One of my daughters has been traveling for the last few months – New Zealand, Bali. She is in Australia now and coming home for the holidays. She sent her itinerary and it got me thinking. Now that could be a dangerous thing given my twisted view of life.

I was trying to figure out which day she would be home, because of the time difference.  The itinerary from the airlines said she was leaving on a Monday morning, but she is flying for thirteen hours direct, and my calculations didn’t match up with her arrival time. Then I thought – maybe it depends on which way you are flying, and that the international date line might come into play here also.

Now when I was in school, math was my worst subject. Doing word problems were an absolute nightmare for me.  I just don’t think that way. Which I am sure some of you have noticed by reading my blog. So I am determined to figure this out without consulting the almighty Google.  I am going solo here. Much more fun and amusing. That Google can be so dry. Not on anyone’s life of the party list,

So here I go. Let’s see what I come up with. Where was I?
Right…I was at thirteen hours and the international dateline. We need to throw east or west into the equation since the plane has to fly in one direction or another, right?  I guess you might call those the variables. They were always X or Y, weren’t they?  Well I am using E and W.

Anything else?  Oh yeah, do you gain a day or lose a day if you cross that dateline?
And…what if you kept flying in one direction, and just kept refueling the plane and continuing?  Would you wind up in the future or the past? Sorry….please forgive my metaphysical musings. Or is it theoretical?  Or existential?  Oh… who cares.
But to continue…using those variables I mentioned…I came up with this equation:
AT (Arrival time) = DT (Departure Time) – TT (Travel Time) – TD (Time Difference)  X E/W – ID (International Dateline: 24).

I plugged in all the numbers, and according to my calculations… my daughter arrived an hour and a half ago. Well, that didn’t work. I told you Math was not my subject.

So now I’m going to try a different approach. What if I was flying? Of course that will complicate matters further because we now have to add my Parkinson’s meds into the mix.  And suddenly, this brings up an intriguing, Einsteinian question: If it is Sunday, and I have taken my medicine before takeoff…and the plane flys west instead of East, can you drop the Beast off at the connecting airport, and take off before he notices, keep flying west, and go back in time before you were diagnosed with PD… and then the Beast will no longer exist?

I warned you…you had time to save yourself.