Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

As someone who gets up before 3:00 AM everyday for work.  I detest the day we "Spring Forward" for Daylight Saving Time every year.  It is a devastating blow to the metabolism to lose that one precious hour of sleep--and it takes several weeks for my body to adjust to its new wakeup time.  (As you might expect, "Fall Back" is much easier to handle--and I feel great the first few days after DST ends).  So that is why a bill co-sponsored by Representative Mike Schraa of Oshkosh calling for Wisconsin to no long observe Daylight Savings caught my eye.

At first, it seems like no longer "springing ahead" would make sense--as we are no longer an agrarian society and the energy savings is negligible.  But there would be some prices to pay.  For starters, I like having those long summer days.  I don't need the sun to come up before 5:00 am in June and July.  I'd much rather it be light out enough to golf until 9:00 PM or sometimes even 9:30.  It's those long days that make the short, cold, dark gloomy days we have to deal with at this time of year tolerable.

Not observing Daylight Savings, would also put Wisconsin in a very awkward "timing situation".  For the majority of the year, we would be on "Mountain Time"--a full hour behind Illinois and Minnesota--and two hours behind neighboring Michigan.  For some perspective on that, consider Green Bay Packers games.  The NFL doesn't start Sunday home games before Noon local time.  That would mean in September and October, the Packers would have to start games at Lambeau at 2:30 "Non-Daylight time"--like they are Denver or Arizona.  Road games played against teams in the Eastern and Central Time Zones would then start at 11:00 am on Sundays--which I can guarantee most churches would not appreciate.  But once the rest of the country went back to Standard Time, kickoffs would resume at Noon or at 3:30 in Green Bay again.

If we were to become a "single time" state, I would prefer that we go to Daylight Saving Time one year--and just never go back.  That would keep us more in line "timing wise" with states around us.  For the spring, summer and early Fall, Wisconsin would be on Central Daylight Time.  For the late fall and Winter, we would become part of the Eastern Standard Time Zone.  That gives us later daylight in the summer--and the winter--but at the expense of much later sunrises in the winter.  It would also mean that the aforementioned Packers games at Lambeau in the second half of the season would kickoff at either 1:00 PM, 4:30 pm or 8:30 pm for primetime games. 

Regardless of what we ultimately decided to do--and I'm betting it's nothing--that alarm is still going to go off way too early.