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Day -2: Road trip delayed

 I tested positive for Covid yesterday morning, 3 days before my planned start date for the US road trip. 

I am resting and quarantining right now and will decide on a new start date based on my recovery and how I am doing. The symptoms are not too bad right now. It is a bummer to have this happen, but the silver lining is that I got it before starting the trip and not a few days later.

My feeling is similar to what astronauts might be going through, if their space mission is delayed a few days before launch. Some of these rocket launches are scrubbed just seconds before takeoff.  Must be quite an emotional roller coaster. There is a lot of uncertainty,  how quickly the problems can be fixed and making sure everything is in order for a new launch date. 

I have a number of decisions and tradeoffs to work through over the next few days. I need to have recovered and feel well enough to start the road trip. However, I can't wait too many days because that increases the chances of running into bad weather in the northern states. I also cannot push my return date back very much because of other commitments here at home. One option I am looking into is trimming a few days from the whole itinerary by removing some of the detours to interesting destinations. I might also need to skip some of the hard and strenuous hikes that I had planned. 

This situation also reminds me of my pre-retirement life, managing software development projects and major releases. It is a critical showstopper bug a few days before the release ship date.  How much will fixing this bug delay the release? How are dependent teams and projects affected? Do I reduce the scope and remove some new features in order to meet the schedule? Do all these changes meet the overall project goals? I guess you can leave work, but the work doesn't leave you :-)

For now, fingers crossed. Resting and quarantining and waiting .....

 


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