When the new story is posted (I can’t wait) this Thursday at 11:00 AM Dallas, Texas, time, it will be 6:00 AM Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.

It will be the morning of the next day in Auckland.

“How can that be?” you ask. “As I travel west from Dallas,” you say, “on my super-fast rocket plane, I loose an hour for every time zone I pass. If the times zones are blinking by faster than a zone a second, shouldn’t I be going backwards in time? I know 11:00 AM, right now, is 9:00 AM in Lost Angeles. Right?”

Well, right, it is earlier there . . . but, you’re going farther and faster, at almost Internet speeds.

“OK,” you say. “But what difference does that make?”

Well, between Dallas and Auckland, there are many many time zones.

If you arrive in Auckland on your rocket sled in only seconds, it would seem you should effectively arrive many hours earlier. For example, and assuming nineteen (19) time zones between the two cities, if you launched out of Dallas at 11:00 AM on a Thursday, you might think you would arrive in Auckland at 4 PM on Wednesday, the day before you left. You would have traveled backward in time.

Like the 1993 movie “Ground Hog’s Day,” you, like Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray), would have to live the day over again. If you kept flying at that incredible speed, around and around the globe, when you eventually landed in New Zealand, it could be weeks or months before you left Dallas. Then, you, like the long-suffering, eventually resigned and finally rehabilitated Phil Connors, would be very, very confused and hoping for a change, any change — a new day.

That is why the International Date Line was invented: to straighten the days out, to prevent you from getting too far behind yourself, to help you reach a new day.

The International Date Line is an imaginary line out there, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, between Dallas and Auckland. Traveling west from Dallas, when you cross that line, you are required, by the conventions of man and the agreements of the global societies, to add 24 hours to your clock and advance to the next day. On your lighting-fast ship, you are forced, by conformity and good manners, to add a day, even though you left Dallas seconds before.

So, you see, because of the International Date Line, you can’t get lost on an endless clock twirling backwards.

For you, there will always be a tomorrow.

I can see the smile on Bill Murray’s face.

Thank you, the inventors of and compliers with the International Date Line.

All of which is a long way of saying that when the brand new and never-been-seen-before story (and, it is not an Uncle Joe story) is published on this web site at 11:00 AM Thursday, which it is the firm intent to do, the story will arrive, almost instantaneously, by traveling on the Internet Flyer, in Auckland the next day, Friday, at 6:00 AM. It will not move backward in time and be lost. It will move forward in time and be tossed on the front porch for a quick read before the Friday morning rush hour in New Zealand.

If that doesn’t make you wonder a time or two, stop back here on Thursday or Friday, your time, and have a new read and new wonder of your own.

The story is on the way.

Almost.

Grandpa Jim