Super Trucker

This past March, and some of April, for a fair number of moons, I was absorbed with the task of obtaining my Class 1A license. This license allows me to operate pretty much any motor vehicle (except school buses and motorcycles), but more to the point it allows me to haul bales on the ranch here with the Freightliner.

My journey began with the simple task of obtaining my Class 1 learner’s license. To do this I had to go in to SGI and pass 7 multiple-choice exams. Since the Class 1 license is good for so many classes of vehicles, I had to pass basic exams for the classes 1-5 as well as a basic sign test and an air brake test. I studied the SGI “Professional Driver’s Handbook” and their airbrake manual for about a month. Actually, I studied the airbrake manual for that long and about a week before my test was booked, it was finally clarified to me that the SGI tests I would be taking were not going to be just a basic Class 5 and an airbrake test. I thought my Class 1 test would be sometime in the midst of the course I was taking. When I realized I had four tests to do with not only semi trucks, but dump trucks, city buses, and taxis, I began to read the Professional Driver’s Handbook in earnest.

In the end, I managed to pass 5/7 of my exams on the first go. This is apparently really good; most people fail more and have to come back multiple times before they get them all. SGI is notorious for having badly-worded questions on their exams, so passing them is less about actual useful knowledge and more about good intuition, reading between lines, and figuring out when reverse psychology is being used on you. I took practice exams for days so that I would be prepared for the SGI trickery, but there were still some new questions. I remember one that asked how fast I should be going when I was backing up to a dock with a semi. My two believable options were “Slow enough to make a gentle stop” and “At a speed from which you can make a sudden stop”. In my head, the scenario of a child running behind my truck played out. I would want to be able to stop suddenly. Apparently SGI doesn’t care about kids, though. The right answer was a gentle stop.

Another question also stumped the examiner that was overseeing the tests. It was something like,

“You’re going down a hill and your truck is picking up too much speed; should you...

A. Snub the brakes

B. Downshift”

The other two options were obviously wrong, so I agonized over these two options for a while before calling the examiner over to ask for a definition of “snubbing the brakes”. He didn’t know either, so he Googled it. It means something like pressing and releasing them repeatedly. He attempted to be helpful then and laid out the scenario for me.

“You’re cruising down a big hill, going way too fast... are you going to try a downshift?”

“Nnnnoooo?” I said with not much confidence, “Because I might lose my gear and end up cruising down in neutral?”

The guy nodded encouragingly. “That’s what I would say, too,” he said.

“But I’m also not supposed to brake much, since I might overheat the brakes...?” I questioned.

“But you have to pick the best answer... not necessarily the right one,” he replied.

This is true; SGI itself has selected this as the motto for their tests.

I selected the brake snubbing option.

It was wrong.

The examiner frowned, but then shrugged in an “oh well, can’t win them all” kind of way. Water off a duck. Only I was the duck and the water was not going off because that was the last question I was allowed to get wrong. It ended okay, though; that particular exam I managed to pass.

Anyway, I just had to go in twice to get them all done. I had failed my Class 2 test over not knowing certain safety certification needs for interprovincial transport. That was not concerning. What was a little concerning was that I failed my basic Class 5 test. Fortunately, they don’t rescind an existing license if you fail these tests. Also, don’t worry too much about the safety of my driving, because 3/5 questions I got wrong were to do with the fines and consequences of drinking and driving. I really don’t think it’s important to know what exact amount of money you have to pay if you’re caught with what particular amount of alcohol in your blood. I think the information that needs to stay in my head is “don’t drink and drive”, not “if I drink a little too much and drive I may have to pay a fine of $1250. And if I drink even more and drive, I could have to pay $2250.”

Anyway, that’s just me being bitter about failing. When I went back to retake those tests I made sure I studied exactly how much to budget for a DUI.

Another test I had to pass was a medical. I’m not sure why I had to go to a doctor’s office and pay for a well-educated individual to ask me a bunch of questions that I could have lied about as easily to her as an online exam (not that I did lie, I’m just saying I could have), but such is the requirement. Most of the appointment was spent with the doctor asking me if I, or any of my immediate family, had any conditions that would make me a danger on the road. The only physical thing done was the doctor making sure I could lift and drop both arms and legs in a controlled manner.

I was proclaimed healthy, but Doc was a little confused about why I had no medical records in town since showing up for infant check-ups all those years ago. She asked if I had been living in a different city. When I told her I just don’t come in to the doctor’s office too often (as in, never), instead of congratulating me on being a prime specimen, she told me I should get bloodwork and other exams done to establish a baseline. The logical part of me says that this is a reasonable thing to do. But the logical part of me is massively overshadowed by the part of me that doesn’t like needles. In fact, I am due for a tetanus shot, too, and have been procrastinating on it because of this fear. Unfortunately, I Googled tetanus and it does indeed sound worse than a needle, so I think I’ll have to exhibit some incredible bravery and get that minuscule poke in the arm. My Google search on tetanus was so conclusive that I get a little paranoid when I get cuts and scrapes now. Especially when I’m trimming horse’s feet. Google said that people who are exposed to dirt, feces, or metal are at high risk of exposure to tetanus, so scraping dirt and poop out of a horse’s foot with a rusty hoof knife that I frequently nick my wrists with seems like it could be a fairly effective way to contract tetanus. If I’m going to get killed by a horse, that’s not the way I want to go down.

Anyway, I got sidetracked by talk of needles, but there were no actual needles involved in the medical examination...

The nurse also had me do a rudimentary eye exam. I felt this humiliation was unnecessary, as I have a trail of regular optometry appointments in my bespectacled wake for them to observe; why did they have to see for themselves how blind I am? They made me stand naked before the eye chart (not actually naked, just with the naked eye), and had me attempt to read the letters, one eye at a time. It was terrible. If you ever see me driving without glasses, or even walking, you better give me a wide berth, because I probably haven’t seen you. Especially if I’ve got one eye covered. I think I only got to the third tier with my first eye before the guesswork started; my second eye was even worse, because I was tense and had been holding it shut too aggressively and it got all wonky and blurry on me. Like an idiot, I forgot that all the letters were capitalized, so I was guessing that the G’s, Q’s and O’s were small e’s the T’s were small r’s. I don’t know why they had to make me stand there and rattle off wrong answers for so long, as my license already has an eyewear restriction, but I guess I don’t make the rules, I just followed them to get my learner’s license.

Once I had my learner’s license, I could technically drive the semi around as long as a Class-1-licensed passenger was present. However, the Freightliner was hibernating for the winter, all snuggled into the snowdrift, and in any case, Dad claims he didn’t want to teach me to drive in case he taught me wrong. I think he also didn’t want to teach me to drive because it would have been a bit of a learning curve to ride out. He attempted to teach me last fall, but when it became apparent that there was no blossoming forth of a latent natural ability to shift an 18-speed transmission, the priority had to be getting the bales off the field before it snowed. The most I learned was how to shift up to fifth gear. I did not touch the switch that splits the gears. I did not put it into high range. And also, I most definitely didn’t know how to shift down.

Knowing how to shift up but not down just made me faster at being a useless driver.

I just wanted to make it clear how little experience I had going into this venture. People tend to think that since I grew up on a ranch that uses a semi, I would have learned to drive a semi. I would like to point out that I’ve also grown up around a woman who is an exceptional chef, baker, gardener, and house cleaner. These, and many more of my mother’s domestic talents, have also failed to rub off on me.

