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Had another good day today but still a little perplexed and wondering if I'm over estimating my progress. I found out right after we were getting started this afternoon that I'm supposed to be in early tomorrow with a couple of other people to get some work in all day. Last week and this week we've all only been in from noon to four with going back to a full day next week. The other two asked to come in early with me are two who I know are struggling and talking about giving up on the manual transmission completely. One actually considered quitting completely yesterday. I know there are others struggling more than me in addition to those two so it is kind of bothering me that I am in that group coming in early for more work. I'm happy that I get more time behind the wheel and able to practice what I need to work on but it really is messing with my head. One of the others in my group really struggled today more than me which is probably why I'm second guessing how I'm doing but I have to keep remembering that the decision was made before today and it is completely possible that they just picked one person from each of the three groups. And in the end, I'm also happy that we'll be with the same instructor that I've had the last three days so I will make the best of it.

I'm just going to be grateful for the extra time and go with it taking advantage of the extra practice and not let it bother me though. I am struggling with the not letting it bother me because my issues are all mental when I do make mistakes. The mental part is my biggest problem with just about anything I do really. If I can just kind of blank out my mind and stop over thinking everything then I'm good but from time to time my brain just goes into overdrive and I constantly analyze and think about every little thing that instincts can't just take over. I was better today than I was yesterday and way better than Monday so I know I'm making progress. I feel like I'm so close to having it nailed, I just have to get my brain to shut down and let instincts take over. I know the second I don't do something perfectly and then instead of just recovering from it and moving on, I dwell on it and the next couple of minutes are rough. Then I get back in the groove and do things correctly for the next ten minutes but as soon as I push the clutch in too deep or am a little too slow with a shift and have to goose the gas to get into gear... my brain just gets in the way for a few minutes until I can get it all back out of my head.

Either way, I've got a full day from 7am to 4pm ahead of me tomorrow to work on things and be in even better shape going into what is hopefully my final week than if I only had a half day like the other 6 in the class.

I haven only had the slightest doubt one other time and that was on day one of the second week when I tried backing up for the first time. That was a disaster. That only lasted about ten minutes though because the head instructor immediately hopped in and showed me a thing or two which basically boiled down to relax, stop as soon as you know something is going sideways, make a small correction and once that one works just stop again to straighten out the wheels and everything is good. I know I can do this but that nagging feeling of maybe I'm not where I think I am is bothering me a little.

Either way, I know that I've got this and will be getting my CDL. I also learned today that when it comes to the skills test, I don't have to do nearly as many backing maneuvers as I thought. I thought we had to straight line back (definitely no problem there), offset to both sides, parallel park on both sides and do an alley dock for a total of six maneuvers. It turns out that we only have to straight back, offset to one side and then either alley dock or parallel park. That takes a lot of pressure off. I am confident that I can nail three maneuvers after a little more practice, especially when you have 15 minutes for each and even with needing to make corrections here and there, I've been getting them done in five so I have a LOT of time to take it as slow as I need to in order to not mess it up. Having to do SIX maneuvers would have added a ton more pressure since you have to pass all of the ones you do. Three is a lot less to worry about than six.

Anyway, I'm in good shape even if my brain is messing with me tonight.

I had a really good day today. I got over being brought in early and it looks like it wasn't because I was doing worse than I thought or worse than anybody else, it was just a thing where they needed to make sure the newer instructor was ready to take student on the road. He has been there two months but only allowed to teach backing maneuvers on the yard until so they could make sure he was good with that and was able to find his teaching style and be comfortable. They really do seem to take safety extremely seriously. So one of the other instructors rode with us in the back while the other two of us drove and he monitored the new guy who was instructing us. There were supposed to be three of us students but one gave up on the manual and switched to automatic.

And then in the afternoon we got tested on our pre-trip inspections. In the test with the DOT, everybody has to do the coupling and in cab inspections and air brake test but not necessarily all of the others (engine, tractor and trailer). It's a random assignment but sometimes you end up having to do ALL of them which you would prefer to not have to do of course. So we each had to do the coupling and then one other. I pulled the engine which was fine with me because I have those down and am very confident in every inspection. I got a little nervous knowing that I was being timed and I have to pass before I can even be considered to take the actual skills test but I almost nailed it. You are allowed to miss 9 or 10 points on the two inspections combined. I drew the engine and then the mandatory coupling and only missed one on each inspection for a total of two missed points away from perfection.

