We don’t get out much anymore, in the traditional sense. But we do make an effort to get the kids (and ourselves) out of the house, even in the dead of winter, and visit spots we haven’t been to before.

So that brought us to 42, the dining spot at the very top of the Ritz-Carlton in White Plains, last week. Little G is obsessed with skyscrapers–forget your little ol’ Empire State Building, this kid’s head over heels for the Burj Dubai, which actually has its grand opening Jan. 4. (I would not be lying to say we built the Burj out of blocks at least eight times over Christmas break.) So that brought us to the 42nd floor of the Ritz-Carlton.

The R-C is about a five minute walk to the White Plains train station and is a combination of apartments and hotel rooms–a terrific option for Manhattan commuters. The Missus and I had been there once before, almost two years to the day, when the Ritz -Carlton had its grand opening party. We were lucky enough to meet the Laziest Man in All of Westchester that night–an owner of a R-C apartment who not only used the Ritz shuttle to and from the White Plains station every day, but even hailed a cab to get from Grand Central to 49th and Madison. (That, after exiting Grand Central at 47th and Mad.)

It being 20 degrees and all last week, we coughed up the 10 spot for the valet parking and made our way up to 42. The lunch prices are very affordable–a pulled pork sandwich and fries goes for $11, about what you’d pay at a pub like Valhalla Crossing.

The food was adequate (I had the pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries and The Missus had some duck confit sandwich) and the service was decent, but you’re there for the view: Manhattan skyline to the south, Long Island Sound to the east, Palisades to the west, Kensico Dam to the north. What blew my mind, and still does a week later, is that you cannot see the Hudson or even the Tappan Zee from 42, even though it’s only a few miles away. I saw those four red and white smokestacks across the Sound in Northport, site of much trespassing fun back in the teen years.

Here’s the 42 Website. Please ignore the “Its/It’s” typo on the homepage. I mentioned it in the customer satisfaction card when I was paying our tab, and the restaurant has chosen to ignore it as well.

Feeling cooped up again a few days later–enough of the tundra temps, OK?–we ventured out to the Palisades Center across the Hudson in Nyack. We’ve driven by it a million times on the Thruway while visit family in Jersey and points south, and always had it on the mental list of things to do–hardly a bucket list item, but we thought Little G might enjoy seeing the roller coaster or whatever thrills the Krazy Town section of the mall offered.

We went around 2:30 on Saturday the 2nd. The lot was pretty damn jammed, so I let The Missus, Little G, and Little Miss C off at the main entrance and said I’d find a parking spot.

Seventy minutes later, I’d been over every inch of the outdoor lot. I’d given up on the free parking and made my way back to the $7 valet parking near the front door (valet parking for a mall parking lot…someone’s rightfully going to hell for that), only to find the valet parking lot full.

I got stuck 20 deep behind Stop signs and caught in parking lot traffic jams with no apparent way out, just furious drivers looking for that elusive spot. Each column of parking had two or three prospectors–drivers sitting there assuming some shopper would eventually decide to walk to their car and leave. I saw numerous cases of SUV’s showing off their mountain-climbing chops by parking on four foot high frozen snow drifts.

I thought January was the month when everyone’s broke and sitting at home, lamenting their brokeness. People sure ain’t Christmas shopping on January 2nd.

Heck, just the day before, a man tried to sexually assault a young girl in a restroom at the Palisades Center.

Through it all, the place was just ridiculously packed. The Missus and Little G saw their friends at Dave & Busters, G through the skeeball a few times, and they met me out front 70 minutes after we’d pulled up. I still have not set foot inside the mall and, God willing, never will.

So thumbs-up on 42, and, as far as the Palisades Center is concerned, why cross the Tappan Zee if you really don’t have to?

A woman got on in White Plains this morning.

She wore a neat black and white checked suit, the three buttons on her jacket clasped.

She had straight brown hair with a touch of grey (Grateful Dead reference intended). It was clear that her eyes, not covered by dark glasses, did not work. She also had a black lab working dog in tow.

