If you are familiar with the instrumental song I wrote called The Longest Day (For Joe), you may know that my favorite day of the year is the one where we turn the clocks back an hour and that extra hour makes that day seem to last forever. I've discovered that traveling west at 40-60 miles per hour has it's advantages. Every night after dinner, we've set our clocks back an hour since we will cross time zones during the night. I've used those hours wisely, sharing various after-dinner beverages with traveling companions and also sitting in the deserted dome cars after midnight playing some songs on my guitar. Of course, just like that annual day in November, I spend that extra hour multiple times over and get no sleep. On this trip, I will have had three Longest Days by the time I reach Vancouver.
This makes me wonder if one kept traveling westward continuously, would they always enjoy 25 hour days? I think the International Date Line would muck things up and be the great time-equalizer, causing this brilliant plan to crumble like a Ponzi's scheme.
I suppose, just like Daylight Savings Time in the spring where that extra hour is lost, I will have to pay up along the way. On the way to Toronto, I lost an hour on the bus (no great loss there, really), and on the way home from Seattle to Chicago, I will lose two more. But at least I'm gaining those hours on the part of the trip that matters most here in picturesque Canada.
