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What a fucking weekend.

My little brother and his cute little cupcake drove down to help me and Miss Carol celebrate my tractor-trailerin’ CDL’ness.

‘Cause I’d done it. I’d passed. I’m a trucker, baby.

We tested out on Friday and I sailed through the tests that the Department of Transportation has decided necessary for me to haul 40 tons of whatever to wherever in the lower 48 states, Mexico, and Canada.

And I’m glad and should’ve been floating. I mean, the CDL course had been a grueling marathon of time and money. After spending 5 grand and two months studying and practicing and after having taken 7 written tests and a grueling 3 hour driving skills test you’d think I would’ve have been more stoked than I was.

But I wasn’t.

‘Cause I was the only one of my truckmates to pass.

Ordinarily I could care less about other people. Call it ego, call it narcissism (boy I love typing that word), call it selfishness, call it self-centeredness, call it what you will, I mostly just love me.

But after spending a month confined to a tractor trailer cab with my three truckmates and our instructor I realized I liked these guys and I was really hoping we’d all pass and get our CDL’s and move through rosy lives full of rainbows and unicorns. Or strippers and blowjobs. You know, whatever.

We’d been through so much together.

We were all of us early to the VDOT testing site on Friday. Michael (the Ghana guy) was oddly distant, kinda wandering around, Derek was nervously smoking cigarettes worrying about the pre-trip, and Haner was excitedly showing me all his shit in his car. (He was headed home to Mississippi and a job orientation with Werner (a huge trucking firm), and to his wife that he hasn’t seen since January just as soon as he tested out). He was tense and excited.

We were all nervous.

Then we found out Michael was distant because he wasn’t going to be allowed to test out. He needs another coupla months courting a 10-gear shift pattern and a clutch. I hope he gets it.

One down.

The DOT test is in three parts. The first part is the pre-trip inspection. It’s kinda like the pre-flight inspection a pilot makes before takeoff but without the wings and flight attendants. It’s mostly memorization and explanation of 105 different parts, lights, gauges, and systems on the truck. It’s easy to remember but effing hard to emote. Trust me.

Of the 105 you have to score 85 or better. Derek got an 82. He knew the stuff and was studying right up until he was tested so I’m thinking he just did the deer in the headlights thing and froze. (Of the two that I missed, one was checking the oil- pffffft, these things need OIL?)

Two down.

The second part of the test is combination backing. You take the truck and trailer out of a curve and then back down 50 feet of cones keeping the rear tandem tire (that’s the one waaay down there at the far end of the trailer) within 3 feet of the cones. Then, you pull forward, they reset the cones in an arc, and you back down into a curve, again keeping that rear tandem tire within 3 feet of the cones.

It sounds stupidly simple but, really?, it’s refreshingly difficult. Joseph, the other Ghana guy, in the other truck, failed the straight back and was done. I tried to feel sorry for him but I couldn’t ’cause did I mention I mostly just care about me? And, you know, my truckmates?

The third and final part of the test is road skills. It’s roughly 10 miles and 30 minutes long and is designed to show the tester that you can handle a big rig and the special rules that apply to us. Like, for example, did you know that when a trucker is making a right hand turn we can’t roll our tandem tires over the curb crushing the pedestrians waiting to cross, nor can we swing the trailer too wide allowing an impatient four-wheeler to scoot underneath our offtracking trailer tires? Who knew?

Double clutch upshift, double clutch downshift, don’t grind gears, don’t kiss a curb, don’t roll over a sidewalk, don’t blow through a caution light, don’t do this and please, oh please, do that. You nervously put yourself and the truck though it’s paces hoping you don’t fuck up and then it’s over.

I got back from the final phase and received the documentation from my tester that I’d passed, shook hands with my instructors and watched as Haner pulled into the lot. He got out of the cab without a piece of paper.

He’d failed the road course.

I wish I could’ve given him mine.

He needed it so much more than I did or do. To see the look of anguish on his face was heart-rending.

I know now that a CDL shouldn’t be easy to get. It’s a huge responsibility and something that shouldn’t be taken lightly and something that should be used but I really don’t know what I’m going to do with mine yet.

So it’s just sitting and brooding, a still and dark dream.

This is a concern- 8 degrees will tip and roll a loaded trailer.

Miss Carol won’t even watch it.

Remind me again what it is that I’m doing?

A funny thing has happened on the way to my CDL.

I’ve been befriended by my truckmates. I mean, who’d a thunk it? Certainly not me.

Derek, Michael, and Haner have become my friends. To those of you who’ve been keeping up with this, and believe you me I feel your pain, Derek is the opinionated black vet, Michael is one of the two Twee? or Twi? guys, and Haner is the sadly conflicted Iraqi war runner and gunner.

