So, where does the hour go?

I do not like to fly.

Which is odd when you know that I was in the Air Force, but as it turns out many Air Force jobs require little (if any) flying. I repaired radios.

But I don't like to fly, for a variety of reasons:

The main reason is I don't want to die in an airline crash. Or worse yet, survive a crash only to live the rest of my life horribly mangled and disfigured. Statistically speaking, one is more likely to die in an auto accident, but I have never heard of an auto wreck that occurred because it fell 30,000 feet.

I do not understand completely what makes an airplane stay aloft. I know basic aerodynamics, that more air under the wing makes it go up, etc. But as far as I am concerned, it is all magic. Magic requires belief, and if I think about it too hard, I will realize that it can't work and "poof" the plan drops out of the sky. I think this is the #1 cause of jet crashes - someone on board realized that planes should not be able to fly.

 Other reasons I dislike flying are:

Airplane food sucks. I was forced to eat C-rations, and the first versions of MREs, and quite frankly I would prefer that the stewardess hand out MREs instead of the traditional in-flight meal. Once, I was serve breakfast (an omelet) on an airline that was actually quite good. I panicked, as I thought God had decided to crash the plane, and this was His way of making it up to me. The plane landed safely, however, and I have yet to get another tasty airline meal.

Another thing that bothers me is the pre-takeoff announcement. "In the unlikely event of a water landing, your seat cushion also serves as a flotation device." Unlikely? We are flying over the Rockies! My question is: does the seat cushion also serve as a sled? as I want to slide down the mountain all the way into Denver, where I will board a Greyhound bus to complete my journey, because you do not want to get trapped in the mountains after a plane crash - the other passengers will try to eat you in order to survive!

Twilight Zone:
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

Gremlins! Remember that Twilight Zone episode (with William Shatner) were the gremlin stated to tear up the engine? Bob Wilson ( Shatner) shoots it with a pistol? How do we know gremlins aren't real?

Turbulence: You are flying smoothly, then suddenly the plane shakes.  The pilot comes on and says "we're sorry, but we are experience a bit of turbulence."

A bit? In California, they measure shaking like this on the Richter scale! If you were driving and you car started to shake like this, you would pull over immediately, as your car was probably about to fall apart. Mr. Shatner, please check to see if another gremlin appeared.

And another thing I dislike about flying is Time Zones. I take a flight from Seattle to Salt Lake City.The plane leaves at noon, and arrives in Salt Lake City an hour. It should be one-thirty (pm), but its not - It's two-thirty. I have lost an hour.

Returning from SLC (leaving at noon), flying for an hour and a half, and arriving at SEA, it is not one-thirty, or two-thirty, but twelve thirty. I got my hour back. But between the two flights, where did the hour go? Who took it?

One's first thought is that it is the airline, but that can't be the case. I once took a Delta flight to Salt Lake City, but returned on United, and still got my hour back. My luggage was missing, but the hour was returned. Obviously, the airlines cannot be trusted with the hours (or my luggage, which wound up in Las Vegas).

The next logical guess would be the FAA, but I have been told that an identical phenomena occurs when riding the train (Amtrak) and the buses (Greyhound), so a more logical answer would be the Department of Transportation (DOT). However, I have not been able to confirm this, as there is nothing on their website, nor have I received a reply to my email inquiry, so the mystery remains.

So where does the hour go? I think it gets taken shortly after takeoff, or (in when flying the opposite direction) gets returned shortly before landing. But what about when you fly another airline, or travel to another destination (such as Salt Lake City to San Francisco)? How does the hour get back to you?

Macky Rae, my youngest dog, has a hypothesis that you don't get the exact same "hour" back, and it has merit. When you withdraw money (cash) from your checking account, you don't get the exact same bills as when you originally deposited the money (cash), but you don't care because one dollar bill works as well as another. Macky Rae thinks it's the same with hours.

