didn’t pass anyone either; indeed, that day I can’t say I spotted many—or any—other Westchester-Manhattan bicycle commuters.) My legs pumped piston-like. My eyes stared resolutely ahead. Nothing hurt excessively. I’m not generally known for speed; however I raced—that’s the only word for it—under another highway. Could it be the Cross County already? Time? Why only about ten o’clock!

Today in self promotion, we’re happy to report that the May issue of esteemed monthly glossfest Westchester Magazine cited our lil ol’ blog in a sidebar within a feature called “56 Things Every Westchesterite Must Do (At Least) Once.” Sadly, “Read Trainjotting…And Click on Those Annoying Google Ads” was not in the list of 56, but #51, dedicated to Stealing the Spotlight at the Next Cocktail Party, touts the merits of using Metro-North to get to and from work every day.

Writes W. Dyer Halpern:

The subject: Transportation

The crowd: 30-somethings

The scenario: Brad, the boss’s son (who just became the boss), recently moved to Westchester and is dying to know how do people ever get into Manhattan from here. He wants to know your transportation of pleasure.

Your choices:

(A)  Helicopter

(B)  Car

(C)  Train

(D)  Who needs Manhattan? I telecommute!

The answer: If you picked A, you’ve got “poser” written all over you. Only Donald Trump can get away with taking a chopper to the City, and you don’t have the hair.  Cars are so pre-Inconvenient Truth.
And, as for telecommuting, it reeks of hermit status. The answer is (C)  train. We’ve got the most on-time transportation system in the country. And just ask Joe Simonetti, who bikes to Manhattan twice a week (and was the subject of our “Pound Ridge Peddler” story in the February issue, westchestermagazine.com), what happens if you make fun of the strap-hangers on Metro-North. He ended up as a target of trainjotting.com and has to ride the 8 am to Grand Central hidden in the bathroom car.

Right on!

The new issue of Larchmont Ladies Who Lunch…I mean Westchester Magazine… has a feature on a psychotherapist who embarks on a 45-mile commute from northern Westchester to the Upper West Side–a 3 1/2-hour jaunt one way.

“I want to shoot myself when I’m on the train,” explains Pound Ridge resident Joe Simonetti. “I feel like a piece of cattle.” (Uh, which “piece of cattle”, Joe, the right flank? The left-rear hock?)

I don’t think I like this guy. He rides a 27-speed LeMond Buenos Aires bike, which sounds really expensive. He fuels up on “egg whites on a pumpernickel bagel with a little Swiss cheese” while he’s riding. He’s wearing bike shorts and bike shoes in the photo; he looks like the kind of a guy who owns two Priuses and chastises his grandson for playing with a toy Hummer.

Simonetti says he does this crazy commute twice a week, six months out of the year (he stops when it gets a little chilly in November), but doesn’t reveal how he gets to work the rest of the time.

Would that be the god-forsaken train, Dr. Simonetti, with the rest of us piece of cattle?