Train 911

One spectacular September morning I make my regular morning commute to New York City. There is not a cloud in the sky and the air feels "country" fresh even in midtown Manhattan. My regular train, the 7:42 from Cortlandt, arrives at Grand Central Terminal at 8:39 AM. I sit near the rear of the train and it takes several minutes for me to get from the train to the main lobby of the terminal. As I am a creature of habit when commuting, I walk out the entrance from the corridor in GCT through the subway's 42^nd Street Shuttle station finally emerging in the majestic lobby of the Lincoln Building. I glance at the bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting in a chair, a replica of the one that is so striking at his memorial in Washington. Abe is a symbol of quiet strength to me, a strength sprinkled with conventional wisdom and tolerance.

I exit the Lincoln Building on Madison Avenue, then cross the street and walk up 43^rd Street to Fifth Avenue. I pause at the corner directly across from the New York City Library. What a day! As I mentioned before, clear blue skies and not one cloud east, west or north. I did notice a low white puffy cloud drifting over lower Manhattan as I looked south.

I continue on to my office building at Broadway and 37^th Street. When I get to our small office on the fourteenth floor, it is no different than the day before or the week before. The time is now about 8:55 AM. Suddenly one of my coworkers jumps up from his cubicle and shouts, "A plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers!" I quickly try to bring up the CNN internet site. S…L…O…W. I try the local WNBC site with no better luck. We are all thinking that some small single engine plane is involved in the accident. We cannot get any information. Soon after, I get a call from a colleague in our London office. He wants to know if everything was all right in our office. I ask, "Why?" It is now about 9:10 AM. He tells me that two airliners have crashed into the WTC towers. He is looking for details about the incident from me and here I am only a mile or two from the site and I know almost nothing. I ask him to keep us informed.

I try to call my wife but cannot get an outside line on my office phone or my cell phone. Another coworker comes into the office. He had just been on the roof of our building. He tells us he could see smoke coming from both towers downtown. The mood in the office is now half shock and half panic. We are getting little or no information, but still rumors are flying. I receive a second call from London and they say these incidents are reported as terrorist attacks. At 9:30 three of us decide to go up to the roof to take a look. It was heart wrenching. The smoke from the two towers looks ominous. We could only see the top of the towers, maybe the top thirty to forty floors. We hear and see a few helicopters and some sirens down at street level. I then glance over my left shoulder as I here fighter jets zooming in. I am aware of the looming Empire State Building just three streets and one avenue away from where we are standing. It occurs to me that the roof is not a place I want to be and leave by myself to go back downstairs.

There is still no way for us to communicate to the outside world. Someone finds a radio and at least we get some information on what was happening. Soon that radio is moved to another office and we again have no news! Many of us, me included, want to be home and not in Manhattan. Just after 10:00 AM the two coworkers I left on the roof burst back into the office. All I here is, "It collapsed! It collapsed!" After what seems like minutes, we finally learn that they were watching the towers and in seconds one of the towers was just not there anymore. The plume of smoke and debris was enormous. Now I really want to get home.

I decide to walk to Grand Central Terminal. Once outside on Broadway, there are people walking not only on the sidewalks but right up the middle of the street. All foot traffic is moving north. There are no cars, no buses, and no taxis. People look frightened. At one point, there is a loud noise – people start running in all directions. Others seeing the runners also start running. It makes no sense and lots of sense. I step into a doorway and soon all is again calm and is back to "normal", although I soon realize that "normal" is soon to be changed forever. The police are not letting people into the train station. Someone comes out and tells those assembled that some trains are running up to Marble Hill in the Bronx but not any further south. Marble Hill is a several mile walk from midtown.

When I return to the office, I learn the South tower has also collapsed. Some coworkers are already leaving on foot. I do not know what to do. I take another trip to the roof top. Now the skies are totally quiet. There are no planes and no helicopters. It is an eerie sight. I still worry about the Empire State Building, but feel relieved that there is no air traffic at all in New York City. By now I also know about the crash at the Pentagon and another in Pennsylvania. I want out of the city. Just before 2:00 PM I leave the office to head north, to Marble Hill if necessary. The streets are more crowded than earlier with people walking north. Some are obviously from downtown since they are covered with ash. As I passed GCT I see some people entering at the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. I follow them in. A policeman tells us that some trains are now running, but there is no schedule. Fortunately there is a train to Poughkeepsie right in front of me. I walk down the platform and take a seat. The train is very quiet. Many passengers are like me, somewhat in the dark about the day's events. Others, those covered in dust, apparently know more but are not sharing information. Today there are no card games, no alcoholic beverages and no idle banter. Once moving, I do over hear some quiet conversations, but still am not able to fully piece together the events of the day.

