the Way of the Turtle

Sigh... No Run for the Turtle & Goodbye Daylight Savings Time
Saturday, November 6, 2010

And I had such big plans for today... I was going to get up early and head to NJ for tomorrow's race, stopping along the way for a short run and also a ride... well, those plans were reduced in scale first by my not getting up all that early and then by my not leaving the house until midafternoon due to a variety of chores and general laziness. But I still planned to stop at the Columbia Land Conservancy's Greenport Conservation Area... I enjoyed running there last fall and since I bailed on the trail race this year, I've wanted to stop there and do a couple of loops. Today seemed like a good opportunity...

... until I got there at a little before 4 PM and discovered a fancy automated gate at the start of the dirt road leading to the parking lot, along with signs indicating that as of 11/7 the gate would close at 5 PM. I drove down to the parking lot anyway, and found more signs indicating that at other times of the year it closes at 7 PM. Granted it's only November 6th, so I might have still had until 7, and I could have at least squeaked in one loop (about 3 miles) before 5... but the concept of possibly being locked in threw me sufficiently off my game that I bailed on the run entirely. I thought about other possible places to go, but nothing came to mind that was both close enough to get to before it was too close to sunset and had sufficiently long trails that I wouldn't be running many loops to get in 5-6 miles. Guess I should have gone with an earlier thought and run somewhere close to Albany... oh, well.

Today also marks the last time for several months that I'll be able to get outdoors after work in the daylight... with the switch back to Standard Time sunset will occur most days right around when I leave. I don't mind running in the dark all that much - sometimes it's actually lot of fun - but it is tough to get motivated to head out into the cold dark night for a couple hours, and it also limits my choices, since many of the parks I'd usually head to are closed after dark.

Still, I shouldn't complain... at least they changed the dates that DST begins and ends back in 2007, extending it by about 4 weeks. The change was supposed to reduce energy use though my understanding is there's not much agreement as to whether it actually does, and interestingly some of the main lobbyists for the change were retail groups that would presumably benefit by people being out and about after work. I recently read an article that claimed that the change was pushed by retailers to provide an extra hour of daylight on Halloween, and thus more sales of supplies for trick-or-treating. Without any evidence to back it up that idea seems a bit silly to me, since it ignores the fact that Halloween has long since stopped being primarily for kids (like it was when I was younger) and now seems to be mostly an excuse for adults to dress up in costumes and party. The world being what it is these days, kids' activities on Halloween seem to be more and more structured in the form of community parties and activities at school. A shame, really... it seems like it's lost some of the innocent scariness I remember it having when I was a kid.

JMH