Training week

On Monday we still were not getting any load offers going in the direction that we needed to go so around lunch time we started to move again. Sometimes when you begin to move, the company will start sending load offers to try to coax you into certain directions. And sure enough that happened but going east wouldn't work for us.

We pulled into the Erie Walmart. This is one of our favorite places to park and walk. We got our walk in and then moved even more west. Load offers going east continued to come our way so we sent a message over the computer telling them we were going out of service.

We drove a little closer to Canton and then stopped for the night.

So, we just drove empty from Albany, Ny to Canton.

On Tuesday we got some preventative maintainence work done on our truck. That took the morning, then we drove to the truckstop nearest to the Fedex Headquarters. We walked once the temps cooled and got a good nights sleep.

We had class on Wednesday until lunch. We went through the cafeteria and got our lunch to go and went out to the truck. 

We talked with some of the others that were in our class and several new hires. We hung around until time to start the testing on our truck. 

Our truck would remain at Fedex while it would undergo testing for the next two days. We went to a hotel.

Our suite was pretty nice.

There was a pretty amazing fitness room. Pops went nuts in there each day. I walked on the treadmill in there the first evening.

We walked to FedEx on the second day to change some things on our truck. It was a 2.7 mile round trip to Fedex and back to the hotel.

On the way we saw this pretty pond.

On the Thursday evening there was a webinar that we watched from the hotel. It lasted about an hour. Afterward we were tested on all that we had been learning. We were required to pass with a 90% correct. 

Pops and I both scored 100% the first try!

On Friday morning, our son, Tom married a wonderful girl, Sophia. We are so glad to have her in the family.

This is a cake that I had made for them. They (Tom) sometimes steal each other's Twix candy bars, so the cake is surrounded with Twix bars.

Earlier that morning, Tom and Sophia got to hear their baby's heartbeat for the first time. It was quite an exciting day.

After lunch on Friday we were required to run a fake run with our truck to test both us and the truck with all the new stuff we will be doing. We had to run a 300 mile roundtrip. We finished up at 10pm that night.

It has been a long week but we were now free to go.

We drove south toward Columbus hoping to get a load right away. But that didn't happen.

The next day was a gorgeous Fall day in Ohio. Pops and I stopped at the Lodi Station. It is an outlet mall with a real working railroad around the stores. I have often wanted to stop there. We had a really nice relaxing time. And we got most of our Christmas shopping done. 

On Sunday we went to church in Ashland, OH. It was a very nice church with warm, friendly people. Sunday school was a good study on Saul's conversion. The sermon was a quick run through of the Book of Revelation.

After church I got our laundry done. We bought a groceries, made another quick trip back to the outlets.

We walked this evening and now we are ready to get back at it.