Althouse: Based on the comments in the "Extreme Larks" post....

August 14, 2019

Based on the comments in the "Extreme Larks" post....

... here... I've got to do this poll:

38 comments:

Bob Boyd said...: You forgot, I'm a methhead so I stay up for days, then crash for 24 to 48 hours.; 8/14/19, 2:40 PM
Nichevo said...: As a person who still works, I have to get up at 6 to have an orderly morning before the 7:23 or 7:42 train into the city. Don't love it though. I've heard that getting up earlier is helpful. Tried it a couple of times, meh.; 8/14/19, 2:41 PM
Rory said...: My dog is a lark.; 8/14/19, 2:43 PM
Balfegor said...: I usually acclimate to waking up around 7:30 or 8:00 am. That said, it's probably bad for my health, but I change timezones fairly regularly (Tokyo/Seoul to US Eastern and back). While I can usually adjust my sleep hours on the plane so I don't get terrible jetlag, I often have extended periods where I am waking up consistently around 4:30 am / 5:00 am and going to bed around 10 pm. But sometimes my schedule shifts to sleeping until around 11:00 am, and going to bed around 5 am, to accommodate colleagues/clients in the other timezone. So my sleep cycle is not as regular as it ought to be.; 8/14/19, 2:44 PM
Jaq said...: A quick perusal of my cafe posting habits says 5:30 AM. But the dog is twelve and a half, so that may change in a couple of years.; 8/14/19, 2:44 PM
Michael K said...: I am long retired. I did work a couple of days a week in Phoenix until a year ago. Then I got up ay 4:30 to be in Phoenix at 6.; 8/14/19, 2:45 PM
rehajm said...: Every morning at his little three-room semi near Reading, Ken gets up at three o'dock...and goes back to bed again because it's far too early.; 8/14/19, 2:47 PM
Ralph L said...: I've been involuntarily in the last category since I got shingles in 2014, except for October 2015, the month after I quit working, when I was getting 10-12 hours of sleep a day until I tried weightlifting again.; 8/14/19, 2:56 PM
Jaq said...: When I am up north in the. summer, I am up at first light, when in Florida in the winter, not so much.; 8/14/19, 2:56 PM
Narr said...: I'm not really a "morning person" though I voted 7-8. But I'm in bed by 1030 or 1100p so I get lots of hours. I do prefer getting onerous chores out of the way in the morning to anticipating them all day.

Narr
Shower, breakfast, walkies, AA; 8/14/19, 3:02 PM
Kevin said...: In the morning I panic about everything that needs done, in the afternoon I despair that it could ever get done, in the evening i try to put it all out of my head so I can eventually go to sleep, at night I go to sleep far too late and have to get up far too early.

End result: chronic sleep deprivation.; 8/14/19, 3:07 PM
AllenS said...: I haven't gotten up at 6 for ever. Between 3 and 5 is more like it.; 8/14/19, 3:21 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Half of your biggest fans are out here in Arizona. If you get up by 4:45, you can be on a beautiful trail by 5am and done w/ nice 6 mile hike by 7am. If you get up at 7am and try that, you end up being on the front page of AZCentral. Don't wake up late in PHX; 8/14/19, 3:27 PM
rcocean said...: I'm like a big cat. I make a kill, eat it, then sleep for 8 hours.; 8/14/19, 3:30 PM
Fernandinande said...: It's nice to comport with the commoners when it doesn't matter.; 8/14/19, 3:34 PM
Jerry Goedken said...: I would like to be an early riser. But my circadian cycle seems to be about 26 hours. If I need to be up early (before 6 a.m.), I set two alarms. I get up and feel horrible. Not grouchy, it just hurts all over; it seems like an opioid withdrawal (which I’ve never had). I did this for work and was successful. If I set an alarm to get up early for no particular reason, I shut if off or put it on snooze for an hour or so. It’s like there is a drug saturating my brain and I can’t think straight. And I don’t get up early until that drug is gone. I’m 73 and this has been my body’s reaction to early rising since childhood. I’m not grumpy in the morning; in fact I’m cheerful, just under the influence of a body chemistry which I can’t seem to change.; 8/14/19, 3:38 PM
reader said...: Unless I’m unusually tired I wake up 20 to 30 minutes after sunrise. We don’t close the blinds in our bedroom.; 8/14/19, 3:43 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Half of your biggest fans are out here in Arizona. If you get up by 4:45, you can be on a beautiful trail by 5am and done w/ nice 6 mile hike by 7am. If you get up at 7am and try that, you end up being on the front page of AZCentral."

Did you see "As Phoenix Heats Up/the Night Comes Alive" in the NYT a couple days ago?

"Neighborhoods thrum with activity at dawn and dusk when residents hike, jog and paddleboard. In the hottest months, the zoo opens at 6 a.m., for the benefit of both animals and visitors. And across the city, certain construction work starts in the middle of the night — not only for the safety of workers, but also because even some building materials can be affected by intense heat.... Since last year, parking lots at Piestewa Peak and two other popular trailheads stay open two hours later during the summer months so hikers can come out after dark. Encouraging hikers to avoid the worst heat is part of a “Take a Hike. Do it Right” campaign that began in 2015 to reduce, among other incidents, heat-related rescues and deaths on the city’s 200 miles of hiking trails....“Around here it will still be over 100 degrees at 10 at night,” said Jerod W. Teller, a superintendent at Haydon Building Corporation. “They say it is always darkest before the dawn. Here it is always coolest before dawn.” In that cooler pre-dawn, greater Phoenix seems most vibrant as many people exercise, do errands and commute. On construction sites, on roofs, on vast swaths of desert undergoing landscaping, on some farms, many workers start before daybreak. The heat comes on fast once the sun is up....In nearby Tempe Beach Park, runners, bikers, walkers and a paddleboarder exercised in the 94 degrees of first light. “I can quantify it,” said Glenn A. Dotson, who arrived at 5 a.m. to do a solo run before joining the local chapter of Black Men Run for a longer one. “It is a three-hour shift earlier.”"