Anyway, since proximity to skill has been repeatedly failing to spark improvements in me, I got professional help at a truck-driving school.

The new requirements for getting a Class 1 license in Saskatchewan are something like...

• 139 hours in-class, reading through the manual

• 17 hours in-yard, inspecting the truck, doing pre-trips, and running air tests

• 18 hours of backing the truck up

• 39 hours driving

That’s 213 hours, if I did my math right (questionable), and if I got the required hours right (somewhat doubtful), which made it about a three-and-a-half-week course, since weekends were off and we put in some longer days to get it done.

Since I had worn out my air brake manual, and given the driving manual a good going-over, the in-class portion of the course was a breeze. Much of the material was not new information, and the rest was easily learned from the book. All of the exam check-points were taken with the book in front of us, so it was a breeze. Every once in a while, the instructors would talk about “splits” and “high range” and “toe play on the clutch” and I would get lost. They’d go off on tangents to do with 13, 15, or 18 -speed transmissions and I would try to account for all the potential gears and always come up with the wrong count. In short, I was getting pretty concerned with the fact that the book-learning was coming to a close and the practical learning was looming closer.

My first day in one of the trucks was a mostly good experience. The instructors took us out to their backing yard and the three of us students took turns practicing a 90-degree backing. I will use my skills with the Windows Paint program to illustrate the general idea...

I had intended to watch the other students drive (they were farm kids who knew how to drive functionally, if not professionally) for a good long while before attempting it myself, but the instructor had me climb into the driver’s seat.

To reset ourselves for the backing, we drive around a bit of a round-about so that we can come into the backing area in a straight line. I had planned to chug around the round-about in low gear, but Mr. Instructor told me to go to second gear (which is sort of actually first, as I will explain later). I did, thinking that was a practical thing to do, as low gear is painfully slow, but that I would stay in second gear.

Instead, Mr. Instructor started giving me instructions like,

“Now idle her up to ten hundred RPM... now off the throttle... now idle her up... now off the throttle...”

And as he did this, he was reaching over and climbing up to fifth gear. I could have stopped the unsolicited gear-grabbing by ceasing to follow his instructions, but when a man who is my father’s age or older is giving me orders, it would be against every fibre of my being not to follow them.

“See? Nothing to it! You’ve got this, no problem!” he said.

I appreciated the encouragement, but felt that he didn’t appreciate how very much I was incapable of shifting down.

“It’s shifting down that’s the problem,” I informed him, a little tense about how quickly we were approaching the end of our round-about.

“Nothing to it! It’s just the opposite of going up!”

He began to coach me with very specific instructions trying to vicariously get my RPMs just right for a down shift.

He eventually managed to find fourth, no thanks to me, and then calmly instructed me to clutch and brake.

“And there we go! Fourth is stopping gear, so that was good; you’ll get the hang of it, no problem.”

I was alarmed at his unrealistic optimism, and wondered what a problem would look like if my attempts constituted “no problem”.

I didn’t have much time to process before it was my turn to attempt backing.

Second gear seemed awfully fast for me that first day in the truck. To do the 90-degree backing, you have to go straight past your “loading dock” (pylons), until you’re in line with the end of it out your window, then you have to turn away from it as much as you can until your truck is facing the same direction as it, then you have to rapidly get your wheel turned the opposite way again, stopping within 30 feet. The reason you have to stop within 30 feet is that there is a pylon there signifying the fence of your loading yard.

I don’t know if it was all the frantic hand-over-hand steering, the imaginary lines that I couldn’t go past, or the fact that I popped it out of gear to coast to a stop (which is a bad habit from driving standard trucks but is not allowed in the semi), but anyway, I ended up stopping several feet after the nick of time.

In other words, the pylon was underneath the truck.

Mr Instructor had been informing me about why I can’t coast to a stop in neutral, then he informed me that I should stop because we were almost at the pylon, then he informed me that we had hit the pylon.

And then I stopped.

I really don’t know what happened. I mean, my classmates were in the bunk, and I didn’t want them to hit the control panel with their faces, so I didn’t want to slam on the brake, but I really should have found a middle ground that wasn't on top of the pylon.

Mr Instructor was very calm and nice about it. He told me to jump out and take a look at how I would plan to back into the dock, and he tactfully dug the pylon out from the truck while my back was turned. It was a nice gesture, but I heard the crunching of the pylon as he wrestled it out.

My first time backing, Mr Instructor gave me step-by-step instructions so I could get a feel for it. As a result, I got it backed into the dock and it didn’t seem so bad. I even stopped before hitting any more pylons.

By some stroke of luck, and with the assistance of not heeding an invisible boundary line, I was able to back into the dock pretty neatly on my first real try when left to my own devices, too. After that, however, my beginner’s luck wore right off and every inch in the right direction was hard won, as I foolishly cranked the wheel to its extremes.

After my 18 or so hours of practice were in, I improved; that’s one good thing about starting at rock bottom; you can only go up.

On the day before my test, I went in to get my last few hours of backing logged. I was hoping to leave the session feeling confident about my backing skills, but instead, I left with the resolution to do the back-up portion of my test last, as the results could very well throw off my mental game (my mental doesn’t have much game, so it doesn’t take a lot to throw it off). I had spent my last 2.75 hours of backing in a state of sweaty despair, chasing after any amount of a feeling of confidence in my backing. Instead of finding my stride, I rapidly lost it. In my first 15 minutes, I did a few awesome runs, but no matter how hard I tried I could never seem to get good again. My only hope for the test was that there, too, I would be miraculously good on my first attempt.

Stay tuned to find out how I did.

The in-yard hours that we had to fill were pretty easy to accumulate. Each morning, we’d spend some time doing walks around the trucks, going through all the components and readying ourselves for any questions the SGI testers may try to spring on us. Apart from the driving and backing parts of the test, we would be tested on our hooking/unhooking of a trailer, a pre-trip (we had to explain a certain component of the truck that the tester asked about, as well as know if certain flaws were major or minor flaws), and complete an air test.

There was nothing much exciting to happen during the in-yard hours. I started out overwhelmed, and by the end, I could competently hook and unhook, do the pre-trip inspection, and walk through the air test. To help myself in remembering all the components of these, I ended up writing the process out like a speech, then rehearsing it at home. This helped me a lot, but may have made me look strange, if you happened to look in my living room window to see me walking around an imaginary truck and muttering to myself. However, if you come into my yard and peer into my windows, I cannot be held accountable for the strange behaviour I exhibit at any time, let alone when I am anxious about a test. It is taxing to wear a mask of normalcy throughout my day, so I will not do it in the lonely comfort of my home.

Anyway, as I was saying; not much excitement for the in-yard hours...

We’d go out in the mornings and check the trucks over in the nice warm shop, then start them and let them warm up for a while. At first, we’d alternate who would hook on, but after a week, I was driving alone with Mrs Instructor, so I always did it. Just so we’re clear, I was not held back due to being a bad driver, but due to what we’ll call a “scheduling error”, I took some time off of the class and jumped back in later. In fact, another of my classmates did the same, but came back slightly later than me. His name was Glen and he will feature in some of the stories behind the wheel, since he was my driving buddy for some of the days. I don’t use real names on this blog, but that is really what we called him. He moved here from South Korea a few years ago, so I’m pretty sure his real name is not Glen. I don’t even know if his real name sounds anything like Glen. I also don’t know if he was the one that decided upon this name, or if some tongue-tied European-Canadian put it upon him. But anyway, we all knew him as Glen.

