More Hours in the Day…

Dearest Rachel –

It’s considered to be an axiom of travel that, for every time zone that you cross in your journeys, you need a day in which to recover from the change. It doesn’t matter whether you’re ‘springing forward’ or ‘falling back’; any change in time causes a certain amount of disorientation that only a day’s rest can allow you to catch up with.

Less axiomatic – and less relatable, in these days where most of the clocks we carry around with ourselves are electronic, and are able to connect through the internet to various atomic clocks around the world, thereby synchronizing with each other – is a mock proverb that “a man with one watch always knows what time it is; a man with two is never sure.” The implication when it was coined, of course, refers to the near impossibility of manually getting one watch to synchronize with another. Mechanical watches were just too fiddly – and time kept marching on as you tried – to get any pair (or more, perish the thought!) precisely in line with each other.

I bring all this up to point out that I feel like I’m embodying both of these statements at the moment; more to the point, the latter seems to be precluding my ability to accomplish the former.

You’d think, after all, that I’ve had enough time to adjust to the fact that I’m now four hours behind my ‘home’ time zone (if you want to call it that). But at the moment I’m dictating this, it’s closing in on nine in the morning… at home. That is to say, it’s not even quite five where I am now; I couldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) even go up to the gym right now. Equally puzzling is the fact that I made a point last night of staying up in order to try to force myself to acclimatize to the local time; I didn’t go to bed until eleven, which is unusual enough back at home, but considering that – at the time – that would translate to nearly two in the morning back home, which is almost unheard of for me. All that being said, I really ought to be quite tired, and willing to sleep in until at least sunup, some time after six.

The thing is, for whatever reason, my electronics aren’t adjusting as we go through one time zone or another. In one text conversation with Daniel, he mentioned that laptops simply don’t do that automatically, so mine will probably remain on Central time for the duration of the trip, as I don’t want to throw it off by adjusting it. Besides, it might be a good idea to remain somewhat grounded with the time at home, especially if I have to deal with certain business matters back there.

Less explicable, however, is the fact that neither of my phones have updated for the current time since leaving Los Angeles. This may have to with being on airplane mode in order to connect with the ship’s internet, but then, they’re connected to the internet; they should know where they are, and what time it is where they are, and adjust accordingly. Certainly, there’s the Royal Caribbean app, which actually does show the ship’s time (although, for whatever reason, it’s still showing that it’s only an hour behind Pacific time, despite there being several announcements that we guests should be turning our clocks back this second time last night. By rights, this should have happened around two in the morning).

So right now, I literally have nothing in my room that is showing what I understand to be the correct time. And while I really feel like I ought to sleep for at least another hour – particularly considering the utter darkness that I’m in at the moment – I’m not sure I’m going to be able to accomplish that. With the time falling back yet again, I have more hours in the day than my body knows what to do with.

Now that I think about it, though, it’s rather warm in here, especially under these covers. Maybe I’ll crack open the balcony door; between the cooling sea breeze and the dull roar of the ocean, I can be lulled back to sleep. Wish me luck, honey; I’ll need it.