Chepooka

Time Zones

Pardon me, I’m cranky.

But why is it that people have such a hard time understanding the Alaska time zone? I don’t mean as a rule, I mean people that you explain it to. Like your friends and family that live out of state who may wish to call you on a Saturday morning.

You’re used to four time zones, right? Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific. These are the time zones in the contiguous United States (we call it “the lower 48"). Then as we move further west, TWO MORE STATES! So there’s Alaska time zone and Hawaii time zone.

If you start in New York at noon, moving west, Minneapolis is 11am, Denver is 10am, Los Angeles is 9am. It’s a pattern of subtracting one hour as you move west from one zone to another. Yes there’s math involved, and yes there’s a certain degree of memorizing the borders of the zones, but major cities should not be a problem. It’s not trig, it’s subtraction. I KNOW first grade was a long time ago, but come on.

Alaska? This is where it gets tricky, apparently. Move one more time zone over, one more hour. New York noon, Anchorage 8am. Seattle 9am, Anchorage still 8am.

Hawaii is a bit trickier, they’re a two hour jump behind from Alaska. And if you’re in Indiana or Arizona, you’ve got all kinds of crazy going on but even people that live there get confused. Alaska? EASY.

Sometimes people get it backward, and think we’re ahead of them. We’re always behind you, no matter if it’s daylight savings time or if there’s a lunar eclipse we’re always west of you (unless you live in Hawaii, in which case, need a new friend?) So I’ve had people WAKE UP EARLY, and call me at 7am their time to catch me at midday. No, you’re catching me at 3 o’clock in the morning, but a fine effort indeed.

The fact that we’re behind everybody in the lower 48 means I can’t read blogs until American Idol is over, maybe that’s what I should tell people, I think people could really wrap their brain around the American Idol analogy.

Long story short, when it’s 10am on a Saturday morning in Toledo, Ohio, mathematically speaking, IT IS TOO EARLY TO CALL BRIAN TO TALK ABOUT GOLF. Thank you. Going back to bed now.

Have a lovely weekend everybody.