Background

Since there is time to spare I glanced over the previous posts and realized that I never gave a foundation of how I got to this point of my life.

I never thought I would be a trucker, even though the wanderlust has been in my blood for as long as I can remember. I grew up in, at the time, a small town in Massachusetts called Franklin. It was named after one of our countries fore fathers and even has a public library that holds original books penned and donated by Benjamin Franklin himself. You can't check them out anymore, but you can look at them through a glass window.  Growing up in a small town was fun for the most part, the quiet at night was only broken by sounds of the crickets and tree frogs with the occasional hiccup of bullfrog. The night symphony was what I went to sleep with for a long long time.

My first major interest was computers and technology. I was an 80's child, which means that video games and arcades were the biggest draw in my life. I loved those electronic cartoons that you could manipulate and destroy, only to be able to do it again with another quarter. The very first computer in my house was a ADAM computer. The first computer that I ever owned was a Commodore 64. I damn near devoured it up when I got it. As time went on, I learned about modems and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and how to connect with other people through those systems. Then came the day that I was able to get my hands on  a copy of a BBS myself. That changed my world, I dove into how it worked and pulled it apart bit by bit, literally. I taught myself BASIC programming and started to code my own programs to work within that environment.

Memorial Day Weekend

Welcome to my long weekend.

Sadly to say, I still have not had any answer back from the trucking company about an orientation date yet. Since this is Memorial Day weekend and the official start of the Summer Season for most commercial enterprises, it comes as no surprise that my recruiter had taken Friday off to start a long weekend.

So this gives me more time to play with, I have started to work on my health a little bit more. If you notice off to the left I have added a RSS feed showing my progress of work for walking with a program called Run Keeper. Its pretty slick and I find its better than a pedometer. Not only does it track with GPS my position and relative speed, but it ties in with Google Maps to plot out where I have gone. So if I decide to go on a few side and winding roads on my walks, I can see exactly where I was at the time.

What I am doing is setting myself up to compete with myself. I need to start exercising again and walking is going to be one of those things I can do no matter where I go. So while I am out and about at various trucking rest stops along the way, I will be walking and if you care to check out where I am doing my walking, it should pop up on a map. A tad Big Brotherish, I know. Then again the truck has similar tracking on it as well, so either way, people know where I am. I'm just bringing it to my friends and curious bystanders.

Tuesday will be the start of a new week and hopefully that will show any progress towards my starting at the company. As it stands all the reports and paperwork that have been submitted has passed the Safety department and is now sitting with the Medical director. They have to look over all the medical paperwork done by the clinic I went to and the reports and documents I have sent in based on my Sleep Study and CPAP machine. From there a decision will be made.

All that there is now to do is wait.

Updates from .... not the field.

As it turns out, the report I sent in Friday was not what they were looking for. The data date range was wrong.

So the final (I hope) piece of information that I need to submit to the Safety department has been sent.

I am waiting now, not more than a little trepidation, for the all clear and a date for my orientation.

As I think I said before, I am jumping through a lot of hoops here for a very good reason. None of these obstacles were in front of me for company number 1. What would have happened when I got there? Would I have had to go through all of these same steps there? A lot of this information would have taken me weeks were I on a truck trying to learn what I needed to learn. It would have been especially difficult if I had the stress of information gathering after the fact.

I am glad I am still home to do all this information gathering. I am not too thrilled about not working yet but I would rather have all my ducks in a row BEFORE I get out there. Focus while learning is an important thing. I really dislike being distracted about one thing while trying to learn another and then failing both.

We shall see what happens now.

Finally done..

As of Friday, I have completed all the medical requirement (I hope) that the Safety department is requiring before they will offer me an orientation date.

The last few bits of medical information was gathered and sent. The one that was the easiest turned out to be the luckiest for me. I use a CPAP machine at night due to Severe Obstructed Sleep Apnea. The Safety Dept. requires 3 months of documented compliance pulled in the form of a report from the machine itself. Long story short, I had to call the mfg. of the machine to see how I could get this report extracted. They referred me to a local company that was about an hour away. I called them and they said they could do it, so I went and brought my machine with me.

Patience.. Virtuous..

I contacted my recruiter yesterday and found that all the information I sent has been received.

Now all we are doing is waiting for the Safety Department to sign off on the information and allow me to come on.

Wait, wait, wait...