When I finally park my car and walk into our home, I am relieved to see my wife. It is at home, in front of our television that I finally learn the chronology of the day's events. I start to wonder about some of my friends who work downtown. Are they safe? I cannot remember anyone close to us who actually worked in the World Trade Towers. I flash back to the early 1990's when I did consulting work for the Port of New York Authority. Three days per week, I commuted downtown to my cubicle on the 72^nd floor of the North Tower. I wonder if any of my old coworkers from that time were still working in the tower – most likely. I try to remember names and faces and in the following weeks I check the New York Times for names of victims. Fortunately, I do not see any name I know.

September 11, 2001 is a day of infamy. Let all who perished, rest in peace. And may all who lost loved ones, find peace in their hearts.

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."

Riding the Rails

In 1977 our family was faced with a dilemma, we needed to relocate from Dorado, Puerto Rico to the New York City area. That meant trying to decide to live in the city, in Westchester, in western Connecticut, Long Island or northern New Jersey and to do this with one or two "house hunting" visits. Oy vey iz mir! We immediately ruled out the city and reasoned that Long Island with its seven million people and only seven bridges and two tunnels connecting it to the mainland by automobile was too stifling. My new job was in midtown Manhattan only two blocks from Grand Central Terminal. This made both Westchester and Connecticut more attractive than a bus and subway trip from New Jersey.

I wanted to have a train commute of less than one hour. That limited where in Westchester or Connecticut we could live. All of our children's grandparents lived about twenty miles west of Kingston, NY in the Catskill Mountains. That made Westchester more attractive than Connecticut. We decided on Northern Westchester and ended up in Croton-on Hudson. In retrospect we are very pleased we made this choice.

Like the hobo and his rucksack or a swagman with his swag, there was I with my briefcase and suit waiting for the 7:43 AM Conrail train to New York City's Grand Central Terminal. It was not a bad experience. This train originated at the Croton Harmon station and only made a couple of stops each morning. There was always a seat for me and I could sit anywhere on the train I wished, theoretically. I soon found myself boarding the same train car each morning and when I took the time to look up from the New York Times, I was sitting near the same group of people each and every morning. It is almost like we all had assigned seats. Now sitting near the same people did not mean you actually spoke to these people. People are weird – commuters are more so. I would spend time fantasizing where does he work or what does she do for a living? Yet the idea of initiating an introduction never crossed my mind. Coming home I usually caught the same train each day and, yes, usually sat in the same car, but had more trouble getting the exact same seat each night. Alas.

Now there was socializing on the trains. Some trains had a bar car, where regulars would congregate to smoke, drink and unwind from their business days. Eventually, this service was discontinued on the Hudson line that I took to the Croton Harmon station. Within in a few years, maybe after 1,200 train rides, I found myself joining a regular card game on the train. Three, four or five of us would sit in triple seats tilted so we were knee to knee and play hearts to and from work. I am sure our bantering and loud play were an interruption to many, but for me and my train friends, it made the commute a new found pleasure. Now day to day different players joined the game, but there was always Jack in his suit, bowtie and handlebar mustache on the train early to claim our seat. He removed one of the advertising posters that were in each train car which we all balanced on our knees for a card table. I played in this game for over seven years – that is a possibility of 2,800 games of hearts. We never played for a penny but were as competitive in our play as if there were hundreds of dollars at stake. Eventually, I stopped commuting for a few years and can honestly say I missed the game and the companionship. As fate would have it, one of the regular players, Bill, is now living in our community on the shores of Dickerson Pond.

In 1999 I reentered the commutation world. It was now Metro North and not Conrail and the trains were actually a lot better than they were in the late 1970's and early 1980's. I did not find a card game, but rediscovered the New York Times. I was still commuting from Croton Harmon so I had forty-seven minutes to "do" the Times. Each morning I quickly scan each section. I check the sports stories and actually read the sports section on football Mondays. If I see an article in the business section, I might read it quickly. Next on Tuesday through Friday, I open the Arts section and start the crossword puzzle. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I finish the puzzle then look again at the Metro section and next read the editorial pages. If I have time I look at the national news section. I save the Tuesday Science section for the ride home. Friday I usually need a part of the ride home to finish the crossword puzzle.

In 2000 we moved a little north and I still commuted from the Croton Harmon station until the predatory Village of Croton-on-Hudson parking rules and enforcement caused me to change to the new Cortlandt Station. I now had fifty-eight minutes on the train and could spend a few more minutes with the Times each morning. Now these past few years I learned to power nap on the ride home. For me a power nap is passing out and falling asleep while the train is still in the Park Avenue tunnel. Napping on the trip to Croton Harmon is fairly safe IF Croton Harmon is the last stop for the train. I was conditioned to wake up in Ossining, but sometimes I needed a helpful nudge in Croton Harmon to remind me to exit the train. There is a much greater challenge napping to the Cortlandt station since those trains go all the way to Poughkeepsie. I had a perfect record going into my last week of commuting. Then one evening, it was a beautiful evening, I woke up somewhere between Cold Springs and Beacon. Twenty-five years of commuting, two hundred trips home each of those years makes five thousand trips and I miss a perfect record the last week on the train. Oh well, the Beacon station is a very nice station.

