Thursday, March 30, 2006

Driving A 40' Bus...

OR...

Shit, this thing doesn't turn for squat.

Took out a bus today in practice for my CDL test. The instructor is a good guy but, well, pretty much says, "Okay, now drive the bus."

That's cool. Did some loop-dee-loops at this driving-range the size of two football fields, and instead of him taking over and driving us back to the garage, he asks me to.

That's cool. Did some highway and back road, and even Mall driving and didn't hit anything. K-turns are a little tricky, and I've got to work on my parallel parking a bit. The bus had to be as old as me, the transmission slipped, the engine labored, and the brakes spat and sputtered but beggars can't be choosers. The guy says a few more days practicing and we'll head down to where they do the road testing.

It wasn't as bad as I expected but time will tell. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time skidding in and out of cones to see if I can learn to make that baby really drive. Funny part about busses, is that if you open the doors before coming to a complete stop the emergency brakes kick in, and the instructor dude tells me that experienced drivers sort of use that as a way to slow down between stops when they tire of standing on the brakes.

And I only asked myself "Why Am I Doing This?" maybe half a dozen times.

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