This year when I went to New York was probably the poorest I have ever been. And as all know, NYC is not cheap.

Now, not all of you know. I am a litttttllllleeeee into public transit. I could be more into it but I can still talk your ear off about it.

So this year in New York I had no money and it was cold. I thought “what would be the cheapest thing to do in New York City” and my dumb ass decided that it would be to ride the subway end to end.

Everyone said I was crazy. One New Yorker even said, “nobody does that.” Well bitch, guess what. I am not the first. There are people out there setting records to go through every subway station the fastest. My journey is nothing compared to that.

How do you ride the subway end to end you are probably not asking??? Well first you choose your line, mine happened to be the A line.

Then you pick your starting point. If you are smarter than me, you would actually more consider your end point but I didn’t do that.
I chose to start at the top of Manhattan at the 207th station. I didn’t want to ride the same line up that I would be riding down, so I took 40 minute ride on the 1 to their own 207 station, got off there, took a wrong turn and walked 10 min more to get to my starting point.

Third, you choose your end. The A line happens to have three different final destinations. I choose Far Rockaway because to me, it felt like the longest and most amount of stops.
Because of my choice to go to Far Rockaway though, I had to make a transfer that added to the time it took to complete my goal.
From end to end, it took me 1 hour 46 minutes 20 seconds. And GUYS, I WAS SO TIRED. There is really just something about riding on a train for several hours that lulls you to sleep.
From here I decided to beg a friend (adjacent) to let me take a nap at their place and thankfully they agreed. Which leads me to

LAST, get yourself to where you actually need to go. For me this was a friend (adjacent)’s place.
Now I am sitting at the end of the line and looking up how to get to his only to realize I have another hour 45 to get there. Which I do.
By the time I get myself to his house I have to piss so bad and am so incredibly tired that I have no time to actually talk to this friend (adjacent). So Eric, who will never read this, you’re the GOAT for letting me crash at your place. So sorry I unknowingly did this at the beginning of my two week long illness.

After all was said and done, I was on the subway for around 4 hours. So obviously I made some notes about what I found.

As I was riding the 1 toward my beginning, there weren’t very many people in the car. All the seats across from me were empty, and because of this I was able to enjoy the way the lights that illuminate the tunnel would dance across the seats. I will forever kick myself for missing the opportunity to tape the way it looked, but it will live on in my memory for a long time.

The rest of my observations will not just be a list because nothing was as beautiful as those short moments in a mostly empty train car.

There was absolute silence with a car mostly full of people until the 59th street stop. After that it was full of tourists until we made it to Brooklyn and it got quiet again.

In such a large city, two people ran into each other on the train. I’m sure this happens more often than you would think but it was amazing to hear their astonishment at seeing each other at that exact moment in time.

On the way back, a large family was in my train car and they spoke to each other in the fastest english I have every heard in my life.

There was a man who stepped in between the train cars while we are crossing the bridge back into Brooklyn to smoke a joint.

Sylvester’s free food for the homeless and hungry, no donations required

Last thing I notice is that, for anyone, if the option was sit next to me or a man, they always sat by me.

Now I don’t know if I really got the super flu on the A train but it feels like the most likely place for that shit to really get me.