The dog led the woman to the aisle seat of a four-seater; the riders did their best to move their feet, their bags, their briefcases out of the way.

All eyes were on the woman, because you don’t see a blind person every day, you know you can stare without impunity, and seeing-eye dogs are one of the most fascinating things to watch.

The blind woman sipped a massive coffee with Andrew’s written across it. Her posture was impeccable, her manner almost dainty. Over time, her neighbors threw some polite questions her way. The dog was named Princess, she’s eight, and she’s been a working dog for most of her life. One man commented on how good the dog was about squeezing into a tiny space between her feet and the feet of the woman facing her in the four-seater.

“You should see the little ball she sleeps in at night,” said the blind woman.

The man across the aisle, gray hair, gray suit, eyeglasses stuck his collar, said he had a black lab too. What’s the name, asked the blind woman. Garcia, said the man — the dog is so laid back the man named him after Jerry Garcia, he explained.

“Another Dead-Head!” said the blind woman.

They discussed the Grateful Dead. The blind woman said she could always tell Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing, even when he was playing on other bands’ albums.

As we rolled into Grand Central, the woman extended her arm to allow her watch to peek out of her sleeve. What function could the watch possibly perform for a blind woman, I wondered. She lifted the glass face of the watch and fingered the digits. Braille!

The blind woman said she needed to get to a job interview on time. She and her neighbors lamented the chronic lateness of the morning train.  

As we crawled past 59th, the woman asked Garcia’s master for directions to the subway. He said he’d take her there himself. She said that wasn’t necessary, she just needed directions. He insisted on escorting her.

She said thank you.

“Not a problem,” said Garcia. “Not. A. Problem.”

The blind woman affixed a clip to the back of her hair and smoothed out of her suit. The train eased to a stop. Princess stood up and plotted their exit.

[image: takegreatpictures.com]

This being the season of all-star teams and the like, I think we found the starting pitcher on the All-Jerk team on the 5:46 out of Grand Central yesterday.

He sat on the aisle in a five-seater and had his feet up on the seat across from him (Jerk!). He had a Bud tall boy, and poured half of it into a plastic cup, which sat untethered under his seat (Jerk!!). He yapped on his cellphone, quite loudly, for much of the trip. (Jerk!!!)

The man was about 45, sported business casual, and looked a bit like a grown-up Erkel. He had a late-model cellphone and made a point of calling several people and speaking at an inappropriate volume. The people he spoke to seemed to make short work of him; the man abruptly coughed up a quick good-bye a few times, then stared at his phone directory to see who he might call next. He’d logged four conversations and two more voicemail checks by the time we hit the Bronx, easily bagging a HAT&T Trick.

He had nothing to read and clearly wanted it that way. He kept staring at his phone the way a simple child would stare at something shiny. He kept wondering who to call, hoping a name would jump out at him, and bearer of that name would accept his call. Alas, none remained by Morris Heights.

The man kept sipping his beer, then returning the cup to the floor beneath his seat. Several sets of eyes studied the beer and contemplated their emergency plans if…nay, when…the beer spilled.

It spilled around Wakefield, sending a stream of the amber nectar flowing to the rear of the car. The man mumbled something to the guy seated cattycorner to him in the five-seater and made no effort to clean it up, even throw an old Business section of the Times on it. The half-empty tallboy can glided along the spillage like a skim-boarder.

Finally, around Scarsdale, the man actually got a call on the cell. Folks, it was Christmas in July for our simple-minded friend. He bolted to the vestibule to speak with his pal.

The man was, mercifully, out of mind for a few moments, and his river of spilled beer had thankfully stopped a row in front of me.

Then the train hurtled into White Plains, and the man sprinted from the vestibule to his seat, beloved phone in one hand and Bud tallboy in the other. He was a flurry of elbows and knees as he attempted to gather his belongings and exit. The remains of his Bud tallboy went flying across his seat and the seat next to it (both empty). Leaving the beer exactly where he spilled it, the man exited at White Plains.

