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.