The most amazing thing about Thursday, February 15, 2007, for those of us on board Queen Mary 2, is that it did not exist. That's because of this wondrous creation called the International Dateline. Rather than being an alluring Internet dating service, or one of those tempting '900' telephone numbers, this particular "dateline" is the official delineation point between one day and another.

Something especially odd happens though when you travel east to west across the dateline: you lose an entire day. That means those of us on board QM2 went from Wednesday, February 14th directly into Friday, February 16, 2007. We just skipped Thursday! This is the chronological equivalent of "Do Not Pass Go/Do Not Collect $200" of Monopoly fame.

We had spent a fair amount of time at numerous dinners trying to grasp the idea of losing an entire day. Every time we thought we had the mystery solved, some new quirk or line of reasoning would come along and create confusion in its wake.

The best explanation I found for the International Dateline is the one from the "Infoplease: All the Knowledge You Need" website, and is as follows:

"While the time zones are based on the natural event of the Sun crossing a meridian, the date must be an arbitrary decision. The meridians are traditionally counted from the meridian of the observatory of Greenwich, in England, which is called the zero meridian. The logical place for changing the date is 12 hours, or 180*, from Greenwich. Fortunately, the 180th meridian runs mostly through the open Pacific. The Date Line makes a zigzag in the north to incorporate the eastern tip of Siberia into the Siberian time system and then another one to incorporate a number of islands into the Hawaii-Aleutian time zone. In the south there is a similar zigzag for the purpose of tying a number of British-owned islands to the New Zealand time system. Otherwise, the Date Line is the same as 180* from Greenwich. At points to the east of the Date Line the calendar is one day earlier than at points to the west of it. A traveler going eastward across the Date Line from one island to another would not have to reset his watch because he would stay inside the time zone, but it would be the same time of the previous day."

I fear it is possible (and oddly logical) for a person to read that succinct and well-crafted description myriad times and still find going from Wednesday directly into Friday utterly bizarre. It didn't help trying to comprehend and discuss this veritable time warp after a few glasses of wine either. It had taken me awhile to grasp Einstein's explanation of how someone traveling at the speed of light would age much more slowly than someone remaining, say, in Connecticut, but this losing a whole day thing truly has 'science fiction' written all over it. In fact, "loss of time" is usually an indication of alien abduction, but let's not even go there.

As it is, we kept setting our clock back an hour a day as we sailed westward across the Pacific. The QM2 staff kept congratulating us on gaining an hour with such regularity; but it is hard to celebrate when you find yourself getting ever more tired at 9:00 pm on successive evenings.

Of course, I accept that "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away," and while He taketh away Thursday, February 15th from my life, I do know He will double-up for me whatever day I choose to return to the Pittsburgh. This happened once before when I returned from Adelaide to Pittsburgh on my birthday. I experienced the longest birthday of my life as I departed Adelaide the morning of June 9th and returned to Pittsburgh the afternoon of June 9th, albeit with 30+ hours separating the big and little hands of the same clock. Granted, I feared I had aged by two years and not just one, as though in payment to some kind of cosmic chronological debt.

Each morning on board QM2 Cruise Director Ray Rouse comes on the television and conducts his own version of the NBC TODAY show. It is remarkable how many interesting tidbits come across in that daily reporting. We learn a "nautical fact of the day," we meet some of the folks working behind the scenes on the QM2, we hear about some of the upcoming performances, and we are even taught navigation skills. Most of the time, however, is taken up with birthday and anniversary announcements. Yesterday though, Cruise Director Ray Rouse, was doubly busy wishing folks 'Happy Birthday' for both February 14th and 15th - a doubling up made necessary by the pending International Dateline time warp.

Since this cruise was an anniversary present for Jan and I, as well as a 50th birthday present for her, it occurred to me that celebrating a wedding anniversary or birthday for a day that technically didn't even exist could prove anti-climactic. Frankly, I don't know how those "leap year" birthday folks manage to stay sane.

Fortunately, plans call for our actual wedding anniversary to occur in good old Pittsburgh, PA. After all, 25th wedding anniversaries only come around once, and it would be a real drag to not have that day exist, no matter how delectable the food, wine, and ambiance at sea.