Eyes shot around the car, all saying the same thing:

A-hole.

As the rainy weather continues, the region’s outdoor recreational activity has been null.

But the wet and wild Curse of Zeke Marcus did not seem to faze a young woman on the 8:16 this morn. She boarded at White Plains. She was about 22 and Asian, but not in that easily identifiable (at least to me) Chinese or Japanese way. Pretty, hair in a pony tail, green raincoat, blue jeans and almost knee-high yellow Wellingtons.

She plopped a ginormous green backpack on the seat next to her. It was made by Nunatak and had a pouch for a large water bottle; the pouch’s elastic rim was decorated with tiny flags from many nations. She had a stuffed miniature Snoopy hanging from the bag, and a large white Frisbee occupying the front pouch.

I focused on the Frisbee. What prompted this women to haul the Frisbee along with her? Did she plan to get out for lunch today and toss it, despite a forecast that calls for rain every day until August (somewhere, Zeke is laughing!)? Was she a traveling backpacker, and the Frisbee was in the pack every day, in hopes that the next city…White Plains…New York…would offer a bit of greensward for a vigorous toss of the disc?

The Frisbee.

I threw the hippie disc a lot in my prior life. Langorous afternoons in college, when we should’ve been in Creative Writing 101 (thus the slipshod prose you’re reading at this moment). Making the most of newfound daylight savings time after work during those few months of post-college live-at-home, LIRR commuting (we said we’d never become one of Them!) with a few tosses in Heckscher Park. Even a little Ultimate in East River Park many years ago, hopeful that the barefoot guy we were covering didn’t step on a hypodermic.

The woman on the train looked out the window as each stop passed–Scarsdale, Fleetwood, Bronxville. She seemed to gauge the rain, to see if there might be a break in it just long enough to allow her to throw the disc.  

Like the woman across from us, we even hauled the magic orb along in a backpack when we ventured to Europe. There was a friendly toss with a few local grungers on the village green Galway, who saved our bacon when they noticed some no-good street kids (they called them “knackers”) attempting to steal our packs.

Then true adulthood hits, and the Frisbee fails to make the move into the new house.

But wait.

Just yesterday, in fact, I compelled Little G to play outside a bit after work. We tossed around the freebie flippy Frisbee knockoff I’d gotten in some silly press kit, Little G squealing with delight as he chased after the thing.

Then Little Miss C wanted in on the action, howling with laughter every time Little G threw the thing, her peels blanketing the backyard with happiness like only a 13-month old girl can do. She even refused to go to bed for some time, clawing at the back door’s window to get out and Frisbee it up with the boys a bit more.

Yes, the Frisbee.

The rain continues, today, and tomorrow, and likely into the weekend. But perhaps you’ll get that brief window of clear weather, Frisbee Gal on the Train, and you’ll be blessed by a few of those moments of Zen when you and your Frisbee are one with the Earth.

[image: wikipedia]

Not sure if it’s the case with other railroads around the world, but Metro-North has this knack for putting forth truly awful performances on the first day back from holiday breaks.

The 8:16 rolled in at the normal time this morning at Hawthorne, and all was fine until White Plains. Once all the Plainsers boarded at 8:28, the conductor got on the mic and said we had to sit for a bit due to a broken switch, as the train awaited orders as to which track it should proceed on.

We sat for about three minutes, until he got on the P.A. again and said we were ready to roll.

But still we sat for a few more minutes before proceeding toward Gotham.

Still, the ride was painstakingly slow. An older woman who looked like a cross-dressing Nancy Pelosi, bedecked in gold baubles and a silk scarf, applied layer after layer of makeup–the end result resembling a garden fence that’s gotten about eight coats of paint over the years.

The monotony was broken up by a man on a cellphone whose tone (and volume) went from restrained to almost hysterical. He was standing in the vestibule, just behind me in the last row. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him as he argued with someone on his phone. I took off the Bose headphones for a better listen, though I could hear him fine despite Bose’s cutting-edge noise reduction technology.

