When I got the idea to ride the New York City subway to every station in one weekend, I was riding the 1 train down from the Upper West Side, sitting across from The Map, at a distance where The Map is just a tangled sprawl of colorful lines—veins and arteries of a city so huge and complex you could never know it all. I had a familiar sensation of vertigo, perhaps what the nameless man felt in Thomas Wolfe’s story “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn,” when he’s looking at his map of the city and talking about drowning. I get this feeling a lot when looking at maps. But this time I had an impulse, same as the guy in the story must have had, that even though I could never know the whole city, I could go to all of those places on The Map. At least then I’d know something, wouldn’t I?

Most people, when I tell them about my idea, don’t get it. They say, “Why would you want to take the most frustrating, boring and uncomfortable part of your day, and do it for a whole weekend?” But my friend Matt, he got it. He immediately signed on to the misadventure and we agreed to two rules. One: Stop at every station; flying past on an express doesn’t count. Two: Get to each station via the subway; no riding a cab or even a bus from one terminus to another in the far-flung reaches of the Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens.

We discussed the style points we could earn by riding the whole system on one fare. Time was you could do it for a nickel, after 1940 when the city bought the IRT and BMT and unified them with its Independent system. Racing through the system on one fare was a minor craze in the late 1960s and early ’70s; if you go express, it can be done in about 24 hours. Then again, in those days there were more than 900 toilets in the system; today—fewer than 100. I did an experiment with a pair of Depends undergarments and I was damn glad I was sitting on the toilet when I did. Screw the style points; we’re buying two-day unlimited cards.

Two things concern me. First is the chance of danger in the thin hours of Saturday night. Next is cabin fever, the question here not if but when we will descend into a train-addled daze. I have visions of us somehow skipping obscure stations and backtracking for hours just to get back to them, so we have our entire route planned in advance. We have food and drink, reading materials, a deck of cards. We’re ready to go.

And now it begins, 8:12 Saturday morning at Union Square, the track curving so much here at the Lexington Avenue stop that there are 18-inch gaps between the platform and certain cars, requiring moving grates to span them. Because of the curve, the conductor can’t see the whole train when he looks out the window. Once, before cameras, a man was killed when he got stuck in the door; the train pulled out and smashed him against the tunnel wall.

At Grand Central we take the Times Square Shuttle to the 1 train and head uptown, popping out at 122^nd Street to ride the viaduct 168.5 feet above Manhattan Valley. Then down again as the highest point in Manhattan rises above us, the track so deep that passengers ride elevators into and out of the stations. At Van Cortlandt Park, the last stop, we cross the platform and take seats on a waiting train. A cleaning crew rolls through, sweeping out trash, but they overlook or ignore a seat that’s pooled with water. Anyway, I assume it’s water.

The train pulls out and slowly fills as we roll downtown, the passengers avoiding the wet seat, a short man finally taking the one next to it. Now we reach 110^th, my home stop, and a young, well-dressed couple get on and the young man gestures for the woman to take the wet seat. She turns and starts to lower herself into it, but the short man puts a stiff hand right on her ass. She jumps and turns in shock. Her man acts concerned and mildly angry. The short man points to the water and they smile and thank him. It’s Saturday and people are relaxed on the 1 train.

At 96th we transfer to the 3 and ride up to where it ends, on an el, in a sweeping, question-mark curve along the Harlem River. Then it’s back down to 125^th, switch to the uptown 2, under the Harlem River, come above ground in the rough part of the Bronx, a part we figured it would be best to run in daylight. Clouds stretch across the sky, giving the day a dirty, even light. We watch the people and snack on homemade rice balls, excited by the novelty our adventure, but pacing ourselves, knowing we’ve barely begun. Matt crosses out each stop on our Map; I’m reading library books about the history of the subway but happy for the distraction of a neighbor’s reading material, and not alone in that. At one point six of us are craning our necks to read a magazine article rating the macho factor, as measured on a thermometer, of several handsome men. It’s in Spanish, but I can still catch the gist: Leonardo DiCaprio—not very macho.

