Time Travel

Vacations are nice. Even vacations that are in a different time zone. There are perks and drawbacks of leaving the time that you’re used to, and while they’re usually not that bad, some can be very stressful.


We went to Colorado for Thanksgiving, and the best part about being an hour earlier is that you can sleep in and still get up at your normal time. So if my kids let me sleep for an extra half hour, I’d still have quite a bit of day left at 7:30. It’s less fun in the morning when traveling east. If you plan to get up at 6:30, don’t forget that your body will think it’s 5:30 and wonder why you’re forcing it up so early.


I didn’t mind my kids staying up a bit later when we’d come from Colorado to visit my parents in Nebraska. 9:30 was really only 8:30, so we’d only slipped bedtime by about half an hour. Last week when I stayed up late watching every single Disney princess movie that my sister-in-law owns (which is all of them), retiring around 11:30 meant that I’d be super tired if I didn’t get some extra sleep in the morning.


When we drive to Colorado, we live through one hour twice, but when we drive back, we lose an hour completely. If someone asked me what I was doing at 12:30 on Saturday, I wouldn’t be able to answer: 12:30 didn’t exist for me.


An hour change isn’t such a big deal. We adjusted pretty well, put the kids to bed at 7:30 instead, and enjoyed our extra hour in the morning. A fifteen hour difference is a bit more stressful.


My husband’s best friend could not seem to wrap his head around the Friday that he lived through, because it was 38 hours long. He explained it to me, but I had a hard time following it, because it was a certain time when his plane took off from the Philippines, an “hour” later when it landed in Korea, and then when he finally got to San Francisco, it was “earlier” than when he’d first started his journey. His Friday wasn’t over yet when he fell asleep for the first half of the James Bond movie we went to see together, or afterward when I was trying to explain to him that the reason for his long day had to do with crossing the International Date Line. (Mostly the conversation went like this: “But I don’t understand why my day was so long!” he would say, to which I would reply, “Because you crossed the International Date Line, so it was Friday again!” After which I would receive a puzzled look, and, “But I don’t understand!”)


Vacations are nice, but traveling can be stressful. Especially when you’re traveling in time.