I forgot to mention the freaking frame not being dented, broken, cracked and not having any illegal welds as far as it is visible while doing the engine. Almost everything else I have to mention is attached to the dang frame. Missing that was just dumb and you can bet that I won't do that again. Then on the coupling I didn't mention the platform that the fifth wheel is mounted on and that it was mounted and secured and not cracked or broken and no missing nuts, bolts or welds. I got every other single part though. I can't believe that others in the class failed the inspections. They've been telling us every day of the three weeks we've been here to study and practice those inspections. Some don't handle pressure well but still. You can be pretty far from perfect and still pass the freaking inspection test. We've been here three weeks now. That's 15 days of class. Every single one of those days they have told us to study the pre-trip inspections. They have given us fool proof checklists and more or less cheat sheets to study. They have even posted videos on YouTube that we can watch. I just can't fathom how a single person failed the test today. Heck, after our morning briefing on what's going on for the day they literally tell us to go to our trucks and start the pre-trip and practice it. Then the instructor shows up and observes the group as we go through the inspections for a bit to make sure we're getting it right. They don't make us do the entire list of inspections because it would eat up way too much time, but the idea is to make sure that we're working on them.

And finally, since this is me, you know I'm going to tell you about something dumb that I did today. During my drive there is a roundabout that we've been going all the way around. It's not wide but it also isn't stupidly narrow. It's a challenge but one that we should be able to handle. I haven't been in a truck with anybody who has run over a curb either around the outside or on the inside median there but I've heard that the curb in the middle has been run over more than once or twice this week by drivers in our class. I haven't run over it but I did rub the side of the tires against it a little once. In the words of the head instructor though, running over a curb is a fail but rubbing it may as well never have happened because it's not running over it.

Anyway, we've been going through there in fifth which keeps you moving at maybe 10mph at the most (but normally a little less in these trucks) and even then it's a bit of a challenge. Of course I have a little brain cramp and the next thing you know, I'm entering that roundabout in sixth. I realized it right as I was about to enter the roundabout and the instructor just said, "Even I don't want to go around this in sixth but let's see what you can do because the only other option is to come to a complete stop." Completely stopping in that situation presents its own issues and you can't change gears when your steer wheels aren't straight so... I just decided to go with it. You only go a couple of miles per hour faster in sixth than in fifth with no feet on the pedals but those extra couple of miles per hour in that situation changes everything and you can't brake in that situation either because bringing the engine down below idol isn't something the truck really cares for. I was gripping the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles were white and my butt cheeks were clenched so tight that I could have turned coal into a diamond. But I made it. Didn't even rub a single curb. The instructors were pretty impressed. They also said, "Now you know it can be done... but you aren't going to do it again are you?" My reply was a simple, "Absolutely not." Or that was the basic idea. My response might have included a few curse words emphasizing that I did not want to try that again. They were almost certain that I was either hopping the curb on the inside with the trailer or going to be concentrating on the trailer so hard that I was going to take out the mailbox for one of the businesses that's right on the road. I showed them though and didn't do either of those things or even scrape the tires on the curb. But, yeah, I really do NOT want to try that again. It was a nice confidence booster with regards to being able to know and control where the trailer at while things are moving faster than I would like. But never again.

Glad you're doing well, we at GRB are pulling for you!

Tomorrow starts what should hopefully be my final week here. There are a lot of us in this class going into our fourth week and with the holiday today, I don't know that all of us will be able to test before early next week. Anybody who tests this week and doesn't pass on the first time will definitely be here until next week. I don't want to have to go into a fifth week but if I have to, I won't be upset. I still need more practice at my backing maneuvers because we didn't get more than 2 or 3 attempts at parallel parking on each side and the alley docking so if I don't get to test until Monday or Tuesday of next week, at least by then I know that I'll be in really good shape to pass on my first try and be ready to start my new career.

There are a couple of guys here in my class that I don't think are going to have their CDL very long after they get out of here. The first day of class we were told that they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to alcohol while we're students at their school. They know that we might have a drink or two with dinner or whatever but suggested that we avoid it completely because if they have any reason to believe that we've been drinking, they will give us a breathalyzer and even a .01 will get you kicked out. If you get kicked out then not only do you lose this chance to get your CDL but the company that is sponsoring your training will drop you and you signed a contract that says if you get kicked out of here then you now owe around $6k to pay them back your tuition that they paid up front and you wasted. Six grand is a hefty price to pay because you couldn't go a few weeks without drinking especially when you don't have to be legally intoxicated to done for.

I know at least two of the guys in my class start drinking as soon as they get back to the hotel after class every day. I just saw one of them out in the parking lot having a smoke and he's stumbling drunk less than 11 hours before we report to class and hop behind the wheel. I know he will be fine in the morning if he just stops drinking now and goes to bed but you can't do that when you're out on the road for weeks at a time and driving 8-10 hours most days. When you're on the road a .01 will get you put out of service for a time and a little bit of trouble but a .04 gets you a DUI when you're driving a commercial vehicle. If they can't just not drink all day Sunday through 4pm on Friday for a few weeks when we're down here... they are in trouble once they hit the road with nobody to watch over them every single day.

