Day 3 - Welcome to CR England Global Transportation!

Good evening fellow travelers, and greetings from sunny/cold Utah!  My first day at the CR England Utah-based training facility is now history.  The day was filled primarily with testing -- drug test, a federal DOT physical and two practice tests to get us ready for the DMV test on Wednesday.

I had been very concerned about my blood pressure, as the company requires blood pressure to be less than 140/90.  Mine has typically been higher than that, so i was THRILLED when the test came in at 128/88 (maybe the double dose of my BP meds helped....).  On the other hand, i was notified that because of my weight and other medical issues (diabetes, high BP), i was a candidate for sleep apnea.  So i have to either lose 20 lbs or take a test to rule out sleep apnea.  I like the latter better, but will also work on the former.

No issues to report from the urine test, or as they affectionally call it here, the "Whizz Quizz".

Also had to do a fairly easy physical ability test, which included lifting 30 lbs over our heads, pushing a 150-lb sled for about 20 feet, and a minute of stair-stepping to check our heart rates.  All in my test group (which was 60% women) did just fine.

The rest of the day was filling out paperwork and completing a couple open-book  tests in preparation for our DMV written test in two days.  The material isn't too difficult, but there is a lot of material to cover, which mostly focuses on how to safely drive, the use of air brakes, cargo loading, and vehicle inspections (QUITE detailed).

Crap, just discovered that i missed dinner -- the on-site restaurant closes at 7.  Is there ANY better demonstration of my commitment to my dear blog readers!

The facility here is flat-out amazing.   It's an entire campus fully dedicated to housing and instructing new and current CR England drivers.  Some of its features include a barbershop, a movie theater, a fairly large video game room, a TV room with EIGHT reclining overstuffed chairs, two pool tables, a full-service restaurant, a small grocery store/gift shop, a medical/chiropractic clinic, and likely many other services that i haven't yet discovered.

I hear a lot of my classmates (there were about 50 today) will wash out for a variety of reasons after the first day, and then even more after the first week.  We'll see.....   I certainly don't intend to be one of them!

Time to buy some yogurt and fruit for dinner and then maybe study a little more.

Safe travels everyone.

KWA