Far as I could tell, the person he was arguing with is the boyfriend of his baby mama, if we can slip into contemporary ghetto parlance for a split second.

“I was with her for eight years!” he yelled. “That’s my baby’s mother! She don’t even like you!”

The man got hotter and hotter, drawing the attention of most everyone in the car.

Then it got a little more ominous.

“If I catch you, I’m gonna kill you!” he yelled.

“Tell me where you at! I stay strapped too, niggah!”

“You have to die, son, if you around my daughter!”

The man on the other end apparently insisted he was avoiding the daughter; it’s a bit saddening to imagine this domestic scene, a woman’s boyfriend making considerable effort not to interact with a girl living in the same house so as to avoid angering the girl’s father, who lives elsewhere. Leave it to Beaver, it ain’t.

“How you not around my daughter if you livin’ with Mary?” yelled our fellow passenger.

Surely some on the train wondered if they should call the cops, especially if the dude indeed had a gun, as he’d said he did. I heard the conductor behind us and heading our way. The conductor seems like a hardy fellow; pleasant but no-nonsense, and I’d noticed some Go Army branding on his badge-holding neck strap this morning. Perhaps he’d nip this little issue in the bud–throw a little Semper Fi at the strapped straphanger.

“Sir,” I could hear the conductor say. “Sir?”

Alas, he was merely requesting a ticket from a slumbering rider, and walked on by the angry cellphone guy, who had seemed to quiet up a bit.

The man on the other end of the line had either launched a seriously foreboding counterattack, or said the magic words to pacifiy our fellow rider.

“Aiight, aiight,” cooed our friend. “You won’t see me, you won’t see me.”

He and his opponent then seemed to join forces against another man who was not lucky enough to be in on the conversation.

“He been driving my car. He stole my car!”

“He’s a bitch! My niggah, if I catch him, I’m gonna kill him. Every time he see me, he run the other way.”

It got quiet a moment later, and I slipped the Bose headphones back into place.

When we finally pulled into Grand Central at 9:14, a full 10 minutes late, I stood up and tried to get a look at Uneasy Rider. Pardon the racial profiling–I don’t think it was the pasty white 20-something kid in slacks or the doughy middle-aged man in a suit in the vestibule spewing the ghetto-speak–but I think I found the man: bi-racial, perhaps black and Hispanic, corn rows under a do-rag, long black t-shirt, baggy jeans hanging below the ass, a surprisingly preppy black and white checked knapsack over his shoulder.

We got off the train, where three of New York’s finest were walking up the platform, obviously looking for someone. Uneasy Rider put his head down and shuffled along, hit the concourse, and hung a left for the subways.

Back to freakin’ work.
 

I boarded the 8:16 out of Hawthorne today, slightly off my game after a four-day weekend. Seat choices 1, 2 and 3 were taken, so I ventured into the next car.

The car held about 30 middle-aged people with red, white and blue neckerchiefs–bandana-type thingees knotted under their chins. Several held cardboard boxes with handles, like the type that holds your donut holes, on their laps. I spied one and it said Turkey.

 I assumed the whole gang of folks, not quite senior citizens but close, were from Turkey. I wondered if I should grill them about their treatment of the Armenians and that controversial G word. I sat a row behind them and caught sight of another one of the boxes on another lap. This one said “Ham.” Yes, the tourists were bringing their box lunches from the suburbs to the city, to avoid those scary delis with their scary workers making scary mile-high sandwiches.

The people were English and had every last trapping of Tourists: the sensible shoes, the guidebook on the lap, the fanny pack. They wondered the best way to get downtown safely, and debated whether they had time to visit Ground Zero.

A bunch of people got on in White Plains, and some attempted to infiltrate the Brits’ partial occupation of a six-seater. A middle-aged man, glasses, suit, a bit fey, sat in the middle. He looked around to size up the sash-wearing tourists.