Finally, Matt’s crossed off all the IRT stations in the Bronx, just the B stops left and then we’ll be done with it, but not today. It’s 3:40 p.m. and we’re on the 6 train, going down again, under the Harlem River. We take a long run down the length of Manhattan, switch to the 4, and plunge way down under the East River to Brooklyn.

You can get so accustomed to riding the train under the East River that you forget how far down you are. This isn’t one of those times. I’ve been reading in one of my books how dangerous it was for the men who dug the river tunnels early last century. Just as bubbles rise to the surface of liquid, that giant column of air under the riverbed is begging for a way out. When it finds one, it creates a powerful vortex capable of sucking people up through the riverbed. Among the workers digging the tunnel were people whose job it was to pick up a bag of sand and stuff it into the breach in the event of a blow-out. These people were called sandhogs.

While the IRT was excavating the tunnel for our 4 train in 1905, a sandhog named Dick Creedon ran to a blowout with his bag of sand. But his bag wasn’t big enough. Instead of plugging the hole, he was sucked up through 30 feet of riverbed to the surface of the river, where he swam until a tugboat picked him up. Again, in 1916, three sandhogs from Brooklyn Rapid Transit were pulled through 12 feet of sand—two died and the other came to the surface atop a geyser that witnesses said was 40 feet high.

To us, it’s just a few minutes on the train. At Crown Heights/Utica Ave. we switch to the 1 and ride it to New Lots, then get on another train back. Three teenage rowdies get on the car and commence to shoving and yelling at each other so violently that everyone but Matt and I moves to the end of the car. At this point in our journey, Matt and I have a proprietary feeling about our seats on any given subway train. So we stay put and watch the scuffle, which seems to be about some spilled candy. Finally it settles, they sit down, and we roll along, orange Runts rolling up and down the floor of the car at every stop.

Then one of the teenagers very politely asks Matt where he bought the stars-and-stripes Chuck Taylor high-tops he’s wearing. Matt tells his story of buying them the day after 9/11 as a show of solidarity, and the kids nod in agreement. One of the kids keeps dumping banana Runts under his seat, and Matt asks “Don’t you like them?” The kid smiles sheepishly and says “Naw, they’re too sweet.” They get off at Nostrand Avenue, saying goodbye to us.

Next stop Franklin, switch to the 2, ride it to Flatbush Ave., turn around again and ride back, out of Brooklyn, all the way to Times Square. 8:18 p.m., twelve hours down. Now we’re into the bourbon, cleverly disguised in iced tea bottles. No one seems to notice that Matt is chasing his iced tea with Gatorade. It’s Saturday night.

We ride the 7 train to Flushing, back to Queensboro Plaza, switch to the W, ride it up to Ditmars. Turn around and under the river to Lexington Avenue, through Times Square again, then leave the subway in the Village, eat some food, drink some beer, fortify ourselves for the long night ahead. Back down again to Whitehall Street and then Brooklyn, this time all the way out to Coney Island. It seems all Brooklyn trains lead to Coney Island, and we ride there and back all Saturday night. Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Gravesend and Flatbush roll away beneath us.

It’s 3 a.m., Sunset Park, and I have to use a bathroom in the worst way. Not the end of a platform or a darkened area behind a trash can; I need to sit down. So I convince Matt to get off again at 4^th Ave and 36^th Street, thinking the place looks promising, being a stop for four train lines. And I’m right. Here’s a McDonald’s … won’t let us in. Over there’s a Burger King … closed. An open gas station … self-serve, no entry. What about that light way down there, among all the gated storefronts, see that bright window ...

It’s a hole-in-the-wall Cuban joint, some tables in front and a juke box, a bar counter with kitchen behind. Four people inside: a young couple trying amiably to pacify an exuberant drunk and a middle-aged man by himself. Surprised to see us, the couple think it’s funny we want to sit down and drink beers. The drunk sits down with us and leans close to me, earnestly slurring words I can’t understand. I smile at him but warily, eying the door, behind the bar, labeled bathroom. The other customer intercedes, apologetic and laughing, pulling the drunk away. I make my break for the toilet.

