Ringo gave me a ride to the Huntsville airport on Saturday to pick up my rental car. He may have been a little disappointed that I had quit, but he was being very supportive. One of his sons would be feeding Kitty while I was gone, and Ringo would check in on her on the weekends. I hated to leave the little critter alone, but I couldn’t bring her with me, and it would have cost a fortune to board her for an unspecified amount of time. I did not know how long it would be before I got back home. After orientation, I would be immediately going on the road with my trainer.
I thanked Ringo, picked up my rental car, and I was on my way. I stopped for fuel somewhere in Illinois and discovered that my credit card had reached its maximum limit. I would have to rely on my dwindling cash from here on out. I spent the night in an unsightly motel in a small Missouri town about 80 miles east of Kansas City, even though I had been tempted to sleep in the car to save money. Despite my worries, I slept well, and headed out early on Sunday morning.
I arrived at the Day’s Inn in Lincoln, where I would be staying for the duration of orientation, and was greeted by a friendly desk clerk named Chelsea. Before I arrived in Lincoln, I’m certain that I had never seen such an abundant landscape of cornfields. It was obvious why Nebraska was nicknamed, “The Cornhusker State”.
After getting settled into my room, I returned the rental car to the airport and, since it was only a mile from the motel, I decided to walk back. The walk would have been enjoyable if it hadn’t been so darned windy. There were still remnants of snow splotched about from a storm that had passed through last week. As I observed the aftermath of the storm melting away, I hoped that it would serve as a symbolic representation for what lay ahead of me.
The shuttle bus arrived at 6:30am on Monday to take all of the new Crete employees to the terminal for physicals. At least 20 people crammed into the small shuttle, and I thought that it might be appropriate to add a little mustard—we were packed in like sardines. A petite, dark-haired girl was practically sitting in my lap.
When we arrived at the Lincoln terminal, it was not what I had been expecting. It was an absolute palace compared to any of my former company’s terminals. The huge three-story building was kept impeccably clean, and the maze of corridors seemed to invite the newcomer to become disoriented and lost. The building contained a large cafeteria, and even a gym. I was taken aback at the contrast between this, and the small, dusty terminals to which I had grown accustomed.
My first moment of horror came when I discovered that we would have to take our road test before orientation, and before going out with our trainer. The Century Class S/T Freightliner had a 10-speed manual transmission, and I had been driving an automatic before. I had not driven a shifter since riding with Ringo, and I had expected the road test to happen after getting some practice with my trainer. I was already sprouting nervous beads of sweat.
The man who would administer my road test was an old fellow named Bill. Bill was 79 years old, and still did a dedicated run from Lincoln to Canada and back every week. Bill’s calm and friendly manner set me at ease immediately.
“If you don’t wreck it, you pass!” he croaked.
My road test went surprisingly well. The Meritor gear-shifter in the Freightliner operated more smoothly than the one I had worked with in Ringo’s truck. I even managed to back into a small hole when we returned to the terminal yard. The first thing I noticed was that the closely positioned dual axles on the dry van trailer caused it to react more quickly than the split axles on the flatbed trailers. This was going to take some getting used to.
