Start school in the morning - Ridge Career Center

Day 7 went very well. I'd like to take a second to hang a tag on the 5 of us class A students. Mine is easy, I'm the "old dog". Then there is the "kid". Now he's no ordinary kid. This young fella has thousands of miles of riding with an uncle under his belt, so he came in well prepared to excel and he is doing just that. I'm progressing better than I could have dreamed and the "kid" is hanging right with me. The 3rd member of our cast is the "magician". And yes he is a bonafide accomplished magician. So far he has just brought in a deck of cards and he is smooth as silk with his presentation and his delivery. The 4th member of our cast is the "big fella". And when I'm saying big I mean all of 6'9'' and 350lb BIG! And the 5th member of our cast is the "project". And to this point, he has been exactly that.
We were a man short today. The "big fella" had an accident last night and it disabled his ride. So today started with us going over our logbooks again and then we watched the video again on logbooks and hours of service. The lead instructor then went over the gears in the 10 speed Pete we were gonna learn to shift gears on today. So the lead instructor had us hook up to a 48. Then he took me and the 'kid" out first on the track and he showed us the double clutch technique to use. The "kid" and I picked it up so quick that after 30 minutes the instructor hopped out and let us practice on our own. We practiced another hour or so and we got smoother and smoother. Then after lunch, the "magician" and the "project" went out with the instructor and the "kid" and I decided to self test on the 4 backing skills we have learned. The "kid" first time thru the test did the straight back, both offset backs, and the 90* back with no gigs and only 2 pull ups setting the bar pretty high. On my turn, I had to use 2 pull ups on one of my offsets and it came down to my final task with no gigs and needing to ace the 90* without a pullup to match the "kid" and I pulled it off. Haha! So we do it again and the "kid" does pretty well but did touch a line on the straight back and used 3 or 4 pull ups. This time I made it thru the straight back and both offsets without any gigs or pull ups. So I'm heading to the 90* gunning for a totally clean score and end up getting out of position and had to use two pull ups to save the 90* with no gigs. It turns out that the "magician" did very well on the shifting also while the "project" struggled badly at first but did get much better as the day progressed. The instructor told us at the end of the day that he had never had a set of 3 students pick up shifting as quickly as we did on the first day. Yikes! Better activate the "Big Head Police".

 

monayindabank, please understand that the general industry standard minimum age to get a job is 21. Probably dictated by the insurance companies. So do alot of research before spending the money. The "kid" in my class has a straight truck class B job waiting for him provided by a family member, so his situation is a bit different. If I were you, I'd start a thread concerning your age and then you will get the advise from the seasoned posters on the issue. Good luck!

 

Day 8. I crashed and burned today big time!! Only 3 of us class A guys were present today. The "magician", the "kid", and of course the "old dog". Remember just yesterday was the first day of shifting gears and double clutching. Today was: downshifting, bumping a dock, driver's side parallel park, and blind side parallel park. WHOA HORSE, WHOOAAAAAAA!!!!! Information overload big time for this old boy! Totally scrambled my brains today! The concept of downshifting alone is a bit of a challenge since you have to accelerate to shift into the lower gear. Not exactly the most natural thing I've ever encountered. Just as I was STARTING to get a feel for downshifting, the instructor threw in bumping a dock which was not hard. Knowing I needed to work on the downshifting I figured we'd get to work on it. NOPE!! So we're only at mid-mornig and the instructor says "now I'm gonna show ya'll the blind side parallel park". I'll be perfectly honest, when I encounter a new concept that requires alot of brain power and focus to overcome like the downshifting, I find it very difficult to just shift my focus to a new challenging task. And he threw BOTH parallel park maneuvers at us today!! So for me, today was quite overwhelming!! Struggling with 3 seperate challenges in the same day was rather stressful! I have no clue why he threw so much at us in one day!! I just hope I'm back to normal tomorrow!

 

Thankfully, Day 9 was a good one! The entire cast of 5 class A students were present today. The only new maneuvers the lead instructor threw on us this morning was the Left and Right "Hook" maneuvers which went very well. So most of the day we got to work on shifting, downshifting, bumping the dock, and the driver's side parallel park. Which is exactly what I needed! I got ALOT more comfortable with the downshifting and the driver's side parallel park. We just didn't have enough time to get around to the blind side parallel park. The "old dog" is back on track!!