Don't Call Me a Sissy

The training continued today.

We started off at the industrial estate again as a bit of a warm up and pretty much right from the start I was doing alright. I was crunching the gears occasionally, but coming up to turns I was getting my speed right, getting the revs right and getting it into gear. So off we went into the traffic.

As it was such a nice day, we headed out to Canungra. Canungra is a nice, quiet little town in the Gold Coast hinterland. Now that word hinterland might give you an idea what the area is like, it's hilly.

We drove from there, back toward the coast to Nerang. By the time we got to there I was starting to feel pretty confident. I still wasn't driving perfectly, but I'd managed some pretty tricky gear changes going up steep hills and the twisty roads didn't bother me.

Onto some more traffic around Beenleigh and Yatala and I was still handling things OK, all the time getting more confident.

Around ten we stopped at a truck stop just off the highway and grabbed some lunch to take back to the driving school.

Back into it after the early lunch for a couple of hours more practice before the test at one.

That was when the wheels started to fall off.

I don't mean literally, I mean my driving just got worse and worse. I was crunching gears, missing gears; the more I stuffed up, the more I got frustrated and the more I got frustrated, the more I stuffed up.

Eventually Keith decided that any more practice was going to be counterproductive and I couldn't agree more with him, so we headed to the test centre at Beenleigh.

After sitting around for a while because we were early, the tester, Colin, came out. We checked the truck out, I signed some paperwork, and we were off.

Putting it into gear to pull away could have been a little quieter, but it wasn't really that bad. We pulled away, turned left at the lights, headed down hill to another left and my gear changes were all good. It was early, but my confidence was coming back.

A few more intersections and roundabouts and I was still going OK. I hadn't hit anything, I hadn't exceeded the speed limit, I was checking my mirrors and generally starting to feel like a real truck driver.

Then we came to a roundabout where I had to slow down and I missed a gear change and had to come to a full stop to get it into gear.

Now normally that would be an instant fail as you're deemed to not have full control of the vehicle. Luckily Col was a nice guy and told me he'd let me have that one, big relief.

We continued on and, even though there were the occasional slight grinding sounds from the gearbox, I wasn't going too bad.

Then I did it again and almost had to come to a complete stop.

When we drove up a street in Beenleigh and I realised the test centre was right in front of us, I knew what the verdict was. The test should have take about an hour and we were back in about twenty minutes.

At least I wasn't the only person to fail today and for the same reason. The fact the other person was female is irrelevant. It was interesting though, that the other student lives in the same suburb as me, when you consider the driving school is a good forty kilometre drive from here and there are other schools we could have gone to. It says a lot for the quality of Major Operator and Driver Training Services. I'd recommend them anytime.

Anyway, I'm going to take some more lessons, probably an hour or two a week, to get up to the right standard, then I'll redo the test.

So don't start calling me a sissy just yet.

One of the upsides of my failing today is that I'll be able to blog about it for a little longer.