Unlike most people I know, I get excited on both ends of Daylight Saving Time. In the fall, I gain an extra hour of sleep and the mornings are brighter to wake up to. In the spring, I lose an hour, but it means than I have an extra hour of sun to prance around in on my way home from work. Overall, I’m not complaining.
But not everyone is onboard with the plan.
As an example, a few weeks ago I went to yoga over in Georgetown the Sunday morning following the clock roll-back. My instructor usually teaches yoga at 10 and pilates at 11:15. I showed up at 9:57 and the classroom was empty, except for my instructor’s mat at the front of the class. I settled in, kind of glad that she took her sweet time to show up.
Another student arrived and rolled out her mat. “Weird that the instructor isn’t here yet, right?” she asked.
I nodded. Usually, the instructor was a bit regimented in the whole thing. “At least her mat is here…”
About 10:10 she finally strolled in, and told us she’d been hanging out in the sauna. “So nice on such a cold day,” she said. There was no urgency indicating that she was 10 minutes late to class. In fact, she sat on her mat at the front of the class and began chatting about Halloween and asking if we’d dressed up.
It was weird, but I was also feeling lazy, so I didn’t mind that she was burning up some minutes that would normally be sweaty. Finally she said, “Well, looks like it’s going to be just us, so let’s go ahead and get started.”
We started. The initial sequence was a bit different than usual. Instead of downward dogs, we were doing 100’s. (If you’re not familiar, a 100 is where you’re basically doing a sit-up/crunchie and waving your hands to a count of 100. It’s a classic pilates move.) As the minutes continued to tick by, I kept wondering when we were going to transition to the aerobic part of the class and stop doing core work.
Then it hit me – she was still running on old time. She’d probably shown up for yoga at 9am (thinking it was 10) and thought that she had no students. So she went to the sauna and chilled – until it was closing in on pilates time. Having formed that hypothesis, I was curious to see if the rest of the class would support it.
Also? Pilates is a pretty intense workout if you’re not used to it. The other student in the class was an older woman who I’m pretty sure had never done pilates in her life. She kept shooting me glances that were more like questions. I suppose I could’ve interrupted the instructor and clued her in that we were there for yoga, not pilates, but it was sort of like a game of chicken. I wanted to see if the other woman would cry uncle.
As it turns out: no. So there we were, the first day of standard time. One extra hour of sleep under our belts – and an hour of pilates. Not the worst pay to enter hibernation if you ask me.
pithypants 