DAY 3: “Back On The Road” – The Group Training Academy EV Tour Blog

March 3, 2021

After our long drive back from Pennsylvania to my hometown of Norton, Ohio I had to immediately get ready for a very busy 6 days’ worth of work. On Thursdays fellow AVI instructor holds/tapes his diesel coaching program out of my place, where I lend a hand manning cameras to capture this Tasmanian devil of an instructor with up to five different camera angles. Whenever we do these coaching programs, they are always well received and with each session we get more proficient with camera gear! Soon, Tom and I will have no need to go to AVI world headquarters in Fort Myers, Florida to shoot video training series.

As soon as Tom’s coaching session was completed (9:00 PM), I needed to clean the shop in preparation for our next EV training session being held on the 6th of March. When Friday finally arrived, it was again, a remarkably busy day for me to unpack the trailers, pull the Prius out and park it on the lift, set up all the tables and chairs, get the presentation tables set up, set up the electrical boards and power supplies, all the show and tell electrical items, get all the student books and paperwork organized and much more.

Saturday was the day of the class. I went out to the garage at 6:30 AM to make final preparations for the class to start at 9:00 AM. People started arriving at about 8:15 and were directed where to park and welcomed to the class. Hats off to the local Fisher Federated guys for sponsoring the class and providing breakfast and lunch for the attendees. these guys were great! Class started promptly at 9 and went all the way until 5 PM with a half hour break for lunch and two 10-minute breaks. I literally had about 40-hours of material to cover in those 8-hours.

The attendees were very eager to learn about high voltage vehicles as are all the attendees attending this course throughout the country. This course was very special to me since I knew a lot of the attendees since this is my hometown. All in attendance were highly intelligent technicians and were very engaged by both asking questions and eager to perform all the hands-on activities that we do in the course. 8-hours flew by as it normally does and when class was over, as is typical, several small groups congregated and discussed a variety of topics ranging from industry related to class highlights.

Once the final car left, I again got busy cleaning up from the class and loading everything back into the trailer for the next venue. The time was now about 7 PM and I began literally tearing apart the entire shop and pushing everything into the middle of the floor. Everything off the walls needed to be removed as well. Sunday morning my wife came out to help get things finished. This is all an effort to get the walls drywalled so as to make the shop more studio quality for video shoots. After lunch on Sunday, the wife and I started staining the beams in the pole barn a nice mahogany color so it will really pop against the white drywall when finished. We weren’t able to finish everything on Sunday simply due to the fact that I am literally flat out exhausted beyond belief.

Monday morning, during our weekly zoom meeting with the powers that be at AVI, I was told of yet even more of a busy schedule training across the country. I swear they are trying to kill me with all the travel and training. Lol. After our meeting ended it was back to work to finish staining what didn’t get done on Sunday. Finally, about 3;30 the staining was completed. Next was time to go do all the email tasks that get sent to me from headquarters daily.

Tuesday I will be conducting a webinar for Vision KC from 8-10PM Eastern time then it’s off to bed to get up early on Wednesday to head to Kentucky for the next stop. We have several more stops to make as we make our way back to fort Myers. While in Fort Myers I will be also shooting a new video from the studio and conducting another one of these EV classes. I am just taking one day at a time until this crazy schedule of this tour is over for me on the 28th.

Then I need to fly home, paint the drywalled walls and ignore all phone calls and emails from headquarters! All future summaries will be from Mike again. By the way, Mike is obsessed with unicorns for some weird reason..... He literally can’t shut up about them as we drive across the country in the AVI truck.

Stay tuned to this blog, as we hope to bring you updates on this tour as it goes, both the good and not-so-good, all the way through to its' conclusion on March 27 in Fort Myers, Florida, TGTA's world headquarters.

If you are interested in finding out how to bring TGTA live training to your area, contact us at Phone: 1-800-718-7246 | Email: support@aviondemand.com. We will be adding tour stops for the EV classes and additional content on such topics as advanced diesel diagnostics, ADAS, and light, medium, and heavy-duty braking systems.