The big one. Four miles across a nine and a half hour overnight. Must have been a busy night — more outages, more walking to think, more laps to the park and back while waiting for a circuit to come back up or a vendor to call back.

Four miles doesn’t sound like much until you remember it happened between midnight and sunrise while simultaneously keeping a network running. Every lap was a thought. Every thought was a troubleshooting step. The walking and the working were the same thing.

The NOC gig was the beginning. Engineer I on the overnight shift, learning how networks behave when nobody’s watching. The walking was just the body keeping up with the mind.