My Prime Adventure

Well today is now done and was a lot better then yesterday.

Spent most the day on the pad today working on my Pretrip. I got it down pretty well by now. Not 100% but I'm pretty happy with where I managed to get so far. Though I'm still kind of annoyed the instructor don't really work with us much, everything I've learned so far I learned from another PSD Student.

On a more positive part, I got an instructor today. He's a new instructor, just finishing his instructor class this week but has been a trainer for the past couple years. He's a cool guy and we seem to get along pretty well.

Best of all, I am now enjoying the ac in the motel.

She told us today that starting very soon (she said as soon as this weekend), they will start requiring PSDs to pass there pretrip prior to leaving on the road with an instructor.

I'm not sure if she means the actual CDL part or just an evaluation which is the same thing as the exam just you don't get anything if you pass/fail.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though as it can make your 75 hours a bit less stressful. I'm going to work again on it tomorrow and maybe take an evaluation if I feel confident enough.

Outside of some wicked sunburn, been a good day and it was great when the pretrip started just clicking in my head. It really makes you feel good.

 

He said most likely Monday. He has to take the Smith Class on Sunday. So I get some time to relax a bit, hopefully we'll knock out some shifting time this weekend.

 

I'll keep an eye out. There's a whole lot of people here and I usually ain't at the motel too long. Spending all my time at the pad lately.

He might see me around though, young chubby kid usually complete with a hat, sunglasses, and a cigarette.

 

Thanks for the encouragement everyone.

Today was a real good day. We spent some time at the bad working on Straight Backing. Took me a second to calm down, my first time in the drivers seat and all but after some tries I was having no problem with it.

After lunch we went out to the shifting pad in teams of 3 with an instructor. I went out with my instructor and 2 other guys. It was tough at first working the gears and getting the double clutching down (downshifting was real tough for me). But as I kept at it, I made a lot of progress.

Nothing beats the feeling as when you first hit a perfect shift. #### I had a smile on my face.

I'm spending tomorrow with my instructor and we plan to try to perfect my shifting as much as we can. He's hoping we might get out Sunday night, but if not then Monday it is.

Been enjoying my time here a lot. There's some stress here and there, not to mention the pretrip is just a huge pain in the ###, but overall things start to slowly click in your head and it gets better and better.

I have managed to get almost all my pretrip down. Though my instructor has a newer truck, so I will have to relearn some part locations. But overall I am not overly worried about it. By the three weeks or so, I should have little problem with passing the pretrip.

Hope everyone else enjoyed there week and things went well.