Glen was a determined student. If he was a little blurry on something in class, he’d go home and study it and come back clear. It took me a couple days to get the hang of a thorough pre-trip inspection, but Glen did one walk-through, then came back fluent.

Since I was a couple days ahead of Glen, the instructors had me instruct him on the pre-trip, hook-on/off, and even had him watch some of my backing. Explaining the process to another person certainly helped me learn, so hopefully he did too. I know I learned him a thing or two on what not to do. The first time I showed him how to hook on, I pulled around the yard and backed up to the trailer to discover that the jaws wouldn’t lock around the trailer kingpin. The suspension had been dumped on my truck, and I hadn’t noticed it.

“That’s a bad thing to do,” I informed Glen. “You should definitely check that this switch is pointed the right way before you drive, and especially before you try to hook on.”

I also had a bad habit of negligence in my back-up warnings. Before you back a truck, you’re supposed to put the four-way flashers on and honk the horn. You’re also supposed to put your seatbelt on any time you move the truck.

I informed Glen that he should do as I say and not as I do.

I would start to roll back a bit, then put the clutch back in and tell him, “Make sure you turn your flashers on every time, and honk the horn every time before you start backing, or you’ll fail the SGI test. I keep forgetting.”

It was usually when I went to jump out that I’d realize my seatbelt was forgotten again.

“And don’t forget to put your seatbelt on every time, too. I keep forgetting, so don’t do this like me.”

Glen was always asking good questions, never made the same error twice, and was an eager participant. I just want it to be clear, no matter what other stories I relate, that Glen was a good student and a quick study. Without a doubt, for all the in-yard stuff, he was a quicker study than I.

Now we move on to the exciting hours. Behind the wheel.

Many of my hours were logged with Mrs Instructor, who was an excellent, patient, and engaging coach. I feel very fortunate to have learned under her instruction. She moved here from England something around fifteen years ago, got her Class 1, married a Class 1 instructor (I'm not sure on the order of events on that), and they now work together to teach others. Both of them are great instructors; very encouraging and enthusiastic.

Mr and Mrs Instructor were in the process of hiring a new instructor, so while he was a seasoned truck driver, I shall call him Trainee, as he was learning how to teach. Trainee was in the truck with us a lot, too, sometimes sitting in the bunk to observe, and sometimes being my instructor. He will be an excellent instructor, I think, but he was having to learn, under my keen tutelage, how to give a student lots and lots and lots of time to process and execute an instruction.

My first day out of the yard with the truck, Trainee drove us to the small and quiet industrial area in town. It was on this 10-minute drive into town that I realized I had no idea how they were counting gears. I was sure we were in an 18-speed truck, but the numbers weren’t working out in my head at all. I didn’t want to admit this to them, so I just kept asking what gear he was in as he drove. I thought it would eventually become clearer. It did not. In truth, it did not become clear in that whole day of driving. In more truth (which is getting to be altogether too much truth), I did not cotton on to the gear counting until about day four of driving, when something finally rattled into place in my head.

But anyway, I had to fake it till I made it, because they then let me into the driver’s seat. They call it the hot seat, and many a student has sweat their nerves out there.

I was no exception. Good thing it’s leather.

I felt the need to explain to them again that I had only ever shifted up, only ever used low range, and had never shifted down. I didn’t have the heart to let them in on the secret that I had no frickety-fracken idea how to count to 18 either.

They seemed to think that we were not in danger and insisted that we proceed. Fools.

I guess I had to start somewhere, though, so we chugged around the industrial area in low range.

Since I have trained my whole life for not understanding my surroundings but acting obediently upon instructions anyway, I was able to execute neat turns, proper signals, gentle stops, and upward shifting, all the while remaining alive.

Not downshifting, though. We tried and we tried to get a down shift. The efforts of two instructors could not coach a reliable downshift out of me, though we did manage to coax a few lucky ones out of the mire so I knew what it should feel like.

After chugging around the area for about half an hour, they decided it was time for a change of pace. I don’t know what about my driving indicated that I was ready to level up, but they figured we should head out onto the highway, cross the bridge, cut through the city, and make some miles on the other side. When they were talking about it, I was thinking they intended to drive to the other side themselves, so I was momentarily relieved to be getting a break. The relief was quickly replaced with a great amount of trepidation as they started giving me instructions on where to drive.

“Are you sure? I still can’t downshift, and I’ve never been in high range??”

“Oh yeah, you’ll be fine! We’ll find high range when we get onto the highway there; and you’ve had some good downshifts!”

Again with the unrealistic optimism, but I suppose someone had to be optimistic, or we’d never have left the yard.

We chugged out of the safe area and onto a highway, pulling up to the first set of traffic lights. It struck me that I was very much unqualified to be responsible for those 18 wheels and 18 speeds amidst all the innocent bystanders who shared the road. I don’t know who made up the rules for driving, but this seems like a massive oversight.

Anyway, I was coached through my very first left turn at a meridian-divided, light-controlled intersection, and we proceeded through the city to the other side so that I could work on finding all 18 speeds in as safe a location as we could find: a divided highway.

In that first week of driving (which was most of my driving hours), I was very focused on my RPM gauge, since shifting was so difficult for me. To shift up in the low range, here was the process...get to 1000 RPM, tap clutch in, take out of gear, let RPMs drop to 700, tap clutch in, find next gear. This process takes about 2.5 seconds. If you take too long, you won’t find the sweet spot. If you don’t take enough time, you won’t find the sweet spot.

And you need an RPM difference of 300 to grab a whole gear, but only 200 to grab a half gear.

And in high range, you need to remember to shift up at 1100 and 800, but down at 700 and 1000, unless you’re doing a half gear, then down at 800 and 1000.

And you can take whole gears from 6-8, but should split the gears after that, and 9-10 and 11-12 are fast gears so you’ll barely have time to clutch, so you should just not bother clutching and instead throw it into those gears, but 6-8 is a slow one so if you get befuddled and go too fast on that shift, you’ll lose your gear and have to find your last one but by then you’ve lost momentum physically and mentally, so you’ll have to try fishing it into every gear as you chug slower and slower until you have to come to a full stop and start out in 2 which is really 1, but which everybody calls 2.

And if you go over 1200 RPM, the engine screams instead of hums which sounds like a big difference in writing, but could actually take you approximately 37 hours of driving to hear effectively.

So yeah. Shifting was using up all of my brain cells.

As a result, I had to be coached very specifically through any maneuvers, and if downshifts were required, I liked to start about a mile in advance.

This is where I did some schooling on poor Trainee.

After we had practiced going up and down through the gears and splits for a while, he had the audacity to tell me about a U-turn we were going to do, and gave me only a mile of notice. When I said I needed a mile of notice for a down shift, I meant a downshift. Singular. One. I couldn’t scurry down the nine required gears in the measly mile he gave me.

“We’ll do a U-turn up at those light poles you see,” he said calmly.

