Driving and Running

When I run the problems of the world usually leave me, and I come back with the feeling that everything will be alright. More often than not I even come up with a plan to correct what ever it is that is bothering me. I am usually optimistic to a fault. It will be alright has been my mantra for most my adult life. Usually it has been.

 Changing direction is not an easy thing.
"An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless an external force is applied to it."- Isaac Newton.
Newton was talking about a physical object with mass, but I have found that the same principal can apply to the trajectory of one's life.   Nothing changes without effort.

I am three days into a 22 week long training program to obtain a class A CDL license.  This is not the direction I had planned on going, but it feels good right now. I am learning to drive a tractor trailer, and hope to be working again by early summer.

If this seems a strange career choice a few things about me may make it less so. I grew up with a construction company in my backyard. My dad had a shovel dozer, two (or three) backhoes, a Ford F-350 (1 1/2 ton pickup) and a Ford 850 dump truck (a big diesel dump truck) parked in our yard.  When I was 4  would ride in the dump truck to construction sites and see my dad operating the dozer.  I remember waking up in the cab of the truck at the end of the day after everyone had gone home. I got up and grabbed the wheel of that mighty truck and pretended to drive it.
I remember the smell of diesel and plastic in the cab of that truck that I could still smell years later in other old Ford trucks. I even drove a similar truck for a day at the UMass orchard in Belchertown (that was in 1991 or '92?).  I was always drawn to the big trucks more than I was to the heavy equipment.

Driving often has a similar effect on me as running does. I don't get the adrenalin rush, but I find most driving to be relaxing, almost meditative. (Much more so on my motorcycle, but that will be another day's musing.).  In my time at Pioneer Gardens I drove their trucks to New York, Ohio, Michigan, Ontario, all the way down to South Carolina.  I have done this job before.

Today I listened to lectures on down shifting before a hill, before a curve, and watched other students driving the courses on the tarmac outside the school classrooms.  I have changed direction. I wonder where this trajectory will take me.

Keep your feet on the road.