Getting 100 Million Clowns to the Station

How do they do it? How do all those clowns fit into that one miniscule vehicle? I have yet to read through every page of Al Gore's $5 Trillion Energy Plan, but a quick search of the document did not reveal any mention of clown cars. This seems to be a significant oversight and given proper consideration could trim $2 to $3 trillion off the estimated cost of the plan. At first I thought that at least T. Boone Pickens was on the right track until I realized I made a typo in my Google search and entered "blown" instead of "clown." Is it possible neither of these prominent Americans ever went to a circus? I am estimating that a reasonable number of circus clowns able to fit inside a modified VW Beetle are eight. Hold onto that estimate, it will be useful in a few paragraphs.

I am no longer commuting to work each day, but have years of experience qualifying me as a subject matter expert on commutation. My former commutation station is rather new and has a parking lot designed for about 700 cars. Most of the spots are paid for monthly, but there are about 200 that can be rented on a daily basis. I have used both methods and neither is without serious trials and tribulations. A monthly pass allows you to park in any of 500 spaces as long as you display your pass that conveniently hangs from the rear view mirror of your car. In my case it is usually hanging from the mirror of the car I chose not to drive that day. That all too frequent occurrence enables me the luxury of finding a metered spot and paying an extra three dollars to park, assuming I have three dollars in change or bills in my possession. If you arrive at the lot at any civilized hour, you have 300 yard walk to the station. Fortunately it never rains until you are at least 100 yards from the umbrella you left in your car. Once you get near the station, you get to use one of the three machines machines (Delphic oracles) that sadistically ask you an impossible riddle, “What is the number of your parking spot?” You can now: (1) guess the number, (2) realize you do not have the slightest clue and skip paying (That assures it is a day they will be checking the lot for scofflaws.), (3) walk back 300 yards, find your car and mindlessly repeat the number over and over again on the 300 yard walk back to the station.

Next, it is time to go to the coffee hut for traveling provisions. At least the Delphic oracles mentioned above allow you a sense of individual identification and assume you have a different number each day (Not so when I was paying daily parking on a regular basis. I beat the demonic oracles by parking in a remote area – 400 yard walk – and using the same numbered spot (#699) each day. My mother did not raise any fool!). At the hut, I am but a small coffee, a splash of half and half, with a buttered hard roll. I accept this lot in life and would not dare ask for a piece of crumb cake in fear that the entire operation would grind to a screeching halt with that request. Five years of receiving the same order without a word exchanged between vendor and customer. Five years longing for one lousy piece of crumb cake.

The actual station platform faces directly across to a cement, gravel and asphalt plant. From spring to fall trucks from the Town of Cortlandt, Villages of Ossining, Tarrytown, Croton-on-Hudson and the City of Peekskill line up to get the goo that smooth the potholes of our lives. That was until gas prices were $4 per gallon! (Asphalt is a thick form of refined oil. It is heated with gravel and is moldable while hot. It becomes "road" hard at normal temperatures. This transformation creates a surface for smoothing out all the bumps in our lives. Apparently, there is a point where our town governments believe that potholes are socially acceptable and smooth sailing is not a right but a luxury. Crude oil above $120 a barrel is that point. The asphalt plant has been idle for months.

Remember the clown car – eight clowns in one VW Beetle? Too many of the cars in the station parking lot are closer in size to a Yukon Denali than my Subaru Impreza station wagon (What more appropriate transportation to get to the station than a station wagon?). A typical commuter drives three to ten miles to the station, carries one brief case or oversized handbag and comes alone in their vehicle. Here is the tale of the tape:

Category	Yukon Denali	Impreza Station Wagon	Clown VW
Weight	5,635 lbs	3,064 lbs	1,900 lbs
Price	$51,000	$23,000	$1,595
Mileage	15 mpg	22 mpg	35 mpg
Height	77 inches	58 inches	.75 clown
Length	202 inches	173 inches	1.5 clown
Width	79 inches	68 inches	1 clown
Volume	711 cubic feet	395 cubic feet	1.125 cubic clowns
Weight per passenger	5,635 lbs	3,064 lbs	238 lbs
Volume per passenger	711 cubic feet	395 cubic feet	0.14 cubic clown
Fuel cost per round trip per passenger1	$3.73	$2.54	$0.202
Fuel cost per round trip for 100 million commuters	$82,060,000,000	$55,880,000,000	$4,400,000,000

1. Seven miles each way with gas at $4 per gallon
   
2. 100 million commuting clowns carpooling
   

So if we can do some slight social engineering and get all commuters to switch to a 1963 VW Beetle and commute by walking to a central commuting point with eight commuters in a car, we stand to save over $77 billion dollars per year in gasoline costs. As reasonable as this sounds, do consider the impact of showing up at the office or factory dressed like Bozo the clown.