the lost hour

There was something odd about my flight from Cancun to Los Angeles this morning.

It took an hour less than when I flew the opposite direction two weeks ago.

There were two possibilities. 1) The jet stream was more favorable in one direction, or 2) the cumulative effect of covid, Putin, and people who insist on salvaging the subjunctive had finally formed a rip in the time continuum. I immediately eliminated option one because my flight from Los Angeles to Manzanillo on Wednesday is an hour shorter, as well.

The clue, of course, is that consistency in the differences. One hour.

It is that time of year again -- when the countries get all uppity and think they understand time better than Mother Nature. The shifting sands of daylight saving time are upon us. And because it is primarily a political question, the time change will happen at different times in different places.

This morning Canada and America jumped an hour forward. Mexico did not. Daylight savings time will not come to Barra de Navidad until 3 April. That means that for the next three weeks, the usual time calculations between Mexico and its two northern neighbors will be off by an hour.

For most of us, that is, at best, the foundation of a good bar bet. But, not all. International flights into Mexico will arrive and leave an hour earlier because the airlines use their own national time.

One year in the spring, I arrived at the Manzanillo airport at what would be my customary time only to discover the check-in counter was closing. I was operating on local time instead of Alaska's Los Angeles time.

For those of you who conduct telephone business between countries and for the others who might be flying or picking up friends at the airport, this is simply a public service announcement.

And, for once, I got all the way through the essay without once bashing the very notion of daylight saving time. 

The next hour is on me.