Daylight Savings Time

Before we get too far into this whole April thing, and time has passed, I want to take the time to talk about time and go on record as saying I love daylight savings time.

Two of my favorite non-traditional "holidays" on the calendar are the first day of winter (because the days start getting longer) and daylight savings time. Long days, with daylight into the evening hours, is bliss!

I think my passion for daylight savings time has to do with the fact that I am a weird combination of night owl who loves evening light. I could sleep until noon every day of the week. My day doesn't get started until at least noon. Lunch is my breakfast. I usually say I don't eat breakfast, which is true, in that I normally do not eat a meal in the early morning hours. My stomach does not wake up until noon. But if my body doesn't wake up until noon, they are suddenly in synch, and I can have my breakfast over lunch, and my lunch over dinner. Then, I can skip dinner (which would probably be sometime around midnight, or later, in my day, although I'm not opposed to a midnight snack now and then).

I think our friends in Arizona have the right idea, only backwards. Arizona doesn't do daylight savings time. They refuse to change their clocks when most of the rest of the country does. So, from now until October when standard time resumes, Arizona, which is in the mountain time zone, and California and Nevada (and Washington and most of Oregon for that matter are on the same time. It's now a little after midnight in Palm Springs. What time is it in Phoenix? Same time! I admire Arizona's pluck!

I want to take that same stubborn spunk and individualism and refuse to return to standard time. Think I can get the rest of the Coachella Valley to go along? California even?

But think about it! It makes sense, especially here in the Palm Springs area. If you've ever been here, you would know that we have this big mountain range to the west, which means we lose the afternoon sun about an hour or so before the sun actually sets. So during standard time, our mountain sunset would be at roughly the same time as the sun would be setting in the rest of Southern California (well not literally the same time, but the same time on the clock).

OK, so I concede that the rest of the valley or the county or the state, let alone the nation, probably won't sign off on my idea. Maybe I'll have to go it alone. Start my own time zone, which can travel with me when I go on the road to Oregon or Illinois or Timbuktu for that matter. I'll call it (when here in Palm Springs and on the West Coast) PGT, or Pacific G-man Time. If I travel to Arizona, it will be Mountain G-man Time (or MGT). A trek to the East Coast would be a voyage into Eastern G-man Time or EGT.

It's an idea whose time has come.

Time
Spring
Daylight savings time
Palm Springs