Turning Back the Hands of Time Often Not That Simple

The autumn time change tends to split people into two groups: those whose lives are enmeshed with their timepieces, and those with biological clocks so sure they don’t give a hoot about the end of Pacific Daylight Time.

It is one of the busiest times for clock-repair people and for neurologists at the Sleep Disorders Center at Harbor View Medical Center.

And every year at Lindbergh Field, there are at least a few travelers with egg on their faces because they showed up for their flights an hour early.

But life goes on for hard-core golfers who take advantage of earlier tee times. Likewise for those who surf: “Cracking dawn,” or paddling out at sunrise, just comes an hour earlier.

Oct. 25 is the one day this year you really do turn back time. At 2 a.m. Sunday, clocks turn back one hour.

With the change comes confusion.

At the downtown nightclub Ole Madrid, the one-hour rollback goes into effect one minute after the club closes, no matter what patrons hoping to squeeze an extra hour of drinking say, said Jonathan Williams, one of the club’s owners. Last call is still at 1:40 a.m.

Gaining an hour is easier for forgetful travelers to cope with than losing an hour in the spring. Tourists can still make their flights, said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman at the headquarters in Fort Worth.

Dr. Renata Shafor, director of Harbor View’s Sleep Disorders Center, said she treats patients every year whose “strong biological clocks” make adjusting to time and schedule changes difficult, sometimes resulting in depression, irritability and lethargy.

Many of the effects wrought by the time change are subtle, Shafor said. Daily exposure to light is usually lessened, meal times and exercise periods shift. Personal habits must be adjusted, and this comes harder to some people than others, Shafor said.

In the past, she has advised patients to ease into Daylight Saving Time by going to bed earlier in the weeks leading up to the change.

Radio surf reporter Juan Grande is less clinical in breaking down the time change: An extra hour of surfing in the morning; an hour less in the evening.

“You just get up with the sun,” said Grande, who owns Canyon Surf Shop in Ocean Beach and whose real name is John Durward. Each day, beginning at 6:50 a.m., Grande broadcasts a surf report on local radio station 91X. He said he generally wakes about 5 a.m.

“If you want to get in good surfing before you go to school or work, you get up as early as possible,” Grande said. “The clock is irrelevant.”

Such words verge on blasphemy for shopkeeper Richard Ivkovich, owner of Tick Tock Doc, a clock shop in Vista.

Typically during the week after the time rollback, Ivkovich receives dozens of calls from customers who have improperly reset pendulum-driven clocks.

“A lot of clocks can’t be turned backward,” Ivkovich said.

The most common call comes from a clock owner who is a chime short, as in 11 chimes at noon and . some come as late as a week after the time change.

“They figure maybe the clock will straighten itself out,” Ivkovich said.

Sometimes he advises over the phone. Advance the time by 11 hours, instead of rewinding an hour. Turn the minute hand instead of the hour hand. For those who foresee trouble and call in advance, asking the best way to set their timepieces back, the answer is simple: keep the pendulum still for an hour.

Each year there is also a spate of cases requiring house calls, he said. Three years ago, Ivkovich made about 20 repair visits to homes, usually to right a cantankerous grandfather clock.

“A lot of people take their clocks quite seriously,” Ivkovich said. “Almost like members of the family.”

Ivkovich’s family of personal timepieces represents a dynasty. He keeps 300 clocks in his home in Vista. Thirty have chimes and are synchronized to sound off at the same time.

Before Ivkovich, 52, goes to sleep tonight, he will spend about half an hour winding, adjusting and halting the ticking in his head and home.

“It feels like being inside a tomb,” Ivkovich said. “After years of continuous ticking and striking, it’s very strange when you take it all away.

“For one hour, one time a year, it will be silent in our house.”