“Those light poles?? Oooohhhh, boy...” I said, but I changed lanes and came off the throttle.

I think I managed to get two gears in, before I looked sideways at him. “Should I brake?” I asked doubtfully. It would have been a heck of a brake.

“... Nah, we’ll hit the next one. Gear up and change lanes.”

“Next time, give me more like five miles notice,” I requested.

He laughed like it was joke.

Fool.

The missed turn just gave me more opportunities to practice gearing up and down as we travelled to the next town along. I was getting better at finding my gears, but I still had my eyes glued to the RPM gauge, and I definitely wasn’t counting gears.

Since I needed such step-by-step breakdowns to prevent mental breakdowns, Trainee was on a crash course along with me, learning how take years of practical experience and dumb it down into short, well-timed instructions. He was a good guy to drive with, never losing his cool, and able to reach over and calmly find a lost gear (for me) or pull the hand brake (for Glen). Mrs Instructor sat in the bunk and offered additional advise for both of us. I didn’t appreciate how frightening the bunk is to sit in until it was Glen’s turn to take his first run at highway driving. Like me, he wasn’t doing so hot on the shifting, so they took him out to the highway for practice. I was in the bunk next to Mrs Instructor, and we were both on the edge of our seats trying to see out the mirrors if we were going to die or not. The edge of our seats was a bit precarious when the brakes were slammed on, but at least we could see a little bit of our surroundings. Sometimes we didn’t need to see much; once, we were rolling down a hill towards a stop sign at a pretty good clip. Mrs Instructor looked at me and smiled knowingly, and we two in the bunk sat back a little deeper and put our hands on the seats in front of us to brace ourselves. Trainee ended up pulling the spike to help us get stopped in time.

Sometimes Glen would get so bogged down with the anxiety of shifting that he would forget about how there was other traffic on the road. Once, he went to pull out onto the highway and Trainee reached over and pulled the spike to stop him. From the bunk, all we saw was this quick interaction, and then a semi truck blew by us. Mrs Instructor and I looked at each other and both of our eyes were pretty wide. We figured Glen needed a break after that, so we switched drivers.

One of the best days of driving I had was when Mrs Instructor took me up north for some highway driving through hills and ravines. This was the day that I finally learned to count the gears.

So apparently, whether you’re driving an 18-speed or a 13-speed, you count the gears up to 13. Even the lower of these two numbers sounds like a lot of gears, but you really only have to find 4 holes on ‘H’ of the stick. Easy peasy, right?

Actually it was, once I finally made this important connection! 4 holes is very doable.

Just as a little pro-tip, here’s how some genius decided to write the unwritten rules around gear counting...

First of all, the way to tell if you’re driving a 13- or 18-speed truck is to check out the splitter switch on the gear shift. If it’s red, you’re in an 13-speed; if it's gray, you're in an 18-speed. I appreciate the simplicity of this, but would like to point out that it is extremely not self-explanatory. No one who doesn’t know that specific factoid would ever guess to look at the colour coding of the splitter. I guess they figure if you are not aware of that, you shouldn’t be driving the truck.

Anyway... the difference in gear numbers comes in the low range. In an 18-speed, you can use the splitter on the low range, but in a 13-speed, you can only do whole gears. But it doesn’t matter which type of truck you’re in, you just count these as 2-5.

Why does the counting start at 2? Because to the left of the H pattern, there are two more holes. They’re not holes that have to get used much for driving as they are the reverse gear and low gear.

There is no gear called 1.

This is partly what was throwing my tally off, but mostly what was hanging me up was the fact that the low range splits are not counted. If you grab a split in the low range, you would count it as a half. So if I were to count up the low gears, it would be:

“I’m in second... now two and a half... now third... now three and a half...” etcetera, up to five and a half. And the high range would be:

“I’m in sixth... split to seventh... now to eighth... split to ninth...” etcetera, up to thirteen. Sounds like a lot, but remember, there are just four relevant holes, so it’s easy peasy; you just have to keep your count straight so that you remember what your next move will be. Also, you have to remember which gears are fast to do, and which ones are slower. Also, it is helpful to remember where you can take whole gears and where to just do splits. For instance, you can usually shift directly from 6-8, and it’s a nice slow tempo, but it is not advisable to go from 8-10, as the truck will lug a lot. Unfortunately for me, I would usually get caught up in all the details, which is allegedly where the devil is, go figure.

Have you ever had to read something out loud in public? I do this thing where my mouth will continue reading at a steady pace, but my mind will get hung up on how I pronounced a word earlier on the page. If I don’t convince my mind to catch up and start contributing to the mouth stuff, the mouth will just stop working and I will appear zoned out and silent, which is not a good look. I have allowed this to happen with immediate family, but never, so far, in public.

But anyway, that’s kind of what was happening as I was shifting, especially if I was climbing up the gears quickly to get to highway speed. My head would be giving me a play-by-play of what had occurred as I shifted, but my head is apparently a fair bit slower than my actions (this is not surprising to me, only a little disappointing), so I would be up in high range, still thinking about what had happened in low range. As a result, I would get a bit panicky when I was in 6, because part of my brain had stayed in touch with reality, but it was just the part that panics, so it was only ever detrimental to me. I would get worried about the gears being faster, so I would try to race from 6-8. Then I would grind it. Lose road speed. Lose engine speed. Try to find lower gears. Miss them all. Full stop. Start over.

This happened.

Quite.

Often.

If I managed 6-8 by some stroke of luck or through constant coaching, then I would be in a bad position for finding 10. Since I only learn one thing at a time, I learned to strangle my panic when going from 6-8. Unfortunately, I needed it for going from 9-10, which is a very fast gear to grab. Eventually I learned not to strangle my panic, but to rein it in and save it for the homestretch, unleashing it for 9-10, with a little reserved for the fast-but-not-quite-as-fast 11-12.

But just four holes!! Easy peasy!

Anyway, when I did the drive up north with Mrs. Instructor, things were finally falling into place for me, especially for the up-shifting. We got to do lots of shifting on hills, and I had to watch where I was going instead of my RPMs because the highways are so full of potholes.

The trip up north was mostly highway miles, but it greatly improved my city driving. I had a much better feel for my gears, and could actually count them after that. I still made many, many, many dumb mistakes, though.

They were often panic-induced, and frequently repeat offenses. At a particular spot in the city, at two particular consecutive left turns, I always seemed to struggle. The first one is a bit of a challenging intersection, since a full stop is required, it’s often fairly busy, and it is just before the peak of a fairly steep little hill. When you’re grabbing gears up a hill, you have to give the truck a little extra oomph (or “give it a little braap” as they say) before shifting, and then shift quite quickly (but still not too quickly). It’s high stakes stuff, because if you miss your gear, you’ll have to quickly find your lower gear again, or make a full stop to prevent yourself rolling back down the hill. In the middle of the intersection. The busy intersection.

For some reason, I never actually fully lost my gears in this intersection (particularly surprising, as I’d lost them a number of times on flat intersections). Either myself or the instructor were always able to fish it into one hole or another. However, my shifting at this intersection was, without fail, really bad. I’d either give it too much of a braap, or not enough. Shift too fast or too slow (usually too fast, courtesy of my Pavlovian panic). Over and over, I’d find myself chugging around the corner in second gear, slowing up traffic because I was incapable of grabbing a faster gear.

