Lost It 11/04/19

Kentucky Horse Park Campground, Lexington, Kentucky

The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil.  ~ Proverbs 15:28

Yesterday, we lost it.  Today, we lost it again.  Sigh . . . . .

In our experience, if you keep things where they should be, you won’t lose them.  That’s pretty much the motto of all those who are gifted with organization.

Blaine fairs much worse than I do.  I believe he thinks about it too much, whereas I just go with the flow.  If you don’t think about what you’ve lost, then you can just sort of pretend it never happened, and life goes on the way it was.

I’m referring to time.

We lost an hour yesterday due to the time change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time.  But today, we’ll lose another hour because of crossing into another time zone.  I guess time zones are necessary in a round world that’s spinning, but I’m not so sure about time changes.  Arizona refuses to do so, and they seem to be just fine.  Our understanding was always that it was created to help farmers, giving them more daylight to harvest, but there are still just 24 hours in a day, so I checked it out, and here’s what I found (most of which came from CNN’s website:

ST is a seasonal time change measure where clocks are set ahead of standard time during part of the year, usually by one hour. As DST starts, the Sun rises and sets later, on the clock, than the day before.

Today, about 40% of countries worldwide use it to make better use of daylight and to conserve energy.

Canada was the first to impliment it in 1908.

However, the idea did not catch on globally until Germany introduced DST in 1916. Clocks in the German Empire, and its ally Austria, were turned ahead by one hour on April 30, 1916—2 years into World War I. The rationale was to minimize the use of artificial lighting to save fuel for the war effort.

Within a few weeks, the idea was followed by the United Kingdom, France, and many other countries. Most of them reverted to standard time after World War I, and it wasn’t until the next World War that DST made its return in most of Europe.

There’s an age-old myth that Daylight Saving was a practice adopted to give farmers extra time in the sun to work out in the field. But, that’s not really why dozens of countries follow it.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a system to reduce electricity usage by extending daylight hours. For eight months out of the year, the US and dozens of other countries follow DST, and for the remaining four months, revert back to standard time in order to take full advantage of the sunlight.

On the second Sunday of March at 2 a.m., clocks move forward one hour. Then, on the first Sunday of November at 2 a.m., the clocks turn back an hour. A good way to remember it? The time shifts match the seasons: Clocks “spring” forward an hour in March and “fall” back in November.

In the summer months, the sun is out for longer periods of time, so you can rely on daylight to avoid switching lights on. The clocks revert back to standard time for the winter months so the sun can rise earlier and the world starts the day off with sunlight — otherwise some places wouldn’t see the sun come up until almost 8:30 a.m.

While the practice can help reduce some energy consumption, critics have raised concerns of whether the amount of energy saved is worth the hassle of implementing the system around the world.

In 2008, the US Department of Energy found that the four-week extension of DST from April-October to March-November saved about 0.5 percent in total electricity every day. While that seems like almost nothing, it totals 1.3 billion kilowatt-hours and the DOE says that adds up to “the amount of electricity used by more than 100,000 households for an entire year.”

But a study that same year by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that DST increases the demand for electricity — even though lighting usage reduced, demand for heating and cooling increased, so electricity consumption was about the same.

Other studies have found that benefits of DST may be location-specific. One found electricity reductions in Norway and Sweden, while another saw increased electricity demand in Indiana.

And the debate goes on . . . . do we keep it and save energy?  Or do we get rid of it and eliminate of a couple of days sleep adjustment in people?

When Blaine went out to get our coach ready to move, he discovered an oil leak on one of our jacks (the metal poles that support us when we’re parked).  It turned out not to be a huge issue, but at some point, we’ll have to get it taken care of.

A much worse issue was the fact that the gps decided not to work!  Fortunately, it came back on and seems to be okay – – at least for now.  I hope it works.  I certainly don’t want to be relegated to navigator, pouring over maps to get us where we need to go and paying close attention to where we are and where we’re supposed to be.

Oh.  And then there was the issue of no phone service for most of the drive today.  ☹

Because of the time zone change, our ETA on the gps informed us that we’d be traveling 133 miles in an hour and twenty minutes!  That’s pretty good for a 40’ RV pulling a Jeep!  Especially on a very windy day.  It was so windy, Blaine wasn’t comfortable driving the 70 mph limit on the expressway.  It actually took us about 2 ½ hours.

Singing Hills RV Park, Cave City, Kentucky

This Park is Christian owned.  If you didn’t see their website, you’d still know as soon as you walk in the office, and if you didn’t notice that, you’d still know if you read their rules.  They even invite everyone to their church for Sunday morning services.  Most likely, we’ll go somewhere else because they belong to a Church of Christ church.  Not a bad denomination, but they don’t believe in musical instruments (among other things).  In fact, Blaine and I got married in a Church of Christ, and the Pastor had to move his personal organ over from the parsonage so we could have music at our wedding.

After dinner, we took a quick drive over to Mammoth Cave National Park hoping to pick up some information.  We arrived at 4:30pm and witnessed the exodus of all the Park personnel.  Seems they close at 4:30 now.  It’s okay.  We already made our reservations for a cave tour, so we’ll get more information when we go in tomorrow morning.  They open at 8:30.

But they don’t close the actual Park, so we took a walk around on some trails until it got dark. We saw a bat! But just one. : (

There sure were a lot of deer around the parking lot!  😊

Tomorrow should be a blast!