Apr 14 2009
Longer Days Not More Hours
I’m not much of a fan of shifting into Daylight Saving Time and then back to Standard Time. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I would be totally comfortable with leaving the clocks alone all year long.
The folks who live in the lower latitudes, say below 30 degrees north latitude, don’t have to experience the large swings in daylight hours that we who live here in the “great white north” experience. When we have light until nearly eleven o’clock at night, it just throws off my internal clock. I could probably get used to it over time, but just when my body cycle rhythm is adjusting, we revert to Standard Time, and the body rhythm cycle has to begin to adjust again.
Around Christmas hereabouts it starts to get dark about 4 pm. What fun. I suppose I could move somewhere else, but I don’t see the sun’s cycles as the real problem so much as the sudden change that happens when we shift an hour one way or the other.
I have always been sensitive to the time changes, and it REALLY affected me when I was in the Navy and we would cruise across the Pacific Ocean, changing time zones ONE HOUR, EVERY TWO DAYS!! After a couple of weeks I couldn’t snap out of it. I had no idea when was day and when was night, why I was eating breakfast at dinner time, and dinner in the middle of the night, at least to my body, it seemed.
Then we would arrive on the other side of the World, and there was 15 hours difference, or 9 hours difference, depending on which way you counted, and it was either tomorrow or yesterday, again depending on where your “thoughts” were located.
And, I don’t even want to think about JET LAG! When I flew from Los Angeles, California, to the Island of GUAM, total hours in the air were about 17 and I need 3 days to wake up during daylight hours.
Personally, I hope that we someday agree to just go to Daylight Saving Time and stay there all year.
