New Driver, About To Start Training Tomorrow Morning!

So here's the latest on my training...

LOTS of classroom instruction. Things like:

- Pressurized brake checks and adjusting the slack adjusters. This is stuff they touched on superficially in CDL school, but here we're actually going in depth and hands on.

- Life on the road (where to shower, park, eat, sleep, time management, getting exercise, etc.).

- How to chain down a load.

- How to put on tire chains.

- Communicating with customers, dispatch, safety and the shop guys.

- Uphill/downhill shifting.

- FMCSR Regulations (securing loads, HOS , winter driving conditions, etc.).

- Different ways to improvise under various conditions (my instructor calls it "MacGyvering")

- Troubleshooting brakes/electrical/air systems.

- Oversize loads.

- What to do in a variety of situations (getting lost, passing a scale, tire fires, accidents, breakdowns, etc.).

-Trip envelopes/delivery receipts/bills of lading.

And so on and so on...

I'm learning so much so fast that I don't really know how much my brain is actually retaining. When I was in CDL school I thought, "man this driving thing sure is easy!" Now I'm realizing just how much thought and attention must go into everything you do, and how many responsibilities you actually have as a driver. It's a little overwhelming.

Here are some pictures of a load which I tarped last Friday. Another lumber load. It was a partial load which was brought back to the yard for another driver, and we took it to a local lumber company to add some more to it. Then we brought it back and did the tarping in the yard. That's me up there in the second picture :)

On a different note, I had my first encounter with what are most likely bed bugs this week. I stayed at the hotel on Sunday night, and on Monday we practiced chaining up tires. I was laying in the dirt a lot, reaching behind the tires to hook up the chains. Then that evening when I got back to the hotel, I started feeling these little itches all over my body, with red bumps forming. I didn't really know what it was. I had a suspicion it might be bed bugs, but I wasn't sure, because I thought I might also have been bitten by something in the dirt that day, or had an allergic reaction or something. Still, the next morning I put the little card on the sheets to have housekeeping swap them out. That day, I showed my trainer the bumps and he said it might be from the chemical that they spray on the lot to keep the dirt down. So that's what I went with, but it got even worse that night. Today, seeing how bad it was, my trainer sent me to an occupational health office and they said it was most likely bed bugs. So this afternoon I had to pack up all my stuff and move to another hotel. I washed all my clothes (even the clean ones I hadn't used yet) and am now waiting for them all to dry. I also sprayed my luggage with Lysol. Here's a picture of the bumps on my arm:

That's pretty much the worst spot, but they are scattered all over my body. They itch like crazy, and hurt whenever I rub them against something rough. I've been using Benadryl, both topical cream and the internal capsules, but it hasn't helped much. The capsules made me pretty drowsy, so I don't think I'm gonna be able to take any tomorrow morning. This sucks. I will never stay in a hotel when I'm out on the road.

But the good news is I'll probably be heading out with my first load early next week! The other guy I was training with leaves tomorrow morning for a delivery of lumber products near Washington, D.C. It works out good for him as a first trip, because it's a nice long distance run which will give him time to get acclimated to the experience of being on the road. I hope I can get a first load like that...