The problem was a compounding one, because about 300 meters after that left was the next bad left turn. I’d get geared up to sixth, still thinking about all the things that went wrong on my last turn, and what do you know, I was not mentally or emotionally prepared for my next left. This left turn was also on the peak of a hill, but I had the right of way. As long as no one was coming from ahead of me, I could just worry about getting to fourth, which is my turning gear, and sail on through.

Of all the many, many times we took that route, I only had a clear intersection once. Even at the most traffic-dead times of day, there was always something going on there. An erratic-driving vehicle that stopped a few hundred meters back, then started speeding towards me, then veered off down a side street. Cars, trucks, and buses that idled slowly through, ruining any attempt I made at timing. I even had a showdown with an oncoming driver who stopped and insisted that I go first. I got all sweaty anxious because we are coached not to succumb to unauthorized traffic directing, and not to direct traffic ourselves; so I just had to sit there stupidly.

I’m sorry, Lady in the van; I was just following the rules. I promise you’d like me if you got to know me.

Anyway, as a result of the rotten luck, I always had to stop on that hill, too. Unlike the other intersection, though, I was always cruising up to this one with the hope of turning in fourth. This meant that when my dreams were shattered, I had to either hit the brakes or gear down in the hopes of timing the traffic so that I still wouldn’t have to stop. This never seemed to work for me, but I always had to try. In the end, it was a full stop, then more grabbing gears on a hill. This hill was worse as it is gravel, which slows the truck down even more. On this hill, I often lost my gears and had to start over. I usually did it in such a way that any oncoming traffic could still get through and the traffic behind me could just go around. That was not planned, it’s just how it worked out. I had no control over these situations.

Once, I failed my upshift so bad in that spot that I thought I succeeded. Even Trainee thought I succeeded for a while. We were both utterly bamboozled.

I had been far too slow in my attempt to go from 2-3, but somehow eased it into low gear as smooth as butter. When you think you are in third and still going painfully slow, you obviously want to get to fourth so you’re not holding up traffic. Three times, I tried to make the shift from low to fourth. Each time I inevitably failed, I was able to slip it right back into low gear. Like butter.

I chugged painfully slow around the corner, and then Trainee, who had looked confused at how badly that went even by my standards, finally understood what had happened.

“You’re in low gear,” he said, chuckling, “you were trying to go from low to fourth.”

That made a lot of sense.

“That’s pretty impressive,” he congratulated me, “low gear is hard to grab when you’re moving, and you found it three times!”

“Yeah, that’s how skilled I am,” I replied.

I never did make a fully successful corner there. The closest I came was when I finally had a clear intersection with no traffic to worry about. I was so excited about not having to come to a stop on the hill that I whipped around the corner in fifth gear. Mrs Instructor encouraged me not to do that on my exam, but also pointed out that turning in fifth gear meant a couple of points off, whereas losing my gears and having to stop meant an automatic fail. However, turning in sixth, as it is high range, is an automatic fail. I did this on my U-turn once. Again, I was very excited at the prospect of not having to stop, so we all got to feel a bit of centrifugal force as I hooked us sharply to the left.

Didn’t have to stop, though.

Mrs Instructor informed that this was both practically inadvisable, and an automatic fail.

I catalogued this valuable information.

I did a lot of cataloguing of information regarding the final driving test. Here are some things that get ten points off on your driving test. Ten points off means a fail, so there’s not a lot of wiggle room...

• Wandering out of your lane twice

• Not turning wide enough and trailer hits curb

• Turning too wide into traffic

• Not going when you have the right of way

• Going when you don’t have the right of way

• Losing all your gears and having to stop in neutral

• Coasting to a stop in neutral

• Shifting on railroad tracks

• Stopping in high range (except in emergencies)

• Hesitating too much

• Not hesitating enough

• Going too fast

• Going too slow

• Stopping for J-walkers

• Hitting J-walkers

• Not stopping for cross-walkers

• Not finding a good gear

I did all of these things except the ones regarding J-walkers. No J-walkers were hit, and most of them have the wherewithal not to cross in front of a semi truck, especially one with “Student Driver” pasted across it.

In all the many hours we spent practicing that SGI test route, I never once had a solid, no-fail run. Every day, I found new wrong ways to drive, and pretty soon (way too soon, I felt), my test was just a few days away.

Here’s how my schedule went...

Wednesday: drive in town with Mrs Instructor.

Thursday: spend all day going for a load of bales with Mr Instructor.

Friday: take a portion of my SGI test; the air test, pre-trip, and hook-on/off.

Saturday: marinate in the mire of my anxiety about my test on Monday.

Sunday: get my last few hours of backing logged. Do more marinating.

Monday: test.

Tuesday: re-test slot booked, if required. Apparently this is typical, to have a re-test in the next day or so, but I thought it was not enough of a gap, as I would need approximately 3-5 years to recover, emotionally and mentally, from the failure.

Anyway, let’s start with Wednesday.

On Wednesday, I had a really bad day of driving. I did a whole bunch of old mistakes and even discovered a few new ones. Mrs Instructor tried to soften the blow by informing me, “Don’t sweat it, this happens with every single student: just before their test, they have a really bad day of driving. This is good; it’ll be out of your system now and you’ll be good to go for Monday!”

Rather than taking away encouragement from that, what my ears heard was, “I know you’re thinking that you’re driving really bad today, and I just want to affirm that, yes, this is, in fact, really bad. I have never seen such bad driving. I guess I booked that test too early; maybe I should call and cancel because of how bad a driver you are. You will certainly fail, you bad, bad driver.”

Just to clarify, none of the instructors ever talk like that; they are always optimistic and constructive. But no amount of optimism can muffle that turd of a voice of discouragement in my head, so I have to point and laugh at it to keep it at bay, which is what I am doing now.

Anyway, I was feeling in no way confident in my town driving abilities when I resigned myself to not getting any more practice at it, because Thursday was the day I went for a load of bales.

For the first time, I would be driving with Mr Instructor, using a different truck, and pulling a load. They wanted me to go along for this experience because I had told them that I would be mostly using my license to haul bales for the farm.

We got started before the sun came up and got home just before it went down again, so I got plenty of driving hours in. Mr Instructor had plenty of wisdom to impart, but, as I told Mrs Instructor later, his tips and tricks were ones that I would use when I was actually trucking, but for just passing the test, I’d be better off without them. One of the biggest differences in his instructing is that he strongly encourages you to use the brakes only as a last resort. That was a very large tool from my toolkit that I had to stop using abruptly when I drove with him. It’s a good method, and something I should learn to do with greater efficacy, but didn’t really align with my plans of “fake it ‘till you make it”.

Besides, even though it is a good practice not to rely on your brakes, I suspect Mr Instructor just likes the sound of the engine brake a bit too much. Every time we used it, he’d roll his window down, close his eyes, smile blissfully at the deep, rhythmic ratatatatatatatata, and remark, “Country music.”

He also likes to say, “If you’re not having fun trucking, you’re going about it all the wrong way.”

It’s so nice to encounter people who have found a career path that suits them so perfectly, and his joy was contagious; I was having fun hauling bales.

