First day in the truck...

I survived. The truck survived. Nobody around me was hurt or killed or wrecked despite the best efforts of some idiotic drivers who have to gun it around the slow truck so that they can get to the red light quicker. Ugh.

So, I thought that we were going to bobtail today (drive without a trailer) through some non-traffic area to get a feel for things for a while before we started doing anything serious.

Guess again.

Chris (my trainer) took us, trailer and all, to an industrial park so that we could get a couple of practice turns in. Then we were thrown to the wolves. The wolves being Southern California traffic.

Now, I've driven manual transmissions for as long as I've driven. I should be able to shift, right?

Guess again.

Never mind that I had to keep reminding myself that the shift pattern is different and the clutch is different and that there are TEN gears, five of which must be gone through almost before you clear a decent-sized intersection...

After a while, I settled down and was able to shift up through the gears without much problem. Downshifting is another story. Double-clutching is strange enough without having to add throttle between clutches in order to shift down. Never mind that I'm trying to shift into 4th gear when trying to go into 5th because it's positioned where 5th is on most cars. And I kept forgetting to set the selector switch so that I could go into 5th instead of trying to go into 10th. Yikes.

And what happens when you try to get it into gear and it just grinds and bounces back out? You can't keep coasting because once you go 100 yards, the Gods of CDL testing consider you out of control and will fail you. You've got to find a gear somewhere. Anywhere.

All in all, I did much better than I expected to. I have a lot to work on and think about, of course, but it could have been much worse. Two instructors have told me that I have the double-clutching footwork down pretty good, so I guess I have to believe them on that point.

Tomorrow is half a day driving the truck and half a day driving a simulator. Now it is bedtime.