Time Change What?

 I did not even realize that the time changed for daylight savings time. I do have a funny story, though. This happened exactly five years ago, when we “fell back” one hour in November of 2020.  

I have to back up and explain that Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time. During the summer, Arizona is in pacific standard time, and during the winter, it’s in mountain standard time. Where I live in Houston is central standard time. In 2020, my side hustles paid extremely well, because not many people did them. I took the opportunity to travel around and do them, and this included going to Phoenix where my on again/off again boyfriend lived. He and I had gone to high school together and reconnected on social media. I lived in Arizona for nine years. 

It’s pretty standard to take I-10 all the way from Houston to Phoenix and back. Sometimes, if I did most of the jobs all the way there, I’d take I-40 back home and cut through Midland and Odessa, Texas. But this time, I was on I-10. 

The time changes from central to mountain standard when you reach the town of Van Horn, Texas. Then, if it’s the summertime, it will change again to pacific time at the Arizona state line. If it’s winter, it will just stay mountain. When the time “fell back” in November of 2020, I was on the road going either to or from Phoenix. I made the mistake of sleeping at the Arizona/New Mexico State line. I woke up the next morning and didn’t know what time it was. I couldn’t remember if fall was when we went forward or backwards with the time. I didn’t know what time zone I was in, I was confused about the change, and some stores I was going to do audits at opened at different times. Standard opening times were either 6:00 or 7:00 am, but since it was Sunday, some had later times. My phone was even confused, probably because I was on the state line. It quite literally could have been 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, or 7:00 am. There was no point in trying to work, because I figured a lot of employees might also forget the time change and be late. So I just sat at the rest area and watched the sunrise. In that part of the country, the sunrises are breathtaking.