I did have three or four beers with one of the guys the first Friday but realized after the first couple of sips that I didn't want to start that habit and get sucked into drinking regularly even if it was just Friday night and Saturday. He called me the next day talking about picking up some more beer and there was no way I was going to do that. I still had 11 cans in my trunk from softball a couple of weeks before when I took a 12 pack and only had one. I just gave him those 11 so he had his beer and I no longer had any around to tempt me.

Well, my last post was a little too spot on. I don't know what happened last night after I saw the one guy stumbling drunk but he did not make it to school today. Apparently he wasn't feeling well. I imagine not. And then another guy didn't show up at all (hope he's OK) and the two women in my class almost got into a fight in the parking lot at lunch. Interesting day!

Otherwise today went really well though. I got lots of practice in with parallel parking and alley docking. It's all coming together and while I don't think that I'll be testing this week because we have so many needing to test and it's a short week, I'll have to go into a fifth week and will test early next week and be out of here within the next 10 days or less unless I fail multiple times and I'm NOT going to fail the skills tests. I could go test tomorrow and have a 60/40 shot at passing everything the first time. A little more practice the next two or three days and I'll be at a 90/10 confidence level.

What I learned today that helps my confidence is that I assumed hitting a "wall" would be an automatic fail during your backing maneuvers. Nope. It's only a point or two. You are allowed to pull forward to make adjustments or get out and look twice for free but if you need more... it's only one point each time. You have 12 points to work with for the three backing maneuvers combined. There is no reason to ever get a single point on the straight line backing and the offset is simple enough that you should never get one there either. Even a conservative estimate of racking up 2 points on the first two maneuvers leaves a ten point cushion on the third and final maneuver which is a TON of cushion for what is the most difficult of the three you will have to do. Somebody in my second week said that they failed their backing maneuvers because they were too far back in the box where the bumper was past the back cones so I thought you failed if you hit a "wall." Nope. The reason he failed was because he set his brakes and blew his horn to signal that he was done with the maneuver. If you aren't completely in the box when you signal that you're finished, that's a fail. If he had just got out and checked where he was at and then pulled forward enough that his bumper was inside the cone before blowing that horn, it would have been maybe an extra point for the get out (if he had already used two) and one point for going back over the cones in the first place. That's only two points. You can literally hit 11 "walls" on the three backing maneuvers and still pass which is kind of scary because in the real world those will likely be cars, fences or ACTUAL WALLS and not cones! That's a lot of dents, dings and scrapes on your trailer.

What a difference two days make. On Monday morning, I would have told you that there is no way that I would be ready to test this week. After yesterday, I would have said that I could probably do it. After today, I am testing on Friday and feeling confident that I'm going to pass. Things started clicking for me yesterday morning and it all continued through today. What I wasn't sure about on the backing maneuvers is now almost instinctive. The instructor I had today is really good and showed us a couple of really simple things that he likes to do differently than the other instructors and that allowed everything to just click. The difference between the second week and just these two days this week with the backing maneuvers is absolutely crazy. The three of us that were grouped together today just kept running through them over and over again without needing any help from the instructor and doing them with plenty of time to spare and with what would have been easily passing scores.

I also have changed my thoughts about being asked to come in during the morning on Friday for the extra work. Either I was just brought in because they were bringing in one person from each group to help them train and sign off on the new guy taking students on the road or I really needed a lot more work than I thought I did. But then when we were all put in groups yesterday, I was put right in with the guys who are going to be the first to test and everybody else seems to believe that they put the people most ready to test together so they could work on what they needed to faster and not be slowed down by anybody struggling. Well that was a complete turn around from how I felt on Friday about being brought in early! Either way, I was glad for the extra driving time even if it meant I only got 15 minutes more than the other two in my group due to the way things worked out in the end with something coming up and an instructor needing to be pulled away to take care of something with one of the trucks that needed some maintenance.

In the end, it was also a big boost to my confidence when I was told yesterday by my instructor that there wasn't enough room for me to test tomorrow (the first day possible because other guys who didn't get it done last week needed to test first) but that I would most likely be going Friday. And then that was confirmed this morning by the head instructor. I appreciated hearing that they think I'm ready and can pass the test because they will not give you a test date or send you there if they don't think you can pass because their job is based on that success rate and they don't want anybody to fail even once and have to retest and definitely not fail enough that the carrier they signed up with says to just send them home because they don't want to trust somebody with their equipment that can't do it or just can't handle the pressure of a test. If you buckle under pressure then they figure you're likely to freeze up the first time you get in a sticky situation on the road and wreck stuff.

Sweeeeeeet