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.
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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.
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