Air Travel

Today is day two of my sabbatical. My thoughts are firmly focused on getting to Pittsburgh International Airport and flying as far away from work as possible. The office and client files are still too close to home for me to completely forget, so I am taking the advice of my eleven partners who completed their sabbaticals before me, and I am leaving town and not looking back.
As part of my sabbatical planning, I enrolled in TSA Pre✔ and Global Entry. Both programs require you to complete an online application, pay the required fee, and be interviewed. Appointments are readily available for the Pre✔ and I scheduled and completed my interview at the Pittsburgh airport. Global Entry appointments, unfortunately, are scarce and booked for months. I checked every airport that I would be flying through hoping to find an appointment slot. Luckily, I was able to be interviewed in the Denver airport after dropping my son off at college in nearby Boulder. Surprisingly, the interviewer only asked me questions about what type of law I practiced and after a brief discussion on the importance of estate planning I was quickly granted global entry privileges.
It was important to me to expedite air travel since I have numerous flights booked over the next six months. With Pre✔ you don't need to remove your shoes and your electronics stay packed. The biggest benefit is smiling at all those blokes behind you as you move to the preferred line. While I haven't used Global Entry yet, I understand you bypass the immigration line and interrogation and simply scan your passport for glorious entry back into the U.S.
Some other travel tips are worth mentioning here. First, link your EZ-Pass to the airport's parking so you can speed through the gates without needing a ticket or stopping to pay. Next, find the shortest line for security. Even with pre-check, one may encounter a line at security. Pittsburgh offers a little-known alternate security line upstairs. Look for the signs near US Airways ticketing and head outside and across the road into the building where the line is always shorter than the downstairs main security.
With that pre-planning having paid off, I am now sitting comfortably in the US Airways/American Airlines Admiral's Club waiting for boarding time. First destination of my sabbatical? San Francisco, the city by the bay.