For those who might not know, I am currently in a training program to drive trucks for CR England. I have been on the road as an apprentice now for a few weeks, first with a trainer that I had to leave because he was an idiot, and then with a second trainer who has been awesome to work with.
I first joined up with my second trainer, Andy, on Friday, July 6. He initially told me to meet him Thursday evening between 10:00-11:00, so I drove down to the England drop yard in Mira Loma to meet him. Due to an unforeseen situation, Andy didn’t arrive to pick me up until Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m., so I had to wait awhile.
Since meeting Andy, I have been back and forth between Salinas, CA and Chicago, IL. As I write this now, I am sitting at the world’s largest truck stop off of I-80, exit 284, near Walcott Iowa. And now, here are some thoughts I’ve had, and sights I’ve seen while meandering the highways….
I drove through Donner’s Pass, near Lake Tahoe, for the first time. I thought the area was beautiful and I would love to camp/hike there some time.
As I drove through the Nevada desert Friday night, July 6, I remember looking to the north and seeing a single line of lights in the dark heading up the mountain. The sight was quite curious to me and I wondered who in the world would develop a community so that there was one single line of lights like that. When we arrived in Mill City and stepped out of the truck, the smoky smell of fire hit us and I realized what the lights were – fire. The next morning as we drove out of the area, we saw crews shutting down the highway due to the heavy smoke.
The first time that I ventured into the state of Wyoming was at night and I regretted it because I couldn’t see anything – except the stars, LOTS of stars in the wide open spaces of Wyoming. I remember seeing a sign at the side of the road stating that I was crossing the Continental Divide. Interesting. I’ve crossed the divide many times before, but never at that high latitude.
Now for those of you who don’t know what the Continental Divide is, please bear with me while I explain that this is basically a ridgeline running north-south that divides the direction rivers flow down the Rocky Mountains. Rivers on the west side of the divide flow west; rivers on the east side flow east. With this explanation out of the way, imagine my confusion when I came across another sign stating that I was crossing the Continental Divide – again. How in the world could that be?! Is there not just one Continental Divide – only one ridgeline dividing the flow of rivers? I knew that I had not reversed direction on the highway and was then driving in the opposite direction, and was thus seeing the same sign I had previously seen. So what was the story?
When Andy and I swapped seats in Nebraska and I went into the sleeper, I could not go to sleep until I pulled out my atlas and looked up the Continental Divide in Wyoming. Aha! The I-80 highway travels through a basin known as the Great Divide Basin. So what I did was drive up and over the ridgeline at the western end of the basin, then dropped into the interior of the basin before driving up and over the ridgeline at the eastern end of the basin. The cloud of perplexion hanging over my head dissipated and I was able to rest.
Iowa was, um, well, there was a heck of a lot of corn spread out across the rolling hills. Lots of cows, too. One thing that I found quite interesting in Iowa was the fireflies. Not the fireflies themselves, which are always fun to watch, but rather the results of a firefly making contact with a windshield in motion. In one rapid swoop there will be the glow of a firefly in the air and then suddenly the glow becomes a translucent green-blue smear splattered across the windshield that continues to glow for several seconds. It’s a fascinating sight.
In Chicago, had the opportunity to scare the be-jee-bahs out of a woman sitting in her car. She was waiting at a red light at an intersection where I had to make a right turn. Mind you, now, I am still learning how to maneuver this truck, with its fifty-three foot trailer in tow. While driving down a main street with very narrow lanes, I slowed down as I approached the intersection and then made my turn. Due to the length of my trailer, I have to pull way into an intersection before actually turning the tractor so that the trailer wheels do not roll over the curb. In this particular case, the lady in her car was in my way.
I inched forward with my tractor and then turned right swerving right in front of her car and along her side. As I made the turn, I watched the lady on my left side with her eyes bulging out of her head. At the same time, Andy is hollering at me to take the tractor wider because the trailer wheels were about to go over the curb. If I took the trailer any wider, the lady on my left would be fleeing for her life. I was in a tough situation where in the end, the trailer tires ran over the curb. If I was still in school in Mira Loma, the curb thing would have been a fail. As it was, I was in Chicago, late at night, and I just continued driving down the road.
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7 comments:
Ah, I see my OCD curse is genetic. I wouldn't have been able to sleep, either, until I checked my atlas, too. How much longer will you be in training? Are you enjoying this job?
These narratives are great. Keep 'em coming!
I will be in training for about another month. I'm supposed to do some "upgrade" training and then hit the road again with an advanced trainer for approx. 3 weeks. It looks as if my upgrades will be in the Salt Lake area, but I'm trying to get back down to Mira Loma (Riverside).
I just finished driving through Wyoming again, along I-80. There were definitely three Continental Divide signs. The one on the west had an elevation of 6980'. On the east the elevation was 7000'. The sign in the middle did not indicate an elevation.
I for one did not know what the Continental Divide was...now I know.
We can really relate to your "turn tight by the lady" story quite well. While we were driving to the KOA in Petaluma, Bart decided to continue on the 101 all the way to the KOA instead of leaving the 101 for the 880 to the 580 back to the 101.
As we were trying to manuever through downtown San Francisco with our Yukon and 30 ft trailer, he realized why the directions said to go the way they did.
I aged about 10 years during the 1 hour it took us to get through San Francisco (which included taking the trailer on the Golden Gate Bridge)
Now, Salinas I am familiar with because that is where, as we approached an uphill offramp, we ran out of gas. It was a complete miracle that we were able to get up the offramp and just into the gas station just as the car completely stopped. (The tail end of the trailer was still in the street as Bart filled one of those little red gas cans to put 2 gallons of gas in the car so we could drive it all the way into the gas station to fill it up)
Never again. I have sworn off trailer travelling for the rest of my life!
Micalanne-your San Fran trip sounded wonderful! Manuevering narrow streets and corners can indeed be life changing moments. One of the hazards we have to be on the lookout for is low bridges. I've seen photos of drivers who did not pay attention to height restrictions and the results were not pretty.
I have only run out of gas one time and that was in dad's beige 1979 VW bus when the fuel gage wasn't working. I tried to make a left hand turn through an intersection when suddenly the van had thoughts of resting. Furtunately I was able to coast to the curb where I then had to tuck my tail between my legs and walk to the gas station at the end of the block for a jerry can. Humiliating!
Mark, do you remember one night in Vegas I ran out of gas at an intersection and you had to come help me? You were not happy about that.
Judy, yes I remember. My reaction to the incident has been one of the scars in my memory. As I recall, I could have handled the situation much better than I did.
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