Improvisation: A Troubleshooting Story (Premium)

Last Friday, I flew home from Seattle and spent a single night in our old apartment before waking up early Saturday to move. That sounds simple enough, but so much happened in just the time span described in that sentence. And there is a little bit of improvisation in there that I'm particularly happy with.

Granted, it wasn't just Friday. It's been a busy---looks at the calendar---two weeks, as it turns out. I flew home from Mexico City two weeks ago tomorrow knowing that I had three workdays and a weekend to perform all my normal daily duties and move as much stuff as possible, one carload at a time, from the apartment we're leaving to the condo we're moving to. That I would spend all day Monday flying to Seattle on a two-leg journey that literally took 14 hours door-to-door. That I would have a busy week at Microsoft Ignite between meetings, podcast recordings, and other responsibilities. That my wife would continue the pre-moving activities in my absence, and that I would return to a hollowed-out apartment devoid of most of our non-furniture personal items. That we would move on Saturday, spend most of Sunday unpacking as much as possible, that work would return to normal for three days, and that our kids would fly/drive home for the Thanksgiving long weekend.

Whew.

I wrote about travel last week because my Seattle trip was so different from the way I prefer to travel, and it was a searing reminder of why I do things the way I do. It was the first trip I hadn't booked myself in, many, many years, and because of the tightness of the schedule, I was determined to fly out of nearby Allentown's Lehigh International Airport, a 20-minute drive, and not Newark Liberty, from where I could have gotten non-stop flights but with a 90-minute drive.

What I got back from Microsoft's travel booking service was … well, interesting. A 4-hour layover in Chicago on the way to Seattle and a 45-minute layover on the way home, with all flights on United, the online airline for which I have any kind of status. I accepted immediately because I figured I could simply work from the comfort of a United lounge on the way there.

That worked out, actually: It was a long day, and the layover was closer to three hours because of a delay in Allentown, but it all unfolded as expected. And my experience at Chicago's O'Hare airport suggested my fleeting layover on the way home wouldn't be problematic: The gate I landed at was just a few gates away from both the gate I later flew out of and the lounge in which I passed the time. Assuming my first flight left on time Friday---it was the first Chicago flight of the day in keeping with my "fly as early as possible" rule---I'd be fine on the return trip and wouldn’t leave my wife to manage the move on her own the next day.

I felt good about that, sort of. But travel days are always stressful. I sleep poorly the night before, get up even earlier than intended, and then shut off the redundant alarms I set a...