The key to sitting LCL out of base is to 'APU' (aggressively pick up) open trips that start late the next day. You can do this starting at 0945 base time the day prior. Assuming that there's an open trip that matches your "silo" (the number of days you have left on reserve), or is 1 less than your silo, if nobody senior to you wants the trip, then you can snag it at 0945 the day prior.

I used to sit LCL reserve at my home (SFO) while I was based in IAH, and that's what I did. I'd look for trips that started as late as possible on the following day. That would give me *plenty* of notice. I didn't do this if the Houston weather was acting the fool, because even with 8 nonstops a day, one lousy Houston summertime storm system could bring everything to a grinding halt. But BOS to EWR is a much shorter commute, obviously, and you could also go into JFK or LGA and just deal with the Uber cost, if there was no other option.

Keep in mind that in some bases, LCL goes senior (I'm not sure about EWR...it definitely goes senior in my current base of SFO). And also keep in mind that upgrade is nowhere near as short as it was for a very few, very lucky people hired in late '23 -- early '24. We have literally thousands of senior FOs who delayed upgrade while the new contract was put in place...then the music stopped in summer 2024 and they haven't been able to upgrade. That said, EWR 737 is (I think) our second most junior BES (SFO 737 being the most junior), so your seniority progression will be pretty darn good.