Let's Talk About...Time Zones

Ok. Have you ever traveled, called a friend across the country, watched the Olympics or the World Cup and realized figuring out the time difference can be a hefty math problem?

I am talking about time zones.

You may know the U.S. has six time zones (not including its territories). So, you may live in the same country as your east coast cousin, but you may be just getting off work when they are sound asleep for the night.

And think about this: Why does the U.S. have six time zones, Russia has 11 and China just one? Look at a map. That makes no sense. If you were going to slice up the globe vertically like an apple into equal time zones, there is no way China would have one while Russia has 11. You don't need mad math skills to figure that out.

What does make sense is that looking up at the sun to determine "noon" is no longer a reliable time keeping method. That accounted for some bizarre train schedules in the late 1800s before time zones became a thing in the U.S. in 1883. And the world soon followed.

We progressed to the atomic clock, then to calling 853-1212 in Southern California and POPCORN in Northern California and many other numbers across the country to hear the time lady say, "At the sound of the tone, the time will be...8:05 and 20 seconds... beep."

Then cell phones came along, and we had the time literally at our fingertips which put the time lady out of business (Although I believe she is still there if you check. Try 202-762-1401 to get the U.S. Naval Observatory Master Clock).

But here's the thing:

It is hard to wrap your head around being in one time zone one minute then walk 10 feet and be in another. You lose or gain an hour in a matter of steps. And how can Alexa or Siri keep up?

I have a friend who was recently vacationing at a lake in Nebraska. The lake happened to be on the border of the Central Time Zone and the Mountain Time Zone. Poor Siri kept flipping from one time zone to the other as my friend walked through the campsite. Luckily, they didn't have to catch a train or someone would have been an hour late.

When I was young, my dad explained time zones to me. I learned about Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and about Coordinated Universal Time (UTC but inexplicably not CUT) which is often referred to as "Zulu" time for reasons too complicated to explain. (For reference, Niwot is UTC/GMT -6 hours. Who knew?)

But what blew my little mind was that if you traveled east, you lost time and if you traveled west, you gained time. And, I learned, if you travel really really far west you cross the International Date Line and lose a whole day!

That is crazy.

Why should I lose a day just because I crossed an arbitrary line in the ocean? If I flew from San Francisco to Tokyo, have I really just lost a day? And If I later fly back to the U.S., do I then call it even?

Moreover, does that mean you can then live that part of your life again? Erase whatever transgressions you did in Japan? But does that also mean that if you stay in the Far East, you lose a day forever?

In other words, time travel is a real thing, and not just a math problem or a logistics issue or a sci-fi theme. All I know is that "Back to the Future" is real. Bill and Ted knew it, Captain Kirk knew it and I know it.

Don't even get me started on Daylight Savings Time which throws all my careful UTC math way off. How is it possible to lose or gain time without traveling anywhere? Aren't there still 24 hours in a day? It is hard to keep up with whether we are on Daylight Savings Time or Standard Time or Mountain Time or Central Time. And if you are in Arizona or the Navajo Nation, I suppose you just guess the time.

And while I am thinking about it, Daylight Savings Time must start at 2 a.m. local time rather than midnight just to give everyone else time to catch up.

As the band Chicago asks, "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" China does. The time lady does. But I wouldn't count on Siri. Time is relative, don't you think?