The Long Way

Today was the first day off the range and it started with an absolute Monday-like feel to it. My carpool got to the yard early by about 15 minutes so we had a little sitting around to get accomplished. We finally meet up in the range class room to get new truck assignments along with a new driving instructor. I was paired up with a guy from Los Angles whom I’ve spoken to a few times during the last couple of weeks so that was better than being partnered with a total stranger. Total stranger was our driving instructor. But he turned out pretty cool so that will help this week—or so it seemed.

It’s funny how some of these guys are just so laid back and easy going until you get them into the truck. Dr. Jeckyl please take the passenger seat! So, you can see where I’m going with this one. Lots of yelling.

Ok, I’m all over the place with this one. Back to this morning…after the assignments were made my partner and I made our way out to find truck #455 and our instructor. I think that I’ve mentioned in the past the size of the yard and the fact that they do in fact have some trucks parked in said yard. We walked around the yard for about 30 minutes before we were able to admit defeat and ask someone for help. Turns out that our truck is in the shop and the instructor is over there picking it up. It is now about 8am so we wait and wait and wait until he finally shows up about 11am with a loaded trailer that’s due in Tucson. We were hoping for an easy first day so we could get used to the truck pulling a load in traffic. Sometimes on the first day the instructors just take students out to the shifting range to get used to the new environment. Not so in our case.

After a brief discussion it is decided that my partner will drive down and I’ll drive us back. Sound good until you realize that we made it back into Phoenix at rush hour and I’m driving with exactly 2 hours experience! It was very stressful to say the least. But once again our instructor got me through it with kind, encouraging words. Mostly; “slow down”, “watch your mirrors”, “you’re drifting”, “down-shift” and it’s cousin “up-shift” etc……

So, in conclusion; it was a day of learning, it was just like being thrown in the lake for a non-swimmer, and it was probably a good start. I would hope that I got over quite a bit of the initial nervousness. There were a million things going on at once…or so it seemed and we made it back in one piece with just a small stress headache. Next time you see a rig on the road and the driver is keeping it between the lines and is not knocking cars off the road you might want to give that driver some credit. It’s harder that it appears………..

That's all for now.

Category: General