Check-Out

It is check out time, after double checking that I had everything my car is packed up, and I am eating breakfast right now checking out bus schedules online for people today. I will be giving a guy from the Toledo area a ride home as well, just to save him from the horror that is Greyhound.

There isn't much time till we take off, so more once we get home.

Indiana Dunes: West Beach

One place I went to twice this week was the West Beach. This is a small part of the Indiana Dunes National Park. It is a beautiful beach, that some day I would love to spend a day at, the water was extrememly cold, but it is still early in the year.

To the right is just one of the many dunes in the park. These dunes are simply huge. To see that amount of sand and knowing that they really move as the wind and waves push them around. One dune has started moving over a trail, covering all the smaller plants, leaving only the trees and tall bushes visible.

This is definitly a park to come to, but plan to come for a full day in the sun. It does cost per car to get in, but is free after 6PM. While it was fun to get around paying, I really feel that there were better pictures of Chicago in the morning waiting for me.

Maybe this would be a nice place to visit during the Olympics in 2016.

Dust, Lots of Dust

My eye is better after using the eye drops I picked up at Walgreens this morning. The first one I went to was still closed at 7AM, but the second one opened at that time. They have a store about every two miles up here, so it is really easy to find another one if needed. I think just keeping my contacts out and using the drops will take care of it, but I still reported the injury to the instructors. Tomorrow I may have to fill out paperwork to get it covered as a workplace injury, just in case it becomes a problem.

This morning we went down by another person. At least he was just sent back to his school for further training. He can come back after he gets some more experience behind the wheel. Apparently he had just as many difficulties driving forward as backward.

Today's schedule was fairly basic, learning about the communication systems in the trucks. Then doing some backing practice in the yard. We also found out that at this point we are basically going to be hired.

I talked to a person from the training department today, they wanted to check and see if I could get myself to Romulus to meet my trainer. Since I would be able to park my car at the terminal, it will be no problem. Now I just need to find out when I need to be there. Hopefully it will be after a few days at home.

The word is that tomorrow is going to be a short day, so at the latest we should be out of there by noon. I think the first thing I am going to do is run to a car wash and spray all the dust and grime off of my car. It looks absolutely horrible at this point, and I just want to make it not nasty anymore.

Early

This is just early, I went to bed early last night, and was up early this morning. It actually felt like it was 5:30AM, not the 6:30AM that it actually is in the Eastern Time Zone. Until now I have felt like I have had an advantage in the Central Time Zone, coming from the East.

All week I have been watching Chicago local news in the morning, and the quality of the news is so much better than that in the Toledo area. They waste little time with annoying graphics between stories. That might be because they actually have a lot of news to report, but it still makes a nice difference.

I don't believe I ever located myself for everyone, I am from the Toledo, Ohio area, and am staying in a hotel in Portage, Indiana. The orientation for Falcon that I am in is being held in Gary, Indiana.

A last night, my last post mentioned my left eye being irritated by dust yesterday. Today it is a little sore to the touch, and bloodshot, so no contacts just glasses. I am going to swing by Walgreen's on the way to class and pick up some eye drops to rinse my eye with. Basically it is then see if it feels better or worse by the end of today.

Off to the dust bowl, I am going to see if I can stay upwind this time.

An Uneventful Third Day

Nothing much interesting happened today, we went over the proper way to log, securing loads, bridge law (length vs weight), and sliding tandems. We also got to watch a few people take their test from yesterday again. With the wind we had whipping through the lot, all the dust raised by the trucks moving around to back just covered us. My left eye is protesting a bit, and I may have to skip wearing contacts tomorrow because of it, I will have to see how it feels tomorrow.

Tonight I really felt like a steak, and since I haven't spent more than ten dollars on a dinner the entire week, felt it was a good time to locate an Applebees. We found one, and a major road construction project on US 6, just a bit south of where we are staying.

Well with a shower to rinse the dust from my hair, I am just feeling sleepy now. More tomorrow.

Day Two at Orientation

Today started off with dividing the class of seventeen into about half. One half went out in

the trucks to start getting evaluated, just to see where we stood in our driving and backing skills. The other half, my half, got to stay inside and watch videos. The first few of these were on the Smith System of driving. After going through it, I wished that I had seen it back when I started with Werner. It is just a few simple concepts, but when put together they really do make a difference in how one drives. Just another thing that someone thought of and is making tons of money from.