The second most exciting part of the trip was going through Wapiti Valley. To get an idea of the terrain, I will just say that Wapiti Valley has a ski-hill on it. That’s about as mountainous as it gets in Saskatchewan. As I was white-knuckling my way through it with no load on, Mr Instructor coaching me on when to shift and when to use the engine brake, I was thinking about how much I hoped that either Mr Instructor would drive there once the bales were on, or that at least the bales would be quite a way further on, so that I’d have time to get used to driving with the load before whistling down the ravine.

The bales were a just few miles past the valley. And Mr Instructor did indeed make me drive.

The bales were loaded without incident, and we even managed to strap them efficiently. The flat deck he has is quite high, and once there are bales on it two-high, it’s a pretty dizzying height to be strolling along, tossing straps down from. The previous afternoon, he had joked that he would be sending me on the rickety ladder to the top to throw straps, but I shot his plan down, saying it was way above my pay grade. We were both bantering like we were joking, but it was like a Mexican stand-off of jokes, because we both were serious about not doing it. I’m pretty sure I was seriouser though, just for the record.

I guess it just takes two people afraid of heights to find a better way. We ended up waiting until the farmer had one layer of bales on, then Mr Instructor just had to climb to the lower layer and reach up and get the strap placed on the higher bale. This method allowed us to strap as the farmer loaded, instead of having to wait until he was done, then climb up and strap.

We were loaded and on the way back around noon.

If I was white-knuckling down Wapiti with no load, then I’m not sure what colour my knuckles were as I traversed the ravine under load.

Mr Instructor was excellent, though, giving me calm, specific instructions on when to let the engine brake slow us, and when to shift up or down. Once we made it through there, it was pretty much smooth sailing.

I only had one cold-sweat moment when we blew past an oncoming semi hauling an air seeder. As we approached him, I tapped the brake to turn the cruise control off, and nervously asked Mr Instructor if we would be okay to pass. He didn’t seem at all phased, and bid me continue on my way. I got as far onto the shoulder as I could, then my breath caught in my throat as we blew past. I was certain the outer points of the seeder were going to scrape along the bales. In fact, I’m not convinced they didn’t tickle the straw as we passed. I wonder if that other driver was as nervous as I, or if he caught a glimpse of my scared female face and clued in that he, too, should be afraid.

Anyway, I mentioned that Wapiti was the second most exciting thing, so now it’s time to confess the circumstances around the first most exciting event on the trip.

It was such a shame, because we had driven all the day long without major incident. I was excited to be back with no collateral damage, and would be headed home soon to catch up on sleep. It was a rookie mistake, counting all those stupid chickens before they hatched.

We pulled into the yard in fourth gear. It was the beginning of April at this point in time, and most of the snow in their yard was melted, leaving puddles and slimy mud in its place. We would be parking the truck in the area of the backing yard, which meant that we had to do a roundabout in the yard, then go out to the backing yard. The roundabout was wet, but had gravel, so we put the diff locks on and lugged around that circle. My anxiety levels were extremely high. I would have liked very much to stop the truck, switch drivers, and learn via observance. Short of that I would have been thrilled to find a lower gear, but we did sort of need momentum to slog through the mud. I was just beginning to feel relieved at having conquered the roundabout when our nose pointed towards the backing yard. The gravel ended at the narrow lane that led to it, and a deep puddle decorated the middle of this lane.

“Should I shift down?” I squeaked the question out.

“No, we’ll need momentum for this one. Just get as close as you can to the trees there, so you’ll have one steering tire up on the grass.”

I did exactly as he told me. That is the one thing keeping me from feeling guilty about the following events.

I kept the right side steering tire up on grass, near the trees. My plan was to chug gently along this curved grass line. Only when I tried to follow the curve, the truck did not listen.

“Yep. Yep. Turn now. Turn!” Mr Instructor told me. He must have though I was just idling stupidly along straight towards the evergreen tree.

“I am turning! It’s not doing anything!” Indeed, it was not. We were on a straight and unalterable trajectory towards the evergreen.

“Should I hit the brake?!” I asked.

“Nope,” Mr Instructor said, and I could hear the cringe in his voice, “Nothing we can do now.” He was gripping one of the hand holds. I was gripping the useless steering wheel.

BAM!

We ricocheted off the 8-foot evergreen with the right end of the bumper. The impact knocked us right off the grass strip and into the middle of the mud.

“Keep her going!” Mr Instructor said, but we were spinning already. Then we clued in that an alarming rattling noise was sounding.

“Alright, stop her there.”

I put it in neutral, and we went out to assess the damage.

The right end of the bumper was kinked back against the tire, which is what was rattling. Mr Instructor got a tractor, and Mrs Instructor and I assisted him in hooking a chain to the bumper to pull it straight.

Both of them assured me that it was not my fault, and that accidents happen. I joked that I should bring some brown paint back to touch up the evergreen trunk that I had gouged. I did not make jokes about brown pants. That was a little too close to home.

So now we move on to Friday, the day of my non-driving exams. On Friday I met Mrs Instructor at their yard and we went through a practice hook on, air test, and pre-trip. I was feeling pretty good about most of it, but the pre-trip is kind of a wild card. The SGI examiner can just ask you about whatever component they feel like, so you have to kind of know it all. A good pro-tip for this portion of the exam is just to fake it; as long as you’re blabbering away, they can’t ask you more stuff, and if you dump a quantity of information on them, the quality of it may go unnoticed.

I one hundred percent employed this method.

And I passed my exams.

We had started with the pre-trip and, sure enough, the tester had asked me about stuff that I wasn’t sure of. I kept my panic in check and began to bedazzle her with any sort of logically relevant information I could conjure. for instance, we had the hood of the truck opened and she said, “Explain the belts and hoses, and tell me a major and minor flaw for each of them.” Belts are easy, there’s really just the two of them right at the front of the engine, but I hadn’t gone through the log book to check what constituted major and minor flaws. Major flaws meant you had to shut down and fix it. Minor meant you had 24 hours to fix it.

So I guessed.

I considered the possible flaws on a belt. All I could think of was a rip on the belt, which I supposed would be a major flaw. I couldn’t think of a minor flaw, but I was inspired by the memory of the used Chevy truck that Dad just bought. About six things suddenly appeared to be wrong with the truck within the first day of having it home. One of the things that came up was a squealing sound from under the hood. Dad found that it was just a bearing that one of the belts was turning. I recalled hat he seemed relieved, since that was an easy and cheap fix, unlike the other issues that had arisen, and he said I could continue driving.

So that’s what I guessed was a minor flaw. It must have been, at the very least, not wrong.

I was not thrilled about the hose inquiry. There are a lot of hose-like things going on under the hood of the truck. Many are actually electrical, so you’ll like like a bit of an idiot if you point those out. To avoid pinning myself down as an idiot, I instead waved my hand in the general vicinity of some hoses that I knew were actual hoses and explained how I would check them over for wear and tear, look for any leaked fluids, and ensure they were fixed securely. I wasn’t inspired with much creativity for explaining a major and minor flaw on this portion of my exam. I just pointed out the obvious, explaining that a hole in a hose was a major flaw, but a spot of bad wearing was a minor one.

All in all, I am impressed with how well I did under pressure. In fact, I felt fairly okay, but when it was time for me to unhook and pull the truck ahead, my whole leg was shaking so badly, I had to use my hand to try and brace it so that I could let the clutch out safely. Perhaps I had pushed all my internal anxieties out to my leg. The left one. Fortunately, the tester didn’t come into the truck for this portion. She stayed outside to watch me do the hook on/off. I still made sure to buckle up, as I could feel her watching me in the mirrors. I even remembered to honk the horn before backing.

