Orientation Begins

I wasn’t able to sleep as long as I had wanted to, yesterday, getting only about 3 hours. I woke up with a rumble in my gut, a pitiful cry for food. I did the math. I hadn’t eaten since about 5 PM the night before and figured it was fair to get up and satisfy the growling monster below.

Immediately next door to La Quinta, San Bernardino, is a cozy little restaurant called “Crabby Bobs Seafood.” I walked past it to the IHOP. Had their “Big” breakfast: 2 eggs, 2 sausage links, 2 bacon strips, hash browns, 2 pancakes (bottomless – if necessary), and a tall glass of grapefruit juice. By the time I was done, the growling monster had become the groaning belly-pig.

I decided to go for a walk, stretch my legs, help my breakfast settle into its new home, and maybe see if there was anything to do nearby (Josh had asked me earlier, since I had already had the mind-blowing experience of trudging my luggage from the bus stop, if I had seen anything fun to do, since we had the entire day to waste).

I walked past about a half-dozen restaurants, a number of hotel/motel establishments, and I understood why the street is named “Hospitality Lane.” Nothing after that.

I turned a corner and walked for a while, crossing one of those overflow concrete rivers that you see all the time on TV and another river-that-was. Currently nothing more than a bed of sand with a little water trickling along, down from the mountains. Eventually the sidewalk ended, nothing interesting in sight, so I turned around and started back for the inn. Hoping that the azure sky and toasty sun didn’t scorch my hairless pate and arms too badly. It doesn’t seem to have.

This morning I got up about 4:30, did my pushups (the challenge is to add one each day until I reach 100), I’m up to 29 - though I’ve been doing 30 for the past several days. I did some air-squats, too, for good measure. I’ve decided to do them in addition to the pushups, though I started them later, and am still playing catch-up. I’m up to 22 on those.

Caught the shuttle at about 6:30 this morning, after having a surprisingly good continental breakfast of corn flakes, yogurt, banana, and apple/orange juice (mixed by me), and have been in orientation ever since. I passed the on-sight physical exam, and have just finished eating lunch (provided), which consisted of pork, Spanish rice, and refried beans. Pretty decent food.

We’ve just been filling out pre-employment paperwork all morning, and watching some instructional videos. Pretty much similar stuff ahead. I’ll post more later.

Later:

The day progressed to computer based training (CBTs)… the trainings were pulled off the same server which meant that the long-ish videos that were part of the training took forever to download. The most video-intensive course was supposed to be approximately 20 minutes long… took me over 2 hours. Lame. Anyway, the CBTs started around 2 o’clock, and I finished it at a little after 7.

We did also have a crash course on reading a trucking atlas, which was informative (though mostly repeated information that I picked up while I was in school).

All in all, good times, so far. More tomorrow.