The Halfway Point

Fact: an average eighteen wheeler, trailer and all, is about 70 ft long
Fact: your standard four door sedan is about 12-15 ft long
Fact: an average eighteen wheeler is roughly 4-5 car lengths long

Fact: backing an eighteen wheeler in a straight line is perhaps the most frustratingly difficult thing I've ever had to do

We've spent two days straight now learning how to back these monsters up in a straight line, and it's taken me two days to finally get it right. That's a good thing because we move on to something called parallel backing and offset backing tonight. Your goal is to basically manuever the truck (in reverse) into a small box bordered by painted yellow lines and barrels marking the corners. The instructors said to expect many barrels to be ran over, so I'm assuming that the next time I post, I'll have some number of barrels that I demolished to report.

Things are continuing to go well, and the class size continues to wither. I'm hanging in there though, with high spirits. However, spending hours out on an airstrip in the cold practicing backing eighteen wheelers in the cold has taken a toll on my health a bit. I've got bronchitis again. This is like, the second time in three months. That's a new record for me. My mom is getting a prescription for antibiotics sent up here so hopefully in the next few days I'll get that taken care of.

At this point I've been here for... ten days. It feels like so much longer. So I guess this is the halfway point. In four days, supposing I pass all these skills tests, I go out on the road every night for a week with an instructor to prove I'm competent and then that's it.

So in another 10 days, I'll have leapt over the most difficult of hurdles in my journey.

Hopefully.