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School reunion prompts subway record attempt

By Chuck Bennett | amNewYork Staff Writer

December 27, 2006

Michael Boyle, Andrew Weir, and Bill Amarosa hope to break the record for visiting all 468 of the city's subway stations to mark their 10-year high school graduation reunion. (Jefferson Siegel)

A group of Regis High School grads will reunite Thursday and attempt to break the competitive subway riding world record by navigating their way through all 468 subway stations in less than 26 hours.

"This'll be an interesting high school reunion," said Bill Amarosa, 28, of the Upper East Side school's class of 1996. "I lost touch with a lot them and this is a way to bring us back together."

Amarosa's quest will be the second such subway challenge this year. In August two college buddies, Matt Green and Donald Badaczewski, rode the trains through all the stations in 24 hours and 2 minutes. Their accomplishment, however, didn't meet Guinness World Record standards because they didn't stop at every station -- they took express trains and just passed through some stations.

"We've notified Guinness World Records and are prepared to document and certify everything," said Amarosa, who works as a customer-relations analyst at a wireless firm.

Unlike Green and Badaczewski, who described their challenge as "moronic," Amarosa, a self-described subway buff, is taking his quest very seriously.

Kevin "Captain America" Foster set the Guinness World Record of 26 hours and 21 minutes back in 1989. Foster also holds the subway-endurance record for riding the trains for 85 hours straight to mark the 85th anniversary of the subway system.

"I don't root for people who go after my record," Foster quipped when told of Amarosa's attempt. "I could do it a lot faster on my own. They got six guys. The slow man is going to bring you down."

But Amarosa said his crew can break Foster's record. He's been dreaming of this since high school, he said, and spent more than 100 hours planning the route during the past six months.

"This is something big that hasn't been done in a long time," Amarosa said.

While Amarosa lives in Queens, his classmates are coming from all over the country, including one who is traveling from Santa Barbara, Calif. for the challenge. They plan to set off from the Rockaway Park station at 3:30 p.m. Thursday and finish at the same time Friday at the 241st Street station in the Wakefield section of the Bronx.

"Bring plenty of water and have a plan on how you are going to go to the bathroom," advised Badaczewski, who ran the subway challenge in August. "And don't get discouraged if you catch a bad break or miss a transfer. The subway gods are fickle. They can give back what they take away."