If you carrot all, you'll eat healthy.

The next two days of orientation at the trucking company were fairly similar.

There was the same bulbous instructor guiding us through various segments of the things that we needed to know. There was a parade of  representatives from various departments (Employee Benefits, Safety, Compliance, etc.) telling us what they did, what their concerns were and what they really wanted us to do now that we knew what their concerns were. They showed us how their GPS-enabled software knows exactly where you are at all times, how fast you're going, what gear you're in and how much fuel you're using. Kinda scary, actually.

During our breaks, I drank 35¢ diet Cokes and eavesdropped on sophomoric discussions of which caliber of handgun provides the most stopping power and how much some of my group despised the current President. Sadly, no discussions about Public Radio or this week's edition of the New Yorker.

To liven things up, our group was shown several videos illustrating how we would get into trouble, lose our jobs and kill scores of innocent school children if we did certain things that we all are now pretty convinced that we should never do. One of the better videos focused on driver health, or, more specifically, the lack thereof. Regular exercise (going on refreshing walks around truck stop parking lots is in my future), stretching exercises (up against the side of a Peterbilt) as well as the dangers of relying upon a diet based solely upon fast food.

In that video, a rich actor (playing the part of a underpaid truck driver) reached into the cab's cubbyhole for a Red Delicious apple whilst driving. Meanwhile, the voice-over actor recommended eating lean meats, whole grains and keeping a steady supply of fresh apples readily available for snacking upon, as well as some baby carrots. The class was quite amused the notion of eating baby carrots. I think that they were amused by the whole concept of vegetables, an unfamiliar food group.

After briefly touching upon the healthy trucker lifestyle concept, we were whisked away to the "mixed-message lunch". Lunch that day was held at the Hometown Buffet, a destination sadly overlooked in the "healthy lifestyle" video that we had just watched. Once there, everyone piled their plates high with hot food items that are illegal pretty much everywhere except in the southern United States. I avoided the chicken-fried steak with fetid Country Gravy and sat away from the others, all by myself, so that I would not have to discuss the merits of magnum over regular ammunition. On our last day, we went to an execrable Chinese restaurant that had pretty much the same menu as the Hometown Buffet, but with some Fortune Cookies for a bit of that Asian je ne sais quoi. There were no baby carrots.

We also got to tour through the company's office buildings, thereby disrupting folks who were just trying to get their work done. We got to interrupt the work of all sorts of nicely-dressed people sitting comfortably at their cubicles, staring at computer screens; the sort of of job I once had, back in another life. In addition to bothering the nice office people, we got to tour through where really big trucks get repaired after newbies like ourselves run into things.

The bulbous man issued us some supplies. We all received about a pallet's worth of manuals, rules and instructions, some trailer seals, a padlock and a mysterious steel tool that apparently is used for turning on lawn sprinklers. We also got issued a ComData card, some blank checks, a baseball cap with the company logo and a nifty lanyard sporting a nifty photo ID badge, the photo badge that signifies my employment.


Next week, I go out on the road with my trainer. I'm bringing apples.

What have I gotten myself into?

One day, I was somehow passing my DMV test and had become a licensed driver. The next day, May Trucking called and invited me up to "orientation", which I thought was just a fancy term for "interview".

The deal was that they would put me aboard a Greyhound bus and bring me up to their HQ outside of Salem, Oregon. Once there, they would put me up in a hotel, feed me for a few days and see if they liked the cut of my hijab. If they didn't, I figured that I would be shamed,  thrown back onto the Greyhound and, with my tail between my legs, forced to explain to everyone why I was such a loser (or looser, as so many people seemed to spell it nowadays). Instead of taking the bus, I opted to drive my own car up to Oregon; they promised to pay me back for my gas.

"It's a long way, about 500 miles", I whined to myself as I was driving up I-5.  I stopped whining when I realized that, from now on, I would be doing that every day. Fortunately, the driver's seats in Semi-trucks are designed for long trips, evidently the seats in my 1994 Camry are not.

I wondered what my classmates would be like once I got there. This could be really cool; it could be like when I was a college freshman: people that I met there would become my bestest friends, my BFFs, my friends for life! Or, (and far more likely) the people I met there would simply eschew me, look at me aghast, treat me like the misfit, loner and outcast that I always have been.

Being a Berkeley native and being brought up inside that strange fishbowl during that strange period long ago put me at odds with the rest of contemporary society. Even nowadays (with our polarized country), I feel as though I really don't fit in anywhere. This new career may be my best chance for me just to stay outside. I tossed and turned all night, worrying myself into a tizzy about the possibility of failing, especially of failing the skills test.

The next morning, I helped myself to the motel's free continental breakfast. I ate a healthy breakfast: raisin bran with skim milk, a piece of fruit and a hard-boiled egg. At about 7:30 am, a company van came to the motel to pick up all the people going to orientation. There was a crowd of people already outside, all waiting for the van. But they were not my people at all: dressed up in stereotypical trucker garb, ball caps, Carhartt jackets and all wearing Bluetooth earpieces, these were "Super Truckers". Certainly, these were not my fellow "ERD's" or "Entry Level Drivers"; they must all be experienced drivers who were attending orientation just in order to learn the company culture before they go back out on the road.

Where were my people? The newbies, still wet behind the ears from trade school? The ones with pierced ears, sporting expensive, bright red hi-top sneakers listening to that hippity-hop music with over-sized earphones? None of those people were around. Maybe they overslept?

