Trying to Understand Relativity (part 2)

At the risk of my sanity, I'm taking another crack at trying to understand relativity.  Last time I set up a thought experiment (figure 1) that involved two neighboring houses that were a light year apart.  I placed the guy in house B aboard a spaceship and sent him to visit the guy in house A.  The end result was that it appeared (to my limited understanding at least) that the trip would seem instantaneous to the guy in house A.  Because of the time it would take for the light from house B to reach him, the guy in house A wouldn't see his neighbor board his ship until 2011. Seconds later the neighbor would be knocking at the door.  This result seemed to be the direct opposite of what I've always been told about relativity.  

Figure 1.

I think that one problem is that I failed to take the constancy of the speed of light into consideration.  Basically, I left the relativity out of relativity.  Light behaves strangely when it comes to the speed at which it travels.  This behavior seems to run contrary to common sense.  If you're in your car at night and you have the headlights on, the light from those bulbs travels at the speed of light.  Now, as you press on the gas and speed up to sixty miles an hour, it would appear that the light should travel at the speed of the light PLUS the sixty miles an hour that the car is going.  Since the source of the light itself is being propelled at sixty miles an hour, then the light should reach an observer, say someone standing on a hill a mile down the road, that much faster...right?  But that's not what happens.  It turns out that the light travels at the exact same speed regardless of the velocity of its source.  So something has to give....time.   

Generally, this doesn't make much difference in our everyday lives and at the normal speeds that we travel, but when you're talking about a craft moving at near light velocities, this point becomes significant.  So that brings me back to my thought experiment.  Now let's suppose that the guy in house A stands at his window, watching the entire trip as his neighbor crosses the distance between their houses.  

Is that a Flying Pickle?

Now, as I mentioned last time, although the guy in house B leaves in 2010, the guy in house A doesn't see him leave and start his journey until 2011.  Since the guy from house B was travelling at 99.99999% the speed of light, and since the distance between the houses was exactly one light year, I figured that the trip would take just a little over a year.  So you have the guy in house A seeing the trip begin in 2011, and then guy from house B arriving in 2011 just a few seconds later. Quick trip, right?  But again, let's put the guy from house A at his window, watching the trip.  Now, at any certain point along the line, the light from the ship is travelling at the speed of light and it takes that amount of time to reach guy A at his window.  So, at let's say...the half point of the journey, the light from the ship is going to take 6 months to reach guy A at his window.

Now, at this point, it's at least June 2011 when guy A sees his neighbor at the half point of his journey.  So the guy from house B can't arrive at his doorstep in January 2011 if the guy from house A is still standing at his window watching him make the trip.  Guy B can't exceed the speed of light, so he can't reach his destination before the light does.  He can't be sitting in guy A's living room, sipping coffee and reminiscing about old times, while his ship is still out there making the trip.  This, I think, is where the time dilation comes into effect.

It would seem then, that at the very earliest, the guy from house B can't arrive on the doorstep of house A until January 2012.  As you recall, this would be 2 years after he started out from his driveway, even though only a year passed for him aboard the ship.  So while Guy A is two years older, his neighbor has only aged one.  I think I'm getting closer to understanding it all, but I don't think I'm quite there yet. 

For one thing, I believe that relativity suggests that the time dilation would be far more extreme that what I've laid out in this scenario.  I think that maybe the guy in house A should have a long white beard when his neighbor finally arrives.  I'm not sure.  At that close to the speed of light, guy A should perhaps see time aboard the ship slow down to almost a halt as it speeds along the cutting edge of light itself.  Maybe that one year aboard the ship would stretch and span across guy A's time line exponentially.  I don't know.  I've taken the matter as far as I can at the moment.

Am I making progress?

To be continued?