In other words, I nailed it. A surprising feat, given the fact that, in all the times at the instructors, I had had to take a couple tries to back to a good spot.

After hooking back on, it was time for the air test. This portion was cut and dry, so it was just a matter of memorizing, which I am pretty primed for, having done 4-H speeches for a dozen or so years. Once again, I nailed this exam. The tester lady gave me a slip of paper that confirmed this extravagant success of mine, and I got that particular weight off my shoulders.

Then I just had the substantially greater weight of the driving and backing exams on my shoulders.

But we’re not there yet. After the test, I still had a whole day of driving to redeem myself for my Wednesday of really bad driving.

I mostly did redeem myself. I still did not have a passing-grade type run, but I think I discovered the final possible ways of doing all the things wrong, because instead of doing things wrong in an automatic-fail sort of way, I managed to execute them in a two-to-five-points-off sort of way. A great improvement.

Usually when something went wrong it was because, despite knowing the practical theory, I let my heart make decisions. My heart was full of anxiety; it has never been my best decision-making faculty.

Still, I mostly kept my cool and despite the little errors here and there, my shifting was pretty spot on!

The weekend came and went, and Monday morning followed all too quickly, as it is wont to do even without any exams.

I had requested that, instead of meeting Mrs Instructor at the SGI testing lot in town, we could drive the truck in together so that I could get the cobwebs out of my system before the test. I’m glad I was able to do this, as it helped to calm my nerves. We got to town, drove to the SGI lot, and she left me to the tester while her sister picked her up to go for coffee. I knew they would go to a particular Tim Horton’s and watch the road for me to go by. We had done this for other students before; I think it is Mrs Instructor’s only way of rooting for her students when they’re on their test route.

The SGI lot is in the industrial area of town. That way, the tester can take you for a bit of a loop down some empty roads to assess whether they feel safe enough to continue the exam. Fortunately, rather than frightening my examiner, I apparently impressed him with my gentle shifting skills, which he complimented. I have Mrs Instructor to thank for this, who’s dulcet English accent had coached me through so, so many shifts.

“Like butter!!” She would exclaim when I would slide it into a gear with no resistance.

“Ten hundred RPM... Ten hundred RPM...” she would calmly encourage, turning her index finger in a small circle to get me to increase my RPMs.

“Brake her down; right down to seven hundred, then find a whole gear,” she would say calmly if we were going a little too fast towards a red light.

These phrases, and many more, play like audio clips in my head whenever I need them.

And I needed them on the exam.

As we were leaving the industrial area, I was chugging up towards a red light, gearing down. I guess it’s a good thing I had missed gears at that intersection so often before, because I looked like an absolute champion when I missed fourth and slipped it easily into third. I didn’t even do any grinding; just felt some resistance on one gear, and slipped it right into the next one down.

“Like butter!”

I was simultaneously having a heart attack and feeling very pleased with myself. A strange combination. Good for the circulation, I imagine.

I saw the examiner look down at the gear shift as I did my fancy fishing, but he didn’t pull his clipboard out, so I kept my composure. I came to a gentle stop at my first set of lights, giving myself some space before the railroad track that went across the intersection. When the light turned green, I managed to remember not to shift on a railroad track, so I got up to fourth, made my turn, then geared up more. I was on my way to the S-turn. I had great fortune at that intersection. I hit a red light, which gave me time to think about my turn, and there was no one on the whole side of road that I was turning onto. This was excellent, as it meant my turn did not have to be so precise. Once, on a practice run, an oncoming lady in an SUV sat in her lane right next to the middle. I made my turn with the guidance of Mrs Instructor, but both me and SUV Lady looked very much afraid. From my perspective in the truck, the lady and her vehicle nearly disappeared behind the bulky front of the semi. However, we could still see her pie-plate eyes, and could easily read her lips as they formed the sort of phrase she might not say if there were kids in the SUV. It was especially easy to read her lips because my own head was chanting pretty much the same words.

Anyway, there were no SUV ladies on my exam, which meant I could use her lane somewhat for the turn. That’s the rule for driving trucks; if there’s space, use it. And good thing I used it. The tester was watching my trailer wheels like a hawk, so he wouldn’t have noticed which lane I drove in anyway. He was watching my trailer wheels so close because their sidewalls were getting pretty friendly with the curb. I don’t blame him. I, too, was transfixed with the show in my convex mirror. When the turn was completed with no rubber left behind, I allowed oxygen into my lungs again and tried to pretend that had gone precisely as planned. I could only hope he wasn’t paying attention to the wideness of my eyes. About 60 meters after the S-turn came the first of my two kryptonite turns, where I had to do a full stop, then grab gears on a hill. The early morning test came with an absence of traffic, and this absent element seemed to be helping me out a lot. I made my turn just fine, grabbed some gears, and carried on to my second kryptonite turn. Bolstered by the lack of traffic anywhere else, I began to count my chickens before they hatched, planning how I would get a lower gear, then just sail around my turn. I may have been even counting my eggs before I had chickens, that’s how out to lunch I was in my plans.

Because of course this turn would not work out to be ideal. It had never ever ever done that. And it did not give me a break for my test.

There was, indeed, no oncoming traffic, per say. What there was, of all the things, was a grater going smack down the middle of the gravel road I had to turn on to. Technically, I had the right of way, but realistically, I had to make a full stop and wait for the grater to slowly lurch to a halt then back into a nearby parking lot to get out of my way.

Despite the interruption, I was able to grab my gears successfully, staying out of low gear altogether.

The next few intersections were pretty easy, especially with the lack of traffic. On one right turn, I took a little too much of the space available and made an extra wide turn. The tester put a small tick mark on the sheet, but luckily, I didn’t notice that at the time. I was just thrilled that I hadn’t hit the parked cars on my side of the road or the curb on the other side of the road.

I continued on my way through a couple more turns, down a residential street, then made the final, somewhat tricky, left turn back onto a main road. The turn is somewhat tricky because the T intersection is at a wonky angle. To see both ways, you have to pull up to the stop sign normally, then at the last second, crank it to poke the nose of your truck to the right so you can see the traffic that way. Also, you have to not poke your nose too much that way or you will hit the stop sign. I didn’t do that, but apparently other students have; they paved the way for all of us though, because the sign is folded so we have a bit more room now.

Anyway, even if you set up perfectly, it can be hard to see all oncoming traffic. In practice drives, I’d been stuck there for over five minutes, waiting, but my early morning test was blessing me over and over again. I hardly had to wait before I was rolling out and gearing up again.

I had completed the turn before it occurred to me that that had been my final turn for the in-town driving. Now, the tester would either take me out on the highway to do a U-turn, or, if I had already failed miserably, he’d take us back to the SGI compound.

I rolled along the straight stretch of road with what I hoped was a calm demeanor as I waited for his instruction. Back to the compound meant I failed. Out to the highway meant I was passing so far...

“Alright, now we’ll go through the last lights there and go do a U-turn on the highway.”

I.

Was.

Thrilled.

