Touring Through Time Zones

With all the technology available there is really no reason we should ever miss a lobby call or load in. But it’s inevitable; we’ve all done it at some point for various reasons. The major contributor to tardiness for me personally is alarm issues. Not so much a malfunction, but rather neglecting to pay attention to time zones before calling it a day.
Our phones do help with this, but be aware of the time zone you’re in when you set the alarm, and which one you’ll be in when you expect to wake up. Doing what they think is a favor our cell phones can make a mess of things in short order if you're not on top of it. If you set your alarm in one time zone and then change zones overnight your phone will wake you at the time you requested, but in the time zone you were located when you set it. Confused yet?
Example; if you’re in Chicago (CST) and set you’re alarm for 8am but wake up in Detroit (EST) which is an hour ahead it will go off an hour later than you planned, because it will go off at 8am Chicago time (where you were when you set the alarm). Now its 9am at your current location and you’re late.  To avoid this mess I have a few remedies:
First I set a few alarms, one for the time in which I want to wake up, and one an hour before or after (depending on which time zone I’m moving to) just in case the phone plays this trick. Worst case scenario you wake up an hour early and get to roll back over and resume sleeping.
Another option that is pretty fail safe (famous last words I know) is to use a good old-fashioned alarm clock. This way you can take time zones into account when you set the alarm and rest easy knowing that it will go off exactly when you want it to since there is no smartphone involved to play tricks on you.
A third option is to set a timer in place of an alarm. Figure out how many hours you want to sleep that night and set the timer for that length.
Of course, NONE of these things work if you don't read the day sheet to learn that tomorrow’s load in is an hour earlier than normal for whatever reason.
Final consideration, Arizona doesn’t observe daylight savings. That’s bound to cause some troubles if you fail to take that into account.
Hopefully, these tips help ensure you wake up with enough time to put yourself together and get some coffee. No one likes a rude awakening followed immediately by a load in.
That’s all for now, rest easy...

*This post is dedicated to my good friend Jay who used to wake up to a timer every day in place of an alarm, regardless of time zones or anything else. Because “eight hours are what you need each night, no more no less.”