“You guys spies or scouts?” he deadpanned.

“A bit of both,” responded one of the women, keeping that trademark British upper lip stiff.

A few minutes later, the ticket-taking conductor got in on the action.

“You guys are that English motorcycle gang, right?” he said. “The Flaming Skulls?”

The group smiled.

“Our bikes are in the back,” responded one of the men.

The White Plains guy in the middle of the six-seater jokingly suggested the group skip the city and check out White Plains instead, and regaled them about the history of White Plains–something about low-lying land and a perpetual shroud of fog that made it seem white.

On we went to the city–another day of work for most of us, a fun day of sightseeing and tasty box lunches for others.

I had the express pleasure of being seated next to an actual CEO on the 8:16 this morning. He boarded in White Plains and took the window seat next to my aisle seat. In true CEO fashion, he booted up a laptop and tweaked a spread sheet showing half-year results, elbowing me in the ribs every time he typed an A, S, D, F, E or C. (I saw that snappy CEO title as he fired off a few emails.)

Also in true CEO fashion, this would-be master of the universe talked business–quite loudly, in fact–into his cell from Tuckahoe to the Grand Central tunnel.

The gentleman’s firm, which I won’t name out of decency and fear of litigation, is a management consulting firm that, according to its Website, helps global corporations with “decision making.” (Turkey or roast beef for lunch? Roast beef! Sprite or Sunkist? Er, let’s do a focus group.)

A few chief executive nuggets that the rest of the car were treated to this morning:

The Full-Time Advisory Consultant

“It’s one of those things we alluded to…we do not have a 100% full time advisory consultant sales guy…there’s no doubt that that’s a glaring weakness…Clearly I’m not able…I can’t be everywhere.”

The Rainmaker

“Getting a rainmaker in the advisory services business is the hardest thing to get. The opportunity to get business over the transom is there, but you never know.

“Jeff”

“Jeff is actually pretty innovative, and at times even effective. But his strength is selling solutions out.”

A man boards the 8:28 at White Plains. He’s tall and heavy-set, and looks like he played high school football 40 years before. He’s got white hair, glasses, a large suitcase, light blue jeans that look scarily close to Toughskins that his wife bought for him at Caldor. (Two Toughskins mentions on Trainjotting in the past few days. You’d think they were advertising here or something.)

He’s quiet for the first 10 minutes, though I feel him looking around, searching for an opportunity to make his presence felt.

As we near Bronkers, he can’t contain himself any longer. He makes eye contact with a guy a few rows up and across the aisle who’s facing him.

“Duz thee-is trayyn go ex-pray-is to Grand Central?”

“Yup,” comes the response. “125th then Grand Central.”

“Wow,” the guy responds. (I’m going to stop writing in phonetics cuz it’s hard to do.) “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

The guy up and over nods, smiles and goes back to his book.

But the big fella continues.

“My first time on the Metro-North,” he says. “I’m just a country boy.”

The up and over guy nods, this time without the smile.

“Sure covers a lot of ground,” he continues. “Expensive too. I was in L.A. recently, paid $1.50 to ride 50 miles.”

“Bet you were still in L.A. when you got off,” comes a response from another guy across the aisle.

Then it’s quiet for a few minutes, but the big fella isn’t content reading his Google Maps printout.

“You sure are reading that book fast,” he says to the second guy he’d spoken to. “Are you really comprehending it all?”

“Probably not,” the guy says with a laugh. “But if I’m not comprehending it, I’ll probably never know.” It was some sort of joke, the best you’ll do on a Monday morning train.

The Metro-North virgin is smashing every commuter rule he can: Talking to strangers, especially those not right next to him. Talking to a guy who has to turn around to respond. Talking to a guy who’s clearly immersed in his reading. The only way it would be more of a transgression would be if the big hayseed was chatting up a guy in headphones.