Lots of photos at the link.; 8/14/19, 3:44 PM
rcocean said...: Here's the current hourly temps for Phoenix:

4 Am to 7 Am - 86-89 degrees.

10 AM - 99 degrees.

1 PM - 108 Degrees

10 PM - 99 degrees.

3 AM - 91 degrees.; 8/14/19, 3:53 PM
Wilbur said...: I voted for the first choice, as the strong lark that I am.

Could the poll results have more to do with the age demographic of the blog's followers than other factors?; 8/14/19, 4:02 PM
reader said...: Oh joy, I'm driving out to Tucson next week. If we golf it will have to be early early early.; 8/14/19, 4:11 PM
Tomcc said...: Bob Boyd- I am suspicious of your claim; I doubt that very many methheads can spell "methhead".; 8/14/19, 4:15 PM
Virgil Hilts said...: Thanks Ann - I missed that NY Times story while travelling. One thing people don't appreciate about PHX is how unbelievably safe it is (at least if you're a guy). I love bicycling around late at night. But I think it's a mistake to hike through desert in the dark. There are rattlesnakes that come out.; 8/14/19, 4:18 PM
Phil 314 said...: "Did you see "As Phoenix Heats Up/the Night Comes Alive" in the NYT a couple days ago?"

The larks in AZ are NOT up at night we're in the morning. And in late June and early July you have light (not sunrise) at 4:30 am.

Once monsoon season hit its never cool enough to run.

Now the flip side speaker as a morning runner is that winter running is always in the dark.

PS the issue in Phoenix in the last 30 years is NOT global warming but the urban heat island effect.; 8/14/19, 4:40 PM
Phil 314 said...: Professor,
Have you considered that your cafe posts may miss many of your "larks" (which appears to be a large percentage of your readers)?; 8/14/19, 4:41 PM
Michael McNeil said...: “They say it is always darkest before the dawn. Here it is always coolest before dawn.”

The first is generally not true, anywhere — unless the moon happens that day to set not long before dawn.

The second generally is true, everywhere — unless, say, a warm front moves in during the night.; 8/14/19, 5:18 PM
daskol said...: The commentariat here skews older, which I think explains their lark-like sleeping habits.; 8/14/19, 5:19 PM
TerriW said...: It's unfortunate that I'm naturally becoming more and more of an extreme lark (3:30-5:30, on any given day) at the same time my kids have become teens and are naturally becoming more and more owlish.

Because it's at the end of their night that they want to talk (*really* talk), and I don't want to miss that. But I'm kinda dying inside of tired. I was hoping my sleep rhythms would show some mercy and accommodate, but they haven't.; 8/14/19, 5:31 PM
TerriW said...: It's unfortunate that I'm naturally becoming more and more of an extreme lark (3:30-5:30, on any given day) at the same time my kids have become teens and are naturally becoming more and more owlish.

Because it's at the end of their night that they want to talk (*really* talk), and I don't want to miss that. But I'm kinda dying inside of tired. I was hoping my sleep rhythms would show some mercy and accommodate, but they haven't.; 8/14/19, 5:33 PM
caplight45 said...: Up at 04:00 every morning. Hardly need the alarm clock. Out the door and walking and praying by 04:30. No caffeine.; 8/14/19, 5:51 PM
tim maguire said...: The thing I don't get about my sleep pattern is that I deal well with time changes. It rarely takes me more than a day or two in a new time zone to wake up at the same stupidly early hour I do at home.; 8/14/19, 5:58 PM
chuck said...: I was a night person when I worked, often going until 4:00 AM. I'm more of a morning person now because the sun comes up early and I need to get to the gym at 8. In an ideal world, I'd start the day about 10.; 8/14/19, 6:22 PM
tim maguire said...: I’m amazed (and a bit inspired) by how many people in this poll consider 6 sleeping in. It makes me feel like less of a freak.; 8/14/19, 6:59 PM
stevew said...: I've always been an early riser, hardly ever use an alarm unless I've got to get up especially early (<4am) to catch a plane or get on the road to a meeting somewhere. It annoys my lovely wife if I get out of bed to much before 6am on weekends and when on vacation; so I stash my kindle on the bedside table, along with my reading glasses, so I can read between waking at 5 and getting up at 6.

I don't brag about this, it just is.; 8/14/19, 7:04 PM
todd galle said...: 0530, always been that way, don't need an alarm. I wake up at 0300 or so, then go back to nap until 0530. My brain is working then and I can't go back to sleep. I'm at the point now where I do not need coffee. I do hope when my wife and I retire in a few years, we might not see 0700, but I'm not sanguine.; 8/14/19, 8:18 PM
FleetUSA said...: Many African cities have Phoenix-like activity. No surprise. Although I haven't been there I would expect similar in Mexico.; 8/15/19, 5:51 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Lark, Lark
The dogs do bark
The garbage trucks
Banging away
If I used my head
I would still be in bed
But the coffee
is already made.; 8/15/19, 6:25 AM
Meade said...: Don't you push me baby,
'cause I'm all alone
Well I know a little something
you won't ever know:
Don't you touch hard liquor,
just a cup of cold coffee
I'm gonna get up
in the morning and go; 8/15/19, 7:09 AM