TIME TRAVEL

11:35 EST 8:35 PCT time zones being what they are, little windows into the whole concept of time itself. I mean how can the answer to, “What time is ?” be, “Well, it depends.” Depends? And no we’re not talking about adult diapers here, we are talking about the answer to an essential question about the time, as in what it is; a seemingly simple question with a calculated response, one that DEPENDS on a simple variable; where you are in space. And before you go on to suggest I have entered into that realm of science fiction known as Quantum Physics or more specifically the SPACE/TIME CONTINUUM I say HOLD ON A MINUTE.

We are not talking about time travel, or are we? And we are not talking about a MINUTE, you know that minute I just asked you to hold on to, no we’re talking HOURS here. In the case of the EST (No this is not Ernhardt Seminar Training from the 60’s) but Eastern Standard Time, the one all the folks who live on the East Coast of the United States refer to when you ask THEM what time it is, and PCT stands for Pacific Coast Time for all those Californians and other West Coast types, and the difference is not in minutes but hours, three hours to be more specific.

Here’s how it works. What time it is depends on where you happen to be at the moment. If you are in New York or New Jersey you’re on EST, so THAT’s what time it is. Let’s say it’s eight o’clock in the morning (8:00AM) If you could magically be transported, like a beam of light to say Chicago the time would be only 7:00 AM. Wow, this is like time travel, I just gained the hour I already experienced in Jersey. By the same token, traveling on that same shiny little beam of light to find yourself in say Denver, Colorado, it’s only 6:00AM. Ack! You say, I just gained another hour! Onward oh light beam to Los Angeles and it’s only 5:00 AM. I should still be in bed but think of all the TIME I have between now and 8:00. Three more hours to do stuff again, do it differently , make things right.

Trouble is that once 8:00AM arrives with the morning sun, you’re back on the clock again, and there’s no more time to gain unless you want to catch not the slow boat to China but another light beam through some more time zones. I really don’t know how far you can take this, though I do understand if you go far enough…you cross the DATELINE, and lo and behold it’s not just another hour, but another day all together it’s….Yesterday. When all your troubles were so far away.

Even more troubling, other than this question: If I keep traveling on my Westward Journey on Mr. Light beam, and I end up going back, back, back in time, what time will it be when I end up back in Hoboken? Since my journey on the light beam only took maybe a few minutes (on my watch it’s only 8:05) is it really 8:05 or has my time travel back in time taken me back to Yesterday. Anybody out there got an answer to that one? Then there’s the, “Well now, if you left your pal Roderick in Hoboken, and took that light beam for a journey to say, the edge of the universe and back, remember special things happen at the speed of light, and you come back to Planet Earth, The United States, New Jersey, Hoboken, you have not aged a bit, but good old Roderick has. You might say something like, “MY GOD ROD HOW OLD YOU LOOK!” And Rod would look at you and say something like, “FUCK OFF YOU SOD!” mainly because he was jealous you looked so good and he was a dried up old coot.