A Beacon at the End of the Tunnel

In my last posting I was lamenting the one train trip I had made to Beacon, New York due to a longer than necessary "power nap" on my Metro North commutation. That was not my only trip to Beacon by train. I made one a few months earlier while wide awake. I just sat in my seat with my eyes wide open as the train sailed right by the Cortlandt station (my home station and desired stop), the Peekskill station (boyhood home of George Pataki the former mayor of Peekskill and governor of New York), the Garrison station (lovely little town with a great view of West Point and current home of George Pataki) and the Cold Springs station (antiquing capital of the lower Hudson Valley). This rail excursion, Cortlandt to Beacon is only about thirty-five minutes, but it was thirty-five minutes I did not have this particular day.

My wife had bought me two tickets to The Greater New York Wine and Food Festival for Valentine's Day. This is a three day gala with gourmet food, cooking exhibitions, wine tastings, food tastings, cigar tastings, and tasting tastings. Click on the link above to get the scope on the event. It was to be held at the Double Tree Hotel in Tarrytown and we were staying there for the entire weekend since we figured driving was out of the question! The gala started at 7 PM on Friday evening and meant I needed to catch an earlier train home in order to make this sold out opening event. I cut my walk to Grand Central Station a little too close and barely had time to look at the monitor with the train schedule and get on the train. I had two minutes to catch the train to Poughkeepsie but little did I know the first stop on this train was Beacon! I was into my "power nap" before 125^th Street and apparently did not even know this train stopped at this station. Somewhere before Spuyten Duyvil the conductor came to collect tickets and informed me that the train would not stop at Cortlandt station. "Can I get off at Croton Harmon," I asked knowing this was a ten minute taxi ride to my home? "No, but you could have gotten off at 125^th Street." Well that was a bit of useful information I would never get to use! I asked for a schedule so I could assess the damages to my plans and see when I would be able to catch a southbound train back from Beacon to Cortlandt. This train gets to Beacon at 6:16 PM and the southbound train leaves at 6:45 PM and gets to Cortlandt at 7:12 PM. My wife expects me at the house at 6:00 PM.

My keen engineering trained mind kicks in. I have a schedule, a calculator on my Blackberry and much too much time to figure out that I am most likely going to be late. But how late will I be? What ETA do I give to my understanding wife and our friends who were also spending the weekend at the festival? Great idea number one: I will recommend that Fran get a ride with Peggy and Tom and I will meet them all there at the event a little late – like an hour and half late. That did not sound so bad. I give a call home and lay out option one. It actually takes a few minutes before getting to explaining option one. There is a short discussion (monologue) centered on how a college educated man with over twenty-five years (5,000 round trips) of commuting experience could board the wrong train. I begin to sense ill will in the call. I interrupt these points of wisdom and present option one to help save what little self esteem I am able to hold onto. Lo and behold, Peggy and Tom are already on their way to the Festival and had left from White Plains. Silence at my end of the call. [Note to self: never present an option one, if you do not already have an option two.] "What time will you be here?" zip,zip,dash,dash – sounds of my mind racing. The return train gets in at 7:12 PM and it is another fifteen minutes to get to the car and drive home; that makes it about 7:30 PM. "I'll be there at 7:00 PM," and the call ended.

What was I thinking? During my zip,zip,dash,dash experience the demon of best possible scenarios overtook my brain. The train to Beacon gets in at 6:16 PM, there most likely will be a taxi at the station (big assumption number one), the drive back to the Cortlandt station is no more than twenty minutes (big assumption number two) and 7:00 PM is better than 7:30 PM (that is axiomatic, all other things being equal). So my little demon has set me up for being late twice for the same incident. But I am the eternal optimist. What could go wrong?

Big assumption number one, was a good assumption. There was a cab at the station. Little wrinkle number one, I was not the only person looking for a ride. So in we go – the Pondit wanting to get back to my car in Cortlandt in twenty minutes, and passenger two sitting next to me who I find out is going to the state prison just outside of Beacon. Ten minutes in the cab listening to the banter between passenger number two and the driver (still not sure if passenger two works at the prison, is visiting the prison or is surrendering for incarceration). All we have done thus far is travel away from Cortlandt. It is now 6:35 PM. I could have stayed on the station platform and the southbound train would be arriving in ten minutes!

Finally the cabbie and I are heading south. I am in no mood for idle talk, but the cabbie wants to chat. Chat we do. At 7:10 PM we pull into the station parking lot. Fortunately I have seventy dollars with me. The fare is fifty dollars and with tip, I now have less than ten dollars in my pocket. This was one of those "all other things being equal" not being equal. I had a cab ride I did not cherish, including sharing the ride with a possible mass murderer (or worse, passenger number two looked a bit like Bayou investment charlatan, Sam Israel), and I spent sixty dollars which gained me two minutes on the trip home.

Getting home I changed clothes in record time, finished last minute packing, had to make sure my wife had some cash with her and off we headed for Tarrytown. We had a wonderful weekend. The Friday night event was over subscribed, arriving late was almost a blessing. As Billy S. wrote, "All's Well that Ends Well."