Better Today

Well school was much better today than yesterday.

We got started early by pulling out of the campus and heading down the open road driving area. Only took us thirty minutes to get there today because we took the highway instead of the city streets.

Once we got there I let Perry go first, I was thinking I would get my early misery out of the way and then do my driving. Besides I had to finish eating my breakfast and I could do that while he drove :)

His driving today was MUCH better than yesterday, he is still grinding his gears and shifting very slowly but he's improving. He's gotten upshifting down just about, but downshifting still puzzles him.

Around 9:30 after we took a break I did my driving, and everything went very well. I only missed a gear once on a downshift, didn't rev up to 1500 fast enough. I also hit the damn curb again pulling into the stopping point. But now I now why I was doing it and can fix it tomorrow.

He got to drive again after our second break once I made two trips around the circle then we took lunch.

After lunch I didn't drive again, Dale said I was doing extremely well much better than most new students, so we headed out to one of the backing ranges to work on backing.

Perry still can't find his trailer or learn which is left and right but he got better as the afternoon wore on.

When he took a break I jumped in and starting working on mine. My straightline is looking great, and I'm staying inside the box, but this piece of crap truck (a 1994 Peterbuilt) has so much play in the steering it makes floating very difficult.

I even worked a bit on parallel parking, I can do it, but I need to learn to get closer to the line without crossing. As it stands I'd pass the parallel parking test but I'd be 18 inches or more from the "ideal" parking line.

After I ran some more backing drills, Perry took another shot and I let him run out the afternoon and Dale and I shot the breeze and gave Perry helpful hints and also worked him out of jams when he jackknifed the trailer.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go down the the DMV so Perry can retake his Airbrakes test, and we are going to drive the actual skills test route to take a look at it. Or at least Dale is going to drive it and we are going to see what is there.

Dale said starting late this week or Monday at the latest he's going to stop driving us and we are going to do it all. Even back and forth from the driving and parking ranges.