Starting Swift Academy in Lewiston Oct 10!!

I'm back!!!

My time off was good. I spent it building a small building for a composting toilet at one friend's place and doing a lot of farm work at another's. That all paid for my extra travel and living expenses, which is real nice.

I drove back through the desert this time, doing it all in 12 hours yesterday. I saw a lot of pines, junipers, sagebrush, bunchgrass, wide open spaces, canyons, a little forest, and one bighorn sheep. I love the high desert - its stark beauty is incomparable. Around Pendleton and Walla Walla I drove through fierce crosswinds for over an hour - the tumbleweeds were racing across the road like cheetahs.

I wasn't sure if the (almost) two weeks off would make me forget everything, or let it all sink in and become more like second nature. So I was pleased to find that doing the offset back, I did three hole shots and two with one pullup - far better than I've ever done. Alley dock was similarly good - one hole shot and two with one pullup each. I self-scored myself on the pretrip and figured I'd missed four things. So it turns out that not paying any attention to the whole thing for two weeks has made it all easier and more intuitive. I just hope that holds once I'm out on the road again. Hopefully that'll be tomorrow, since the class ahead of us will be doing their state tests. The class I'm in now has only 5 other people, so it's easy for us all to get all the time we need.

It feels good to be back. More than just being on track for my CDL and future job, I like the instructors (and they seem to like me), the students I'm with now seem to be mostly good people, and I like this area. I have my voice (and general health) back, so that's a definite improvement also. But I'm tired, as expected for doing hard manual labor for a week, then driving 12 hours and sleeping for 3. I'm looking forward to the time change this weekend - the sun will be a little closer to our ridiculously early schedule. Time for some groceries and bed!

 

After two days back, I'm now caught up on everything this week. Today started with an hour of road driving with the more laid-back of our road instructors. It turns out that I haven't forgotten anything during my time off, but it's not any easier either - I still need lots of practice before some of the million things become second nature. As usual, he and I chatted most of the time, and by the time we were done driving, we'd nearly made plans to go shopping for a bicycle for him, since I'm the bike geek. I finished all my range time today, and was consistently doing both alley dock and offset back perfectly with 2-3 pullups. Most importantly, I'm getting much better at seeing where the truck is and, if it's not right, how to fix it with minimal effort.

I did a complete pre-trip with another student "grading" me, and aside from completely skipping the alternator, I missed 4 items (and on several others, said all but one of the conditions I was looking for). So I'm feeling good about that, but I'll read over the paper a few times this weekend to be sure I have it down for the evaluation on Monday. I'm excited for next week - it's all road driving, and there's only 6 in our class.

Awesome! I was wondering why I didn't see you around today at the academy and thought maybe they'd sent you straight to Ontario. It's cool that you got to do it earlier in the week. Congratulations on passing! Is your orientation next week or the following? I'm pretty sure mine starts the 15th. BTW, did all the other Oregon people from our class pass the CDL test?

 

Just a bunch of sitting in class and doing hazmat and maps and stuff today. It was useful information, but not very interesting. At least we got the normal classroom instructor this time - she's good at this stuff. Don't most drivers use map software (GPS or laptop) to do most of their trip and route planning now? We studied and took a test to use the Rand McNally trucker atlas, but it's been many years since that was the best tool for the job - computers do those calculations much faster and more precisely.

And you probably can predict my response. By "second nature" I mean things like shifting - when to shift and how to get the rpms and timing right, setting up a corner so as not to hit the curb, putting the steers on the outside of the curve so the tandems don't run out of the lane, etc. That stuff takes practice to get used to and shouldn't take lots of conscious effort at thinking through each bit of it. Then your mind is free for the important stuff - the thousands of decisions that impact everyone's safety, paying attention to the changing situation on the road. Our instructor today showed us a little chart thing that explains it: the progression from unconscious incompetence (I don't know the right way) through conscious incompetence (there's a better way I have to learn) and conscious competence (I have to think about it to keep doing it the right way) to unconscious competence (I do it the right way every time because it's a learned habit). It applies to the "mundane" stuff that's the same every time - like the 3-point stance - not the decisions based on traffic, etc which is always conscious.

Compared to where I started, not running over cones and doing less than 5 pull ups is perfect enough for now! I take what I can get!

I'm going to enjoy my day off tomorrow - got another long bike ride planned - and the time change giving me another hour tonight. It's been cold out, but I've seen worse.