We took a brief test on the Smith System, watched a few other videos, then out to lunch. Once again I packed, have to save money somewhere. So far I am fairly far ahead on food, most of my lunches this week were purchased at home for less than twenty dollars. I have also gotten lucky in finding reasonable places to eat dinner at. Tonight I found a little place buried near the vacation and beach houses near Lake Michigan, called The Flamingo Pub. I had a fantastic Reuben sandwich with a good portion of fries for less than eight dollars, including my iced tea. This was truly a neighborhood bar, each person that walked in the door was greeted by name by at least one other patron. Then it was off to the beach.

I had already been at the Miller Beach prior to eating dinner. Talking to a person there, I found out about the Flamingo, and that the park stopped charging for entry at 6PM. They had several trails, as well as the long beach area to wander, which I did. I got to see a lot of girls in bikinis, and these were girls that were supposed to be in bikinis. In one of the pictures above you can see Chicago and the Sears Tower in the distance, past the dunes and over the water.

I got so sidetracked by eating and the fun at the beach I almost forgot to talk about the second part of my day of being evaluated. Once again we were divided, this time between two trucks, one group for a road test, the other for backing tests. Wanting to see how a spread axle turned, we were doing the driving test while pulling a flatbed trailer, I decided to not go first. The guy that did go first had a few problems shifting, and wanted to discuss this fact with all of us, so he turned to ask our, the three guys riding in the bunk area, opinion. Since he was doing around 35 in a 30, had just passed a sign that said dangerous curve with a 90 degree arrow, all I could do is look at him and point straight ahead, at the scrap yard and concrete wall he was about to run us all into. He managed to make the turn by jumping on the brakes and lugging (had the transmission in a higher gear than the speed required) the engine. I was more than happy to jump in the drivers seat to go next when we got stopped for the switch. Mainly I was hoping to get it over with before anything else heart pounding happened to throw me completely off my driving. I didn't do too badly for it being a completely unfamiliar truck, but I really did feel that I should have done better at it. I was happy at the finish of our trucks evaluation, that I seemed to be the best driver in it, which really wasn't saying a lot about the over all skill level of the group.

Next was the backing test, after getting a mulligan on the first try, I got perfectly lined up one space to the right of the one I was supposed to, I did quite well at the three different tests. I definitely feel that I was the best in the group backing, just due to the amount of time and tries it would take the others to get backed in.

The area we were taking the backing tests in was dry and dusty. The dirt had been driven over so many times that it had been ground into a fine powder that would billow at the slightest breeze. The wind wasn't blowing when I took the third picture, but the look of the ground can give one the impression of how dry it is.

In talking with the road test instructor, I did find out that we were now a group of sixteen. One person had been sent home after making the transmission in the road test truck go bang, none of the people in the truck knew exactly what had happened mechanincally, but it did seem to work afterwords. Apparently he hadn't passed a single backing test prior to driving, so they told him it was time to go. I don't know if it was back to school to practice more, or just get out, but he is gone.

That is all for tonight, I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow brings.

The First Day of Orientation

Today was a long day, we got started at around 7:30 AM and went to a little after 6PM. We do get an hour for lunch, and we found a really good Chinese restaurant, Wing Wah. You get tremendous value for your dollar there, the cost included hot tea, and a bowl of egg drop soup. The food was excellent, large portions and well flavored. The only thing I would have liked is for the spicy to be a bit more spicy, I could barely taste it for something that came with a warning.

We started the day with a paperwork process that would make the IRS proud. Never in my life have I had to supply three years of W2s to prove my previous employment. The number of different forms that we signed was insane as well. For some reason I had to study a little extra hard for my drug test. Even though I drank a lot I still had to drink a water and wait till around ten central time to finally be able to go.

I packed food to save money, so didn't have to leave to find lunch. After that was over we did several assessment tests to check our knowledge of logs and maps. I didn't do to badly with the log one, but only missed two question on the maps, one of those was due to reading the question wrong.

Tonight I have some homework to work on, it is planning a trip and then logging it as if it was actually happening. Shouldn't be too difficult, except the need to make a note of every single change, well it feels that way anyway.