It’s been two months, but I think now I’ve finally wrapped my brain around exactly what happened to me the night of July 16, 2025. Both times I experienced it.
Allow me to explain.
The morning of July 16, 2025, I left my hotel in Kyoto, Japan, headed for the airport in Kansai, about an hour and a half away. Interestingly enough, during my cab ride I was listening to a baseball game occurring in the United States. On July 15. Live.
It was the MLB All-Star game, actually, which ended with a home run swing-off.
All of those details were totally normal compared with what was about to occur.
We arrived at the airport several hours before our flight from Kansai to San Francisco.
(Kansai International Airport, by the way, sits on a man-made island in Osaka Bay. Another uninteresting detail unrelated to the story.)
Our flight was set to depart at 4:55 p.m. local time. It did. And we arrived in San Francisco about 11 in the morning. That morning. Like, earlier in the day from when we left. This was still July 16. From our perspective it was a red-eye flight, but in actuality it was a reverse red-eye, landing earlier in same day.
And here’s where it gets weird.
Our flight from San Francisco to D.C. was your standard leave at 1:00 or so and arrive at 9:00 or so. It’s really not as long as you think because you’re crossing a few time zones. Five hours in the air, three-hour time difference: eight hours total.
Except our “1:00” flight out of San Francisco was delayed. And delayed. And delayed by every excuse airline personnel could conjure.
“Bad weather.” Runway congestion. Overworked unionized flight crews.
Food delivery running late. Food delivery arrives but is the wrong temperature.
Idiot pilot scrapes the plane against the jet bridge while backing up.
Yeah, that one actually happened and we had to get a whole new plane.
Finally we’re set to leave, and now it’s late in the evening.
Still on July 16, by the way.
Except now it’s a red-eye flight, for real this time, as we won’t land in D.C. until the morning of July 17.
And that’s how I took a red-eye flight two nights in a row.
Two nights in a row… that actually were… the same night, twice in a row.
And nothing else ever seemed strange to me for the rest of my life.