Over the last coupla weeks while we’ve been driving together I’ve listened to them and their life-stories and found out that Derek, at 41, longs for the stability and companionship of marriage, that Michael is planning to send for his wife in Ghana just as soon as he starts trucking- hoping that they can make a life of it on the road, and that Haner, for all his brashness and bravado, is just a bewildered kid trying to sort shit out.

I’ve also witnessed and been caught up in a weird kinda tribal group think thing. Men, by nature, are competitive (duh?) so it was no surprise to see a hierarchy forming after the first day or two as those of us who were catching on to the double clutch pump compared our progress to Michael who was really struggling with just shifting gears.

We were at first supportive (I spent several break periods with Michael explaining the shift pattern and the use of gas and clutch- he’d never driven anything but an automatic transmission) and then almost gleefully dismissive as Michael continued grinding gears winding up in neutral with the diesel howling or simply stalling the truck.

We took comfort in the fact that we were better than him. That by his failing we were passing. That there was the us and then there was the him.

Then on Friday, a curious thing happened. Michael had a breakthrough and kinda figured it all out. Sure, he was still grinding the gears and dumping the clutch but he was moving through the shift pattern and was even driving the truck in a raw kinda way. It was cool to watch. But what was even cooler was the immediate flood of genuine support from all of us. Join us we seemed to be saying, become one of us. I almost teared up but I can’t ’cause I’m a guy.

Instead it made me realize how much I’ve changed in the last seven weeks. Whereas, I once was the self-imposed outsider clutching my aloofness and aloneness and not really wanting to mesh with these guys, nor wondering how or where or why I might fit in with them, now I’m finding myself caring about them and actually wanting to keep in touch with them when this is done and we all strike out in our wildly different directions like exploding fireworks. I’m hoping that they all find good trucking jobs and happy endings to their lives and I almost think I’ll miss them.

Jeebus.

It’s like I’m becoming a chick.

Today was a weirdly interesting day in tractor-trailerin’ land.

Instead of cutting us loose to rumble dangerously amongst an unsuspecting public, we were kept in the yard because the school was having a commercial shot to bolster the already sold out seats.

The commercial dudes and dudette needed motion as a backdrop for the voice-over, a kinda lumbering ballet of behemoths slowly moving to and fro. And guess who was hand-picked to lumber the star behemoth?

Yeah, baby.

That’s me rolling the big dog back and forth over and over again across 100 yards of scarred concrete busting my acting chops while the camera rolled. At each pass I’m running through my repertoire- sad, plaintive, happy, sorrowful, hopeful- for the camera. Sometimes I even waved.

Anyway.

Being a star is harder than I thought. I sure was glad when the director finally called CUT and I could stop the to-ing and fro-ing and exhaustedly climb down from my truck cab and embrace my new reality.

‘Cause ya know what? Life is different now.

Now that I’m a big star, I’m not the who that I thought I was- I’m a somehow subtlety changed somebody, and even though the mantle of stardom rests lightly on my broad shoulders, I’m finding myself viewing others differently. It’s, like, the little people seem clutching and needy and maybe just a little bit distasteful. And all the sudden, I’m keening for stuff like no green M&M’s in my bowl, and having the crusts cut off my sandwiches, and I’m screaming for my beer to be chilled to 34 degrees.

I mean, I’m still me, so none of that’s a bad thing, right?

After a month of classroom and seven tests and six days spent creeping around carefully laid out courses practicing backing manuevers, we hit the road on Wednesday.

And somehow I lucked out.

For good or bad, the instructor I drew has unleashed us on the general driving public and let us drive, which has been amazing. Picture driving as an adventure again, picture sitting in front of 20 tons slowly trudging through traffic grinding through 10 gears until suddenly, finally, you’re rolling free, stacks billowing.

Ooooh, baby, baby.

All would be rainbows in a bright blue sky and unicorns cavorting if it weren’t for the double clutch pump.

VDOT, in their infinite wisdom, requires double clutching through every gear as you upshift and downshift, which means you clutch, shift to neutral, clutch, and shift to the next gear.

Bored yet? No? Keep reading.

That was upshifting. Downshifting requires that you brake to match engine speed to road speed, clutch, shift to neutral, goose the gas pedal to bring the rpm’s back up, clutch, downshift with the gas back on and brake again to slow the truck. It’s quite the tap dance while you’re trying to bring your 20-tonner to a controlled stop before you mow down that little Ford Focus that just cut in front of you trying to get to the light first.

Are we having fun? Is anybody still reading this?

So anyway, in the last coupla days I’ve discovered that clutch and brake tap-dancing these big rig clutches and transmissions that’re as huge and gruesomely tough as the trucks themselves makes driving one of these big bitches a workout.

But ya know what else I’ve learned?

It’s flippin’ FUN.