Like I said, the toilet’s just behind the little bar, and I have to walk past the end of it. I glance behind the counter and see a whale of a woman on her back, filling the area behind the bar, her arms at her sides and her legs together, like she’d laid herself down to pass out, her eyes closed at the ceiling. I decide not to ask any questions.

The trains are empty now but for the extremely drunk. We tell our story and show off our map, which has most of the stations crossed off. Look at that—must be almost two-thirds. We’re getting there, we say to each other. We can do this. We spread out on the seats, playing cribbage. Sometimes we’re the only ones on the train and we can sing, shout, and even pee into our empty bottles. The sky grows light again in Brooklyn and we wearily note that we’ll be back in a couple of hours. But first we have to go back to the Bronx on the D train, to the end and back again.

Done with the Bronx now, our first borough down, we take the A train up to Inwood Park, arrive at 8:30, and step out into a bitter wind in the early, gritty sunlight. We climb the hill, worn down by all the hours on the trains, the natural earth strange beneath our feet. I’m ready to lie on the ground and sleep, but Matt has found an extra gear. We can’t stop now. Down again we go, on the C, all the way down Manhattan again and out to Lefferts and Far Rockaway.

Far Rockaway, high noon, 27 hours from when we began, probably as far from midtown as you can get on the subway. Close to the beach. At Rockaway Park Beach we walk to the water. It’s cold and windy, the sand blowing on the beach, forbidding. I turn around and look north, back at the city, a pile of buildings here, more over there, knowing how much more lies beyond. But what I truly imagine for the first time so vividly are the tracks running toward it, the tunnels buried beneath it. And I have a profound feeling of not wanting to go back in there. Wanting instead to lie down on the beach in the cold wind. But Matt drags me on and we stumble along deserted streets back to the train platform. And when we leave Brooklyn Sunday morning, we’ve covered most of it. Vast expanses of Queens await. But first we dip back again to lower Manhattan.

          This, I’m reading, is where the first subway was built in 1870, with no permits and in secrecy, at night, workers going in through the basement of a clothing store. Wealthy inventor and publisher Alfred Ely Beach created a train that traveled a huge pneumatic tube: a giant fan blew the car from one end to the other (there were only two stops), then sucked it back. The stations were gorgeous—golden chandeliers, a grand piano, and a fountain with fish. Beach wanted to make a big splash when he opened it up and he did, but he couldn’t get the political or financial backing to expand.

Two stations. Double that, multiply by 100, and you’re approaching what we have to contend with.

Sunday we roll through Queens and parts of Manhattan, the trains filling up hour by hour; no more lying across the seats or pissing in plastic bottles for us. After 30 hours on the train I have such a sense of entitlement toward the subway that I’m affronted when I have to stand and hang on. The other riders are relaxed and happy, festive even. Mocking us, it seems. It’s a long ride to Jamaica, you say? Don’t get me started. All night we’d stayed on edge, ready for violence at every station, but now we’re caught in a dreary, pedestrian commute. The thrill is long gone and there’s nothing left to do but slog it out.

Slog it out we do, until it gets dark again and we’re on the M out of Jamaica Center, transfer at Myrtle and up to Middle Village and back, then over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan, below downtown and then under the river again to DeKalb, switch to the W and ride it up to Union Square. Where it all began. It’s 9:37 p.m. and we’re boarding the L for the last run of the adventure, feeling good now. We stand in the front of the first car and watch every inch of track as it rolls away beneath us, reaching Canarsie at 10:11, 38 hours after we started.

Riding back home, thinking about what we’ve done, I wonder what we’ve accomplished. We’ve run all of the system’s 240 miles, many of them twice with all our backtracking—enough to reach Portland, Maine, if we’d gone in a straight line—without traveling more than 16 miles from Central Park. Pretty futile. But then I look at the map on the wall there, across the aisle, and I smile. “Been there,” I say. “Done that.”

Craig Coley is co-creator of GeorginaBush.com—The Amazing Erotic Adventures of Georgina Bush: An Elect-Your-Own Adventure.