DISCLAIMER: In all reality, I won't proof read any of this. So the many grammatical errors should be overlooked. Also, I will try to keep my cussing to a minimum, but just know it will be there.
Hello family, friends and feather weather friends alike. Let me start this out by acknowledging and apologizing my radio silence for the past months. In times of uncertainty and doubt I suppose I've found it best to keep my focus on a goal to get things back on track. But enough cryptic bullshit and let's cut to the chase and why I'm even starting this silly little composition.
For those who don't know, and I can imagine that's the majority of people, I am no longer at Alorica and have for the past few weeks attended a truck driving academy to get my Class A license so I can start driving semi trucks in Fontana, CA. Out of left field, right?! Travelling has always been an ideal job for me and since I can't seem to keep a band together, this seemed like a pretty damn good alternative for someone with my qualifications (read: none). Just this past Friday I passed my final test for the license and come Monday I start orientation for Central Refrigerated. Preeeetty stoked and nervous. Which brings me to this blog; my goal here is to have those who care to know my whereabouts and my whatsgoingons a, hopefully, constant feed. No epiphanies or funny business here. Just an online journal I suppose. I will try my best to keep up with it and post as many pictures as I can remember to take as well as my miles, where I'm at and if I get abducted and anally probed by aliens.
Without further ado, let's get into the first actual entry and talk about the training that led me up to this point. It may be a little dry, but just hang with me:
Training for me started on April 29th, meaning I had to trek down to Fontana (which, for those too lazy to Google it, is about an hour East of L.A.) on the 28th. One cool thing about this particular company is that they pay for damn near everything, at their convenience of course. Central purchased my Greyhound ticket and paid for my housing for the duration of the time I was going to be away from home. Now if you have not taken a Greyhound before, or if you have and haven't been their new buses, it's really not a bad deal. All of their newer buses have wifi, outlets and decently comfortable chairs so the trip itself wasn't too bad, especially leaving from Fresno and making sure that I was there early enough to get a seat to myself. My older sister bought me some rad over-the-ear headphones which have become my best friends for my birthday in March and between that and Game of Thrones it was relatively uneventful. After the ten hour trip on the Greyhound (only one layover which was in the Toy District of downtown L.A. [trust me, not as fun as it sounds... that place is horrifying]) I found myself waiting at the bus station in San Bernardino for the hotel shuttle to get me. I made a huge goddamn mistake by placing my backpack on the floor as the place was COVERED in cockroaches the size of my fucking thumb. Bugs do not sit well with me at all so for the twenty or so minutes it took for the shuttle to come get me, I stood outside carrying my backpack, messenger bag, pillow (with sleeping bag stuffed in with my pillow) above my head and staring at the floor so I would have plenty of time to crush any brave cockroach that decided they wanted to tango. This night will be known as the "what the hell did I get myself into... I want to go home already" night. That phrase will be a theme for the first night. Once the shuttle finally did decide to show up and take me to the hotel, it was already ten at night and there were no more non smoking rooms available so I got stuck in smelliest goddamn room possible. I've slept in crackhead houses using only a smelly curtain as a blanket and complained less than I could about this room. I can not understate how much this place reeked of smoke and sadness. Sleazy hotel? Check. Roaches crawling on my stuff? Check. Random people talking to me (a pretty big pet peeve of mine... Seriously)? Check check check. I found a way to sleep and made it through the worst night there. Thankfully it was all downhill from that point on.
The next day the shuttle comes to take us to the training building at 6:00am. We go through pretty standard pre-job stuff. Piss in a cup, fill out a bajillion papers and the like. The only difference here is that you have to have a physical in order to get your Class A. Eye site, hearing, blood pressure and a physical. I'm a young, healthy buck, and aside from a slightly unexpected turn-your-head-and-cough ball grab by the doctor conducting the physical it was an alright experience. Next we file into a room with the oldest, most pissed off little Irish dude who will be our classroom teacher for the better part of the week. The other employees there called him Grandpa and he acted like what I can imagine an Irish grandpa would. Swore and made racist/sexist/hilarious jokes pretty much the whole time. While watching a sexual harassment video he writes on the white board "Sexual Harassment: Just don't be a pussy". Pretty good stuff. This portion of the training is just to get you to pass the DMV written test and it was pretty effective. I don't think a single person failed the written test, and there were some dumb people in there. I can't say much else about the classroom portion because it was pretty damn straight forward.
After the written test portion of training we started going to the truck yard to actually learn how to drive the beasts. The instructors there were pretty rad dudes and to say it was laid back would be a crime of an understatement. Tomorrow I will go more into detail about the driving and the yard experience but for this first entry I want to change gears real quick and talk about the living situation real quick...
So when you attend the Fontana training program you always have a roommate. I was lucky enough to have two rad roommates and unfortunate enough to have a rude fucking ape for one night. My first roommate in the stinky room came in, dropped his bags off and left for the entire night, probably because he couldn't stand the smell. So no complaints there. The next day they gave a me non-smoking room with the roommate I would have for the majority of the time I was there. Rad dude, lived clean, didn't fuck with or steal any of my stuff, watched sports and had a sense of humor. Unfortunately he did not make it through the training and for the last night I was there they gave me one more roommate who sucked so goddamn bad. He was a huge hick from Georgia who couldn't control the volume of his voice even the slightest (which is saying something coming from me). This dude literally woke me up to ask if I was asleep. He smelled like ass AFTER showering and talked to me non stop (remember my hate for being talked to by randoms... especially while I am wearing my headphones and clearly have no interest in talking). So much talking to the point where I ended up sitting in the restroom with the shower on just so I could get away from him. It was terrible.
I met a few other rad dudes there as well, one from Fresno who passed his Class A exams the same day I did and drove his car down to Fontana and let me ride back with him for this weekend until we have to be back on Monday for orientation. I'll get more into that story as well as the truck yard tomorrow.
Hit me up through text, email, comment, send a pigeon or facebook me if you have any questions about my adventure. Sorry that this ran long. I can guarantee after the first few entries, they will become shorter, I just have two weeks of stuff to write about. In the future I will also write a little more about more personal stuff like my relationship with my girlfriend who is obviously supportive but bummed about how long I will be away from. But for now we'll get the boring informative stuff out of the way.
Thanks for reading, twerps. Part deuce manana.
Bear out.
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