Trip around the World 4 🕰️

There's nothing out of the ordinary about my Tuesdays. Usually, they are just ordinary 24-hour-long Tuesdays. But there was something different about this particular Tuesday. It's the fact that it lasted 32 hours and 20 minutes.

What on earth happened?

The time machine

Imagine a traveller. The traveller is on a very special mission on September 3 of 2024. At the first glance, nothing seems special about his mission: he wants to travel to San Francisco. He's a traveller after all.

What's so special about his mission is that he will embark on a time-shifting experience. He will stretch his third of September to become 8 hours and 20 minutes longer than what us Earthlings are used to.

For that, he will sit inside a time machine, that will take him to another continent. Setting off from Tokyo's Narita airport, he will cross the Pacific Ocean in order to reach his destination San Francisco. While crossing the biggest of all oceans, something will happen to time. It will reset. Back in Tokyo, the traveller was ahead of time. In the land of the rising sun he was among those countries on Earth that were the first to witness a new day.

While crossing the Pacific, he passed the International Date Line and all of a sudden he was behind time. All of a sudden, he was among those countries on Earth that were the last to witness a new day.

Circumnavigation

The traveller had lived part of September 3 in Tokyo. He spent 21 hours and 35 minutes there, before he embarked on said time machine. Once the traveller arrived in San Francisco, it was still September 3.

But since he passed the International Date Line, he was set back in time. He got off the time machine in San Francisco at 15:15.
At the time of his arrival, 10 hours and 45 minutes were left of September 3 in San Francisco.

You might have guessed it: the traveller is me. For me, and all the other passengers on the flight from Tokyo to San Francisco, September 3rd lasted not 24 hours, but 32 hours and 20 minutes.

I'm one big step closer to the circumnavigation of planet Earth.

And let me tell you: resetting time was a spectacular experience, for which I'll still need time to understand what has actually happened.

What an extraordinary Tuesday!