How to miss a day?

Factual Questions
1

Okay, this is probably an asinine question that I should be able to figure out on my own, but hey, what are you guys here for?

Ok, here’s my question. If I am at the Intl. Date Line at midnight, and I fly (drive, swim, teleport, use my vast array of mental powers to instantaneously appear) to the next time zone (one hour behind) in an hour, it will still be midnight of the day I left, right?

If so, can you keep this up for every time zone? In other words, could you travel around the world at midnight (or 11:55, whatever), and basically skip a day?

Man, this sounds less than intelligent as I sit here and type it.

Stop laughing. So I’m simple.

“I’m still here, asshole!”-Angus Bethune

2

Yes. Read “Le tour du monde en 80 jours” (aka “Around the world in 80 days”) by Jules Verne.

J’ai assez vécu pour voir que différence engendre haine.
Henri B. Stendhal

3

I often have to fly to Japan, and on my way from Fukuoka, Japan to Los Angeles I leave at 10 am on Wednesday morning, fly across the Pacific Ocean, and arrive in LA at 10 am that “same” Wednesday. In other words, you could say I get to live that day over again. On the way over to Japan, I leave LA at 11 am on Wednesday and arrive Thursday night in Fukuoka at 8pm. So I “lose” a day; Thursday is gone. The flights are about 10-12 hours long Tokyo-LA, depending which way you’re going, then a 45-minute layover and another hour long flight to Fukuoka. It’s always been kinda weird to me to leave at 10 am, fly for all those hours, and end up at 10 am same day/same time in another country.

www.thecats.com

4

I reiterate MrsBWayne’s experience.

However, the “losing a day” needs to be viewed on two levels. It’s not unlike, when the clocks change off Daylight Time at the end of October, you’re “gaining” an hour. However, it’s not like that means there’s an extra hour added to your life span. It just means that the arbitrary system by which we reckon time has had a hiccough. You’re not magically an hour younger.

Similarly with the date line. You get on the plane in Tokyo at 10 AM Wednesday. You fly for 12 hours and you adjust your watch, and lo and behold, you arrive at 10 AM Wednesday in LA. It doesn’t mean you’ve really “gained” a day, your body is as tired as it would be after a 12 hour flight. The day happened. It just didn’t get “counted” because of our artificial dealing with datelines and time zones.

I’ve taken short flights over one or two time zones that arrived before they took off. Leave Brussels at 10 AM, fly to London, flight takes 45 minutes, your arrive at 9:45 AM that same day.

5

You can also stop the earth from revolving around the Sun. Thoes guys at NASA detected it once. Don’t you ever read the Weekly World News? :wink:

6

Personally, my favorite way to lose a day is to spend it asleep.

The opposite effect can be had by spending the day with my father and stepmother; now that can make a day seem like an eternity.

Live a Lush Life
Da Chef

7

OK, lets avoid the whole Superman, Speed of Light, time going backwards thing, and get you a rocket plane that goes a thousand miles a second. You can now go around the world in exactly twenty-four seconds. We go to Tokyo, and I go on up to bed, since, in Tokyo, it is now 11:59 PM, on Friday. You decide to take a trip around the world, in your spiffy new plane.

You leave, heading west. In only one second, you are in a new time zone; it is 10:59:01 PM, Friday. So far, so good. It’s getting earlier, already. Another second, another time zone, and time is flying backwards, as you streak passed 9:59:02 PM, Friday. You continue to click by the time zones, 8:59:03 AM, Friday, and so on, and whiz by London at just before Noon, Friday. On you fly, and as you blip on by Hawaii, and the Pacific Islands, you pass through the early hours of Friday morning, and only a thousand miles away from Tokyo, you arrive at 00:59:24 AM Thursday! Time Travel! You hurry on, to be there waiting for me, when I go upstairs to sleep, but just as you get to the Tokyo, landing field, you realize that you have crossed the International Date Line, and it is now, . . . oh, no… 11:59:24 PM Friday, precisely twenty-four seconds after you left. I am still trudging up the stairs.

You’re gonna have to go faster.

<p align=“center”>Tris</p>

8

A twisted zen answer to your problem ?

Flying from Guam on Air Mike, I’d leave 6PM Friday, arrive 6AM Friday in Honolulu. I called my boss once when I left for some pressing Left Coast biz, talked awhile, got on the plane, landed in Hono, called him again. “What’s up, man” sez I. “Same shit, different day” he said, “what about you ?”.

“Different shit, same day”.

Ua pisia i le tagaliu

9

Remember the episodes of M.A.S.H., whenever someone made a phone call back to the states, how Radar would confuse everyone with his trying to explain about the date difference?