So when you fly westward across Time Zones, you get an hour back, one that may have just been collected by someone flying eastward. But you don't care because one hour works as well as another.

The Daylight Savings Time Conspiracy

Another thing that bothers me, similar to the time zone thing is Daylight Savings Time (DST) - spring forward and fall back . Every spring the clocks are set ahead one hour, so at 2 am, it is suddenly 3. We lose an hour. But in the fall, the process is reversed, and the hour comes back.

Who came up with this?

We know from his writings

that Franklin had a sense

of humor. I believe that it is

possible that his proposal

was a joke on the French.

According to Macky Rae (my youngest dog) it was Benjamin Franklin. He looked it up on Wikipedia. During his time as the American envoy to France, he anonymously published a letter suggesting that the French people could economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight.

The problem is that you don't actually create an extra hour of sunlight. The extra hour of light in the morning means an hour less in the evenings, and any candles that are saved in the morning are going to used in the evening.

Daylight Savings Time was first implemented during the First Word War, and then again during the Second. Apparently, we needed to conserve candles as part of the war effort. After the war, it was more or less optional for the states to use Daylight Savings, but this got confusing so the government (DOT) standardized it.

Arizona and Hawaii do not participate in Daylight Savings, and I believe the reason for this is that these state receive an abundance of daylight and the people in these states do not feel a need to create more.

Either that, or they figured out that DST was  joke on the French.

Sadly, during fall back, when we gain

an hour, the bars and taverns do not

allow an extra hour of drinking - which,

in my humble opinion, would be one of

the best aspects of the whole Daylight

Savings Time system.

So in the spring, we spring forward and set the clocks ahead one hour (thus we "lose" an hour), but in the fall, we fall back and set the clocks back, regaining the lost hour.

But, where does the hour go? And between spring forward and fall back, where is the hour?

If, as I have hypothesised, the Government (DOT) is involved, it can be reasonably assumed that the hours are taken to a government facility, and stored in a warehouse.

I'm not sure how much physical space an hour takes up, probably not much, but when you consider the number of hours collected, it can be assumed that a large amount of space is required. The current population of the United States is approximately 316 million people. Subtract 6.5 million Arizonans and 1.4 million Hawaiians, that leave 308 million hours - 35,160 years! This will require massive space, so we can assume there is not one warehouse, but several. And probably the government has multiple locations across the country.

Another question I have is what happens to the hour for people who die between spring forward and fall back?

Last year, nearly two and one-half million people died last year, half of the between spring forward and fall back. Excluding those who died in Arizona and Hawaii, this comes to roughly 1.2 million people who died and did not get their hour back. 1.2 million hours - this works out to almost 138 years. What happens to these hours? If the government is involved (as I suspect), probably nothing. The hours just remain in the government warehouse(s), collecting dust (if hours can actually collect dust). 138 years, and this is for 2012! DST has been going on for decades, can you imagine how many years have been accumulating? Centuries!

What is done with these hours?

If the government is involved (as I suspect), probably nothing. The can't be returned to their owners, nor are they given to the next of kin. The hours probably just remain in the government warehouse(s), collecting dust (if hours can actually collect dust). 138 years, and this is for 2012! DST has been going on for decades, can you imagine how many years have been accumulating? Centuries!

Wasted time (pun not intended).

Instead of just laying around, these hours should be put to good use, and I have an idea of what the government could do with all the un-returned hours: Ambulances!

You hear about it, or see it on TV shows, where the EMTs arrive, render aid, and transport the patient only to have him (or her) die en route to the hospital. "He would have made it" the doctors say "if he had only arrived a few minutes sooner."

If the EMTs had a surplus hour on had in the ambulance, they could have opened it up on the patient just before he slipped away, and he (or she) would have had plenty of time to get to the hospital.

Hell, the EMTs could even stop by Starbucks for a grande raspberry mocha (other other beverage of choice) and still have time to get the victim to the hospital!



In the military fall back means to temporarily retreat
and regroup around a more dependable position.