Running With Watkins & Shepard

Hey everyone. Ok, day 3...oh wait...I NEED a SMOKE!! BRB...

 

OK...that's better...LOL

Well today was an interesting day. Yesterday we were told (or I misunderstood) that ALL those tests were to be done last night. Sooooo...of course I did them all. Only to hear this morning "Oh no man, you could have taken till the end of the week or even day or two longer if needed....WHAT?? Well, they're out of the way now at least and I think I may have even surprised our classroom instructor Matt a bit especially since I got like three questions wrong between all of them. (Just lucky I guess).

He widened his eyes a touch more when he handed us the Speed to RPM to Gear test (randomized) this morning and I handed it back with only 3 of them wrong. DARN!! Three WRONG?? I better get my butt in GEAR...or is that RPM...or Speed?? Heck! I don't know

He looked at me and I could tell he really meant it when he said... "Chris, that's really really good man". I have to say that felt REALLY good to hear. When we were told about that the first day, I copied it all down in my notes and then really studied it.

I walk around the whole motel at night and in the morning for exercise and carry it with me. Look at it and then repeat it over and over. Then I sit down, turn to a fresh page and write it down and I mark the ones I get wrong and do the whole deal again. I must have like 2 dozen pages of them now....LOL But I'm getting it.

We're facing a "LOG" jamb today as we're doing a lot of work on that and now into the Scenarios we have to do the logs for. (Man!! it's a whole lot easier to do in real life then from a "story") LOL

BUT!! We finally got into a truck today and did some bobtailing around the yard. It felt SOOOOOO good to be back in a rig as the last time was on July 28th in school. I've been feeling like I was loosing all I learned but much to my delight, it was like I never left.

Our yard instructor RL was quite surprised at my shifting and started throwing some small tests at me. Nothing spectacular but things like backing up to a trailer, starting out on a fairly steep hill and shifting up and down on it. Both up and down the hill. With each test handled he said nothing. But he had this barely noticeable grin on his face. I know what it meant...LOL

So we did that for a couple hours today switching out drivers and taking turns. I'm hopeful we'll get to hook up and start dragging the fully loaded trailer around tomorrow. I was doing pretty well with their shifting technique on the downshifts. The up shifts were a little tougher because it's just not natural (at least for me) to "hold" the rpms up and then ease off them since having them drop is what you want when up shifting.

My shifting is pretty smooth (most times) to start with but I have to say that those downshifts going down hill were never so smooth for me before. By holding the rpm's where they are when you shift to neutral, and then just adding a bit to go into gear, the truck didn't even rock a bit. VERY COOL STUFF!!! I'm sure once I "get it", the up shifts will be the same. It's really cool to shift on the down hills. Something our school told us was TABOO!! BS.... LOL. It's proper, smooth and needed at times.

If I wasn't so tired right now, I'd head over to the yard and drive around some. We can now use the trucks for practice 24/7 so I'll jump on that tomorrow.

Well, I'm gonna get back to the books and see if I can't pull my head out of my butt and learn those shifting specs. I mean....jeeezzz Chris! Three wrong???

 

Don't count on it!