"The AA Subway Conspiracy"

From: Don Guido
Date: 13 Sep 97

It's odd what runs through your mind while staggering through a nearly empty subway station at 3:00am. As I was listing towards the phone, my gaze naturally drifted down onto the tracks. Or maybe this was only natural because my head was too damn heavy to hold up. Nonetheless, I found myself look at the tracks.

While the subway tracks of NYC are certainly home to a wide variety of trash, there are truly some gems to be found. Last night for instance, I found a penny and a metrocard. There were also a number of cigarette butts, empty beverage containers, paper bags, and the like.

So what should I see lying in among with the other trash? Batteries. AA, to be exact. And not just one or two, but at least a dozen - all at this one station!

Somehow this though meandered its way through my cider-induced sleep and popped up again this morning, while I was jumping from train to train. So what, right? That's what I thought, until I started to notice the tracks at the different stations I passed through. This is especially easy on Saturday as the trains don't run too often.

The result - at all six stations (okay, only three, but I was going different directions), the tracks off of each platform held a veritable cornucopia of batteries! AA to be exact.

Now I know that NYC is a pretty damn big place, and there's a whole fackload of people here. But how do you explain the sheer number of batteries to be found in the subway stations? With the possible exception of cigarette butts, AA batteries seem to be the single most common item found discarded in the tracks!

Surely all those walkmans aren't giving out right there on the platforms. And if they are, why is it that people throw their batteries onto the tracks? There's no way that they could all need the battery compartment in their radio to be empty that urgently. I mean how many of you that use some sort of walkman-thing carry spare batteries with you?

Now if this were happening outside the battery store, I could understand - but in the subway? Surely something is amiss.

If I could only figure out what it is...

From: Don Guido
Date: 14 Sep 97

I, Don Guido, wrote:

[a bunch of shite]

But now, it's gone too far. As I hopped off of the R train this afternoon, I naturally looked about the platform to see just how far the AA conspiracy has spread (my first time at this station).

What did I find, but four (four, dammit!) bright blue, shiny 6 volt (okay, I don't know the voltage) lantern batteries, lying amidst another dozen or so AAs.

This is too much - what does it all mean?!?

Date: 14 Sep 97
From: Nippleboy

Don Guido wrote:

This is too much - what does it all mean?!?

The NYC subways are electrically powered (see don't piss on the third rail thread for clarification) and while some of the original subway companies had their own electrical plants in the distant past, they now all get their power from ConEd (motto: We'll charge you triple and still not provide good service). Since it seems that ConEd sometimes has trouble keeping power up, the TA, in a brilliant covert move, has installed battery backups for the entire subway line.

Unfortunately, this was implemented during serious budget troubles, so the original plan for huge, industrial batteries had to be modified to use off-the-shelf technologies, i.e. AA batteries, with 6V batteries for the switches.

They do try to keep the spent batteries out of the track area, but do you have any idea how many AA batteries it takes to power an 18 ton train? You try carrying 72,000 batteries without dropping any. Sheesh! Next thing, you'll be complaining about the horns honking (Hi Gonz!)

Jeremiah
off for more booze