But I didn’t have much time to get giddy over counting my chickens, because the next thing the tester said was,

“Now either as we go out or when we’re on the way back, I’ll need to see you gear up and down using all the high range splits, and using the clutch.”

My eyes were getting wide again. Not that what he said surprised me; we had been told that this is how the test would go. However, every time I expressed doubts about my ability to clutch when shifting down, Mrs Instructor would just assure me that I would be fine.

And then all of a sudden it was my test, and I was not feeling fine at all.

I managed to hit a green on the last light, so off we were cruising out of town, and I didn’t even have to overthink my first five gears.

Gearing up went well. I had managed to develop a pretty good feel and ear for it thanks to many hours of driving, and I was even pretty good with the double clutching for it. I had a little mental hang-up on how to clutch when I just split a gear, though. I had never done it before, but I had heard that it was a thing to do. To make up for my lack of knowing what the heck I was doing, I pretended very hard that I did indeed know what I was doing. Every time I thought I was expected to use the clutch, I put my foot up to the clutch, hovered it there, maybe moved my leg a little bit while still not engaging the clutch at all, then put my foot back to the floor with a bit of a stomp. My hope was that the tester had a pretty limited view of my clutch, and that as long as the gears were going well and my clutching leg was showing signs of life, he wouldn’t dock any points.

I had climbed all my gears, and the U-turn was quickly approaching.

Due to all the many many many times that I had done this U-turn wrong, and due to the many many times that my weakness had been blowing up to it way too fast, I decided this time to slow down way too soon. That is an offence punishable by points off, so I had to act quickly to ensure that I wasn’t coming off as an unconfident driver.

“Are we doing the U-turn at this approach, or the one up there with the light post?”

My throat was tightening around the stupidness of the question because of course I knew. How could I not know after executing the turn approximately a million times?

“Oh I’m sorry,” the tester said, “I forgot to direct you; it’ll be the one up there, with the light.”

I’ve never been more in touch with my femininity as when I did something wrong and got that man to apologize for it.

But I didn’t even have time for Shania Twain to sing, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” in my head (she’s a frequent flier in there), because I had to catch all my gears going down.

Gearing down has never been easy-peasy-lemon-squeazy for me. And now that I had to add a second clutching, even if it was a pretend clutching, it was going to be difficult-difficult-lemon-difficult.

Somehow, and I don’t know exactly how, I managed it. The second clutching was most certainly pretend, and sometimes I stomped my foot back down a little too dramatically and I thought for sure he would catch on to the ruse.

I guess he either didn’t catch on, or figured I was such a bad actor I better be allowed to follow my trucking dreams instead. In any case, I had geared down successfully and came to a stop to wait for oncoming traffic.

For the first time in my life, then, I did a good U-turn. I had managed to find a few gears before I was in the sharp turn, and both my truck and trailer stayed on pavement. I was so elated about my success and about being on the home stretch that, as I geared up to get to highway speed again, I forgot that going from 8 to 10 is a big gear, and should always be split.

God Himself wanted me to succeed, though. I didn’t even notice what I’d done until I was in 10, had a moment of horror, then realized the truck wasn’t even lugging. I quickly did the math and realized that the Lord had sent me a tailwind.

I thought the tester looked as though he was eyeing my gearshift, also putting together what I had just done.

“We’ve got a good tailwind now,” I casually remarked, in case he was starting to suspect that I had only gotten this far thanks to a fortunate string of dumb luck.

We headed back to the SGI compound. To make the right turn into the gates of the lot, you have to use up the whole roadway. It’s like the final test, because if you take out their chain link gates, I’m guessing it’s an automatic fail.

I made it into the compound and came to a stop. I was not in any way sure that I had passed, but I didn't feel as though I'd brought dishonour on my family, so that was good.

It was time for my backing exam.

One of my classmates had failed his backing exam because he had pulled into the SGI lot in fourth gear and gone straight for the backing part of the exam.

Both the tester and the instructors (who heard of it later) remarked, “Wow, I’ve never seen someone do that in fourth before.”

He didn’t fail directly because of his break-neck speed, but because his attempts at two ninety-degree turns at that speed didn’t set him up well, and he couldn't get backed in.

Perhaps it was thanks to that student that the tester told me to stop. We stepped out of the truck and went over some parameters and perimeters. The lot was bigger than what I was used to practicing in, and apparently there is more leeway than what I was familiar with. When I backed into my pylon bay, I was allowed to go either 5 meters short or 5 meters too far back without penalty. I was also allowed three free pull-ups, but every one after that was just two points off. I was relieved that the rules were less strict here than at the practices. I even felt marginally confident that I could accomplish it.

The tester stayed outside to have a better view of the pylons and I got in the truck. My set-up seemed to go well, and I got the truck into reverse and slowly got my trailer pointed in a good direction. I even remembered to put my hazards on and honk the horn before I started backing. I only went back a little way, then I put the truck in park and got put and had a look at things. You are allowed to get out and look as many times as you want, as long as you’re done the whole process within 15 minutes. I liked the way I was starting out, so I jumped back in and chugged back a little more. When I was about to jump out again, I realized I hadn't put my seatbelt on, so I pretended to take it off, in case the tester could see, then jumped out. Again, I liked what I saw, so I chugged back a little more. I couldn't see my offside pylons, but I thought I would be able to discern my distance from them well enough by just watching the onside pylongs. Boy am I glad that all three voices of Mr and Mrs Instructor as well as Trainee were sounding in my head. “Get. Out. And. Look.” They commanded me. I did, just in time to see that my back bumper was right in line with the pylons on my offside. A little farther, and I would have scraped the imaginary bay wall for an automatic fail. I tried not to look shaken by this discovery when I got to the back and assessed my situation, the tester hovering nearby. “I'll just use one of my pull-ups to straighten out, then I should be good to come back,” I explained casually. Internally, I was screaming at my close call with totally blowing it. As I said I would, I pulled ahead a little way, then eased the trailer in nice and straight. In the end, I did a pretty fantastic job, if I do say so myself. I was sitting square in the bay, tight to the end pylon, and the truck and trailer were straight with each other. This one, I felt pretty confident that I had passed.

When I felt I was done my backing job, I put the truck in park and walked to the back of the trailer where the tester stood with his clipboard. He asked if I was done backing. I know he just had to ask this so he knew whether to proceed or not, but it really took the wind from my sails, making me think I had made some huge error and not accounted for it. I looked around the truck at all the intact pylons and my nicely-positioned truck. “Yes?” I said tentatively. The tester smiled and said I'd passed the backing exam. I was relieved for a fleeting moment before he continued, pulling his clipboard out. “Now for your driving,” he flipped some papers over and left me hanging in silence for an agonizing few seconds as my stomach dropped. “I didn't take any points off,” he continued. “There's a mark here where you took a turn a little too wide, but I scratched it out. If the rest of your drive had been questionable, I might have needed to tally up some faults to fail you.” My stomach was still in a dropped position because my brain wasn't processing things very fast. “So... I... passed?” I asked hesitantly, because if you ask that question and get a “no” answer, you look like a real butt. But I was no butt. I had passed. I was a super trucker.

I am a super trucker.

That is what I kept telling Sister the next weekend when I cruised around the city in the Buick Lesaber. Every time I bounced over a curb, parked crooked, and missed a turn, I reminded her not to worry...

“Because I'm a super trucker.”