The man then starts asking about getting a bus to LaGuardia, and the first man he spoke to tells him there’s a bus at 125th [Editor’s Note: Freudian Slip of the day–I typed “buzz” instead of “bus.”]. They dissect the finer points of bus transportation, LaGuardia and 125th until we arrive in Harlem. The first guy was getting off, and said he’d show the big hayseed where to go.

As they exited the train, Big Country continued to pepper the poor commuter with inane questions.  

We happened upon the grand opening bash for the Ritz-Carlton in White Plains last night, which brought out an odd mix of Bedford blueblood broads in iron-gray hair and builder-types in ill-fitting suits, white socks, and giant phones strapped to their belts.

Seating was hard to come by. The Missus and I spied a small table occupied by a couple and their toddler daughter, a winsome whelp who singlehandedly brought the average age of the party down below 75. We did the requisite ‘mind if we crash?’ pleasantries and took a seat at their table.

The couple moved to the Ritz earlier this month after a decade in Manhattan. The guy worked in finance, and said his commute now was pretty much what it had been when he was cabbing it from way lower Manhattan up to midtown.

For commuters, the walk from the Ritz-Carlton to the White Plains train is a breeze: I half-walked/half-jogged in last night’s drizzle and did it in five minutes. But the guy mentioned how he hopped a shuttle to the White Plains train each morning.

I asked if he had an easy time of it once he got to Manhattan. He did, in fact, with his office on 49th and Madison.

“My exposure to the outside is pretty limited,” he said with a smile.

The man then revealed that he, in fact, hailed a cab each day to take him from Grand Central to 49th and Mad!

OK, that back entrance/exit in Grand Central takes you out to 47th and Mad, if I remember correctly. So the guy was cabbing it from 47th and Mad to 49th and Mad! How did he not have enough self respect to at least lie to me about this?

The Missus and I politely excused ourselves and said we were going to mingle. As I got to my feet, I kept picturing the man laboring through the bike/train/foot triathlon I do each morning.

The Ritz-Carlton was pretty cool. With that 32-odd minute train ride from White Plains, a resident could be at their office within an hour, door to door. Security was extremely tight, the guys with the fusilli behind the ear even following me into the can at one point. Which made it kind of strange when I somehow ended up not on the guest list, but was let in anyway.

Other notes: the view from the 42nd floor is great, even on a cloudy night — Wal-Mart never looked so good. The buffet line at BLT Steak was too long to wait on, so we didn’t in fact get to try BLT Steak while attending an event that was explained to us as “a grand opening for BLT Steak.” Kind of disappointing. And at one point I saw megabuilder Louis Capelli imploring a scribe from Villagers Vote Down Tax Proposal …I mean, the Journal News… to “write something nice about me.”

A couple got on board the 8:28 at White Plains. They were in their 30s, black, normally dressed, pretty average looking, if not the commuter prototypes. The train was fairly full, and they milled around a bit, trying to figure out seating.

I sat on the aisle, as I always do. The man took the window seat next to me. His gal pal took the window seat across the aisle from us, so they were in the same row –only with two strangers and an aisle between them.

Despite the distance, their conversation continued. He leaned forward and asked her if her cellphone had power. I pulled back my Times so I wasn’t blocking their convo. She leaned forward and said she had a few bars. He said she was lucky.

The conversation went on for a few minutes, the words passing right through me and the other guy across the aisle.

They eventually grew quiet. I went on reading the paper. The conductor came around and took tickets. The guy had a single-tripper, the sign of a neophyte rider.

A few minutes later, it started up again, again about the cellphones.

I spoke up.

“Do you want me to switch so you guys can sit together?” I asked.

“Sure!” said the guy with a wide smile. “Thanks!”

As I got my things together, he asked me how my monthly ticket works; I sensed he’d been eyeing it when I took it out for the conductor. Personally, I feel the monthly pass is pretty self-explanatory, but indulged him nonetheless — told him I saved a few bucks by buying it online, but had to remember to get it each month before the current month ended. He seemed genuinely interested.

I moved, his gal pal took my seat, and the two of them went on talking about cellphones.