I wish I could attend more of the training nights with the fire department, but my tutoring schedule precludes it during the school year. I'm always glad when I can make it to training or a meeting, and tonight I had a chance to drive a firetruck.
We regularly cycle thru a regimen that includes dealing with car fires, ladders, hoses, air tanks, and so on, but tonight was the first time I've made it to a session with the trucks. We drove a pickup-style firetruck thru a short slalom course with a few pylons in the parking lot of the high school, and then we did the same route with one of the longer trucks. In both cases, we had to drive the trucks up to a stopping point to see how close we came to a cone, and then we had to do the same course in reverse! I was surprised how well I did -- backing up towards a cone in the dark while driving a huge truck is not something I expected to have much skill in, but I attacked the task with a sort of mathematical approach, and that worked for me. I also got some excellent advice from one of our members who drives a truck for a living. In a nutshell, it involved shadows.
I don't think I'll be driving a firetruck on my own anytime soon, but I'm glad I got to try them out this evening.
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