I drove myself the six miles to school, parked in the lot and asked to be directed to "Orientation". Once inside, I found myself  right back with the same guys straight out of Central Casting, the ones who seemed to be auditioning for a part in the next installment of the Smoky & the Bandit series. I took a seat and simply waited to be curtly redirected to the correct classroom. Although it was still before 8:00 am, everybody in the room already had a folder of important papers except for me. I started fiddling with my smart phone, still waiting to be told that I was in the wrong location.

A man came in and told me to follow him out to the parking lot.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I haven't shown my paperwork to anyone yet", I told him. He replied that I was indeed in the right place, that the paperwork could wait and that we were going out for a road test. I told him about all of the "real truckers" that were in the room and he told me that out of the 10 people there, only one was an experienced driver; the rest were newly-minted graduate newbies like myself. And as for the extreme trucker garb, well, they apparently wanted to make a good first impression. With my fleece jacket, designer glasses and Merrell boots, I looked like I was there to attend an Audubon Society luncheon.

We walked out through a gravel parking lot, it was filled with enormous semi-trucks and trailers. These were not the ratty old school trucks that I had trained on, these were the real thing: shiny trucks built fairly recently, fancy models that had actual working lights and gauges. 

We did a light 'once over', not really a proper pre-trip inspection, just to make sure that the fifth wheel release bar was secure, we both climbed inside and I was instructed to drive back through the lot, out the gate and onto I-5. The tractor had a 13 speed transmission, one that I had never seen before. It shifted like a dream, assuming your dreams include double-clutching. I drove the prescribed loop, took my turns correctly, check my mirrors often, downshifted well enough and returned to the yard without embarrassing myself too badly. I had passed the road test.
 
Next, I was again snatched out of orientation by a different fella and driven to the back of the lot where there was an obstacle course set up with old truck tires and other nuisances. 

This was the "skills test" part of the orientation. I knew only a couple of things about it: that it was extremely difficult and that failing it would send me home that day. The skills that one had to show seem fairly easy as described: just do a prescribed right turn starting from a fairly shitty beginning (trailer positioning already tweaked so that it would be hard to recover), a straight-line backing (easy-peasy) and then a 45 degree alley dock. All stuff that I had trained on.

Of course, I had not trained on doing them with a 53 foot trailer or with my career at stake. 

The good part is that here, "pull-ups" were not penalized. (The DMV docks you a point each time you do a pull-up). Oh, and there was this little matter of a horse-shoe shaped portion that one needed to negotiate without hitting anything. Would have been a cinch, had I been driving a Smart Car, but I was not. Instead, I was driving a vehicle that was approximately the size of New Hampshire. Again, I took it slowly and somehow I passed the skills test. 

Back to the classroom and do some more paperwork, then went somewhere to correctly pee into a special cup. I passed again. At about noon, someone delivered about a million bad pizzas from Pizza Hut so we all ate pizza for lunch, thereby cancelling out my healthy breakfast.

After gorging on bad pizza, most of the others were sent off to get their DOT physicals done. That would take up the rest of the day. Since I had mine done just recently, I was excused to go back to the hotel. 

Once back at the hotel, I studied up for the nap test.

Squeeze me and I'll pass another one.

Well, thank God, that's over.

After I graduated from Trucker school, I had two long weeks to just sit on my hands and wait for the DMV driving test. I know how to sit on my hands. Quite good at that, actually.

I also used the time off to study for my endorsements. Endorsements are the certifications needed so that one can transport or do additional things, such as drive a truck around packed to the gills with explosives.

The HazMat endorsement is the hardest one to study for; it has some fairly straight-forward rules to memorize mixed in with a whole passel of oblique minutia. It is, to put it mildly, an absolutely boring mind-fuck.

When it became clear that I could procrastinate no longer, I drove my sorry ass down to the nearest DMV office and tried my best to concentrate on correctly answering the questions while a nearby, unattended toddler screamed. Despite my firm belief in imminent doom, I passed three tests that day and received my endorsements. Phew!

The following Monday, I went back down to the Trucker school in Stockton for some much-needed refreshing of my skills. (It is normal for the graduates to come back to practice just before the test)

It was pretty clear that, in only two weeks, I had forgotten quite a bit. I had forgotten the correct sequence of how to do a "Brake test". I had forgotten enough names of parts that I wouldn't be able to properly do my "Pre-Trip" but, most importantly, I had forgotten how to do a 90 degree alley dock.

Clearly, I sucked.

I was going to fail. I was going to humiliate myself in front of my friends, family, my girlfriend and my fellow students. If you don't do the brake test in front of the DMV examiner perfectly, you fail, you don't pass go and you won't get to proceed with the rest of the test. Big-time fail if you blow the first part. And failing was not an option. I didn't even have an escape plan if I failed.

I took the bull by the tail and faced the situation. It was either that, or fail.


On Monday, I reviewed both the "Pre-Trip" and the bizarre parameters of the brake test. On Tuesday, I spent five hours doing nothing but driving a semi-truck though the "alley dock" and parallel parking routines. On Wednesday, I went to the DMV.in Modesto to actually take my test.


I was nervous and absolutely tongue-tied during the Pre-Trip portion of the test. There are over a hundred individual truck-thingies to identify correctly and I just couldn't even get the words out. It was as if I had a terrycloth dish towel shoved down my throat.

Thankfully, it got better after that. I did fine during my driving and during the "rodeo skills". I didn't hit any curbs or run over any elderly pedestrians. I did, however, take three (cough-cough) pull-ups during my Alley Dock (which is quite shameful and costs you points) but, luckily, I nailed my parallel parking test.


My final score won't ever qualify me for the Trucker Olympics, but I passed.

I passed. I passed. I passed!!!!