After our adventure with the 500lb man, we went back to the firehouse and slept for what little there was of the rest of the night. In the morning, I had to go to the training academy for more of my driver training class (I'm learning to drive the long tiller trucks, with a driver in the front and in the back). I felt like I was slowly getting better at driving these big monsters, so I was looking forward to a good day.
Part of the class is learning how to parallel park the trucks (something we'll probably never do in the field, but still it helps us understand how to maneuver the trucks better). I was driving the front portion of it and, with knowledge gained from watching other people do it, I felt like I could do it too.
I started backing in and the tiller man got his portion of the truck in the parking space. I slowly started to swing the front of the truck in as well. I lost sight of the front barrier of the parking space, but still thought I had enough room to swing in.
Turns out I thought wrong.
As I was swinging in, one of the guys in the class who was spotting us ran up to the front of the truck, hands waving and yelling, "Stop!" I thought that I had just miscalculated the angle at which I was coming in, so I pulled up and started backing in again. Then another guy stopped me and called over one of our instructors. At this point, I saw the guy and some other guys staring down at where the barriers were. "Uh-oh," I thought. "This can't be good."
Our instructor came over, looked at what the other guys were looking at and told me to shut down the truck. Really not good. I shut it down, got out and saw what they were staring at. Apparently, I had hit one of the barriers and dented it pretty good. However, in doing that, I had caused the front bumper of the truck to be bent a little bit. Ultimately, it was not a lot of damage. However, our county has had a lot of problems with apparatus drivers getting into accidents recently, so every accident, no matter how minor, has to be investigated. Next thing I knew, the entire class was put on pause, the driver trainer had to come out to investigate, pictures had to be taken of the damage, the safety chief had to come out and take a statement from me, I had to write a statement of what happened to the driver training coordinator and the safety chief, the police had to come out to file an accident report...utter craziness!
Had this happened a couple classes ago, I would have really been kicking myself, because then I was at the pinnacle of frustration with driving these trucks. However, that day I just shrugged it off. It's a training class...this is where we're SUPPOSED to make all our mistakes. Better I dent up a plastic training barrier than a $70,000 Mercedes, right?
In the end, pretty much everyone told me not to worry about it; these things happen and it's not that big of a deal. But they told me all that AFTER they got in some good-natured shots at me. Hey, this IS the fire department after all.
As the class wound down, I got one more shot of driving through the cone course and parallel parking. I did a lot better on the course, but still struggled a bit going backwards through the serpentine. After we finished the serpentine, we got to parallel park one more time. I gave it a shot, but still didn't do it right (but I didn't hit anything!). That ended the day on a frustrating note for me.
As the class ended, I had to go inside the academy and write a revised statement to the chief and driving coordinator, telling my story in a bit more detail. Then I headed home. Starting from Friday, I had had my driver's class from 8am to 3pm, had to work from 5pm to 7am Saturday, had to work from 5pm Saturday to 7am Sunday, had to work all 24 hours on Sunday, then had my class from 8am to 3pm Monday. I love my job, but at that point on Monday, I just wanted to go home and not even THINK about anything related to the fire department.
I got home, made some food, sat on my couch and just let out a big..."SIIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHH"
Home Sweet Home.
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