The adventure begins

After 30+ hours in the shop, we are finally out. We got an unplanned reset, but after 34 hours, I'm ready to roll. I was actually ready after the first night. I see what they mean about once you start rolling, you don't want to stop. I did hear some information that was confirmed by the fm, with the amount of students out on the road and the lack of testers in springmo currently, they are not keeping to the 10,000 miles/75 hours for the PSD phase. They will now contact the FM/Instructor/Student when they can come back and test. This might upset some people, but I'm old enough that I've learned to flow with the punches. My instructor and I get along really well and I figure the more I'm out here before I go back to test, the more prepared I will be. I feel the same way with TNT, I don't plan on being a team driver and extending my TNT phase when the time comes, but the more I experience out here with someone else that's already been there done that, the more prepared I will be when I'm solo. My current instructor is a company driver and doesn't do TNT, so I'm kind of hoping my TNT instructor is a lease guy. No matter how much they push/promote I'm not planning on leasing until I am completely comfortable with the driving and learn how to play the game, but I would like to see that side of it.

 

The adventure continues. I will be back in Springfield next week to test. I haven't been on lately because we've been running pretty hard and the internet has been spotty. We have been staying at a lot of petros so I got the month worth of wifi, but not all Petro's offer the wi-fi. Anyway, things are still going pretty well. One thing that I will tell anyone going out for either PSD or TNT; if your instructor is anything like mine, you will pretty much know every detail about their life if you want to or not. It seems like my instructor is on the phone all day and half the night, if I'm driving or he is. I will say if we are covering something and someone calls he will ask them to hold on or call back, but that is rare. For the most part, we get along really well.

He says I will be his last student and he doesn't do TNT after he had a TNT student roll his truck while he was in the sleeper. I'm kind of glad he doesn't do the TNT, so I'll get another perspective on driving. The main challenges I have is that when I make a mistake such as not making a turn wide enough he'll jump all over me, which I know is part of his job because and that it is serous if you don't take turns wide enough you could clip a car or worse. He seems to get more upset when I say OK or alright, I have explained to him that I'm not flowing it off, I am acknowledging the mistake the I made. But the real difficult thing is when he asks why I made that mistake, I can't say that part of the reason is because he's sitting there arguing with his wife 2 feet from me while I'm trying to concentrate on driving because then things would get really ugly. Especially since what he's arguing with his wife about is total BS because as I stated before he's always on the phone, so like it or not I know what the real story is. Anyway that will be over in a week.

We have been running pretty hard. I don't remember exactly when I last posted, but we had a run from Texas to Detroit, then to Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to NY where we were broke down for 4 days, then to VA down to the Carolina's, back to VA over to KY, up to Indiana, down to New Mexico, back to Texas, back to Kentucky, down to Arkansas over to Colorado and delivered GA this morning, picked up in South Carolina this afternoon and deliver to Alabama tomorrow afternoon. So, I've definitely got to see a lot of different places.

I'm still enjoying and even with the struggles, I think I made the right decision going with Prime.

 

I need some advice on an issue I'm still having issues with and my instructor just says I need to figure it out and leaves it at that. There are times I have issues with lane placement and maintaining placement. Here is the strange part, today I drove 40 miles of road construction with narrow lanes and had no issues at all, but as soon as we get back to the open road, I find myself hugging the white line and when the lane indicator thing goes off, I tend to over correct and it will go off on the other side. During night driving if I'm in a place where I can't see the lines I have no problem staying in my position, but if I can see it there I am hugging the white line again. I know lane placement is critical and I need to get this figured out and I know my instructor is getting very frustrated with it as well, yet doesn't have any suggestions. Any and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.