RK Series Racing; Stage 8 Camp; Part 3
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Team Shift Happens
“Erm… we’ll see what Val thinks once we get there…”, Constantin replies as the three are heading over to the Dione where Tim and Valentin were still stood.
It wasn’t hard for Valentin to miss three people approaching him, but we was a bit confused at first, as the visit regarding the inner workings of Robert was already dealt with.
“Still need anything?”, Valentin asked with a raised eyebrow, unsure about why Kayden was back and what he was carrying.
“Constantin mentioned you were in pain,” Kayden said, “so I’ve come back over with some of my supplies to see if there’s anything that can be done about that. I have a basic pain cream that should work to reduce your pain some, but I’m not quite sure how effective it will be.”
From by the Bricksley, Kaylie yelled out to her brother, “Kayden, can you also ask them if they know where I can refill some of these water jugs?”
Kayden rolled his eyes. “Probably don’t have to, Kaylie, you made it clear enough,” Kayden called back. He looked to Valentin and chuckled. “Well, it also seems like Kaylie’s given me a task as well, as you heard. Apparently she’s worried that more than half of our radiator water is gone. Considering Rukari tried to blow it up towing your car to the steamworks, I’m not surprised we’re low on water.”
“Hardly a surprise, but it isn’t that bad…”, Valentin groaned, trying to not be forced into taking any more favors from Shift Happens and their members. Though by his posture, some areas were visibly less than pleasant currently.
“Well if your knees go tits-up for whatever goddamn reason than we’re stuck here. We only have one driver… well, two, but nobody can work that array of levers you call the ‘fireman’s controls’.”, Constantin countered rather sternly, before being startled by Kaylie shouting into his back from afar.
“Robert has a water hose clamp between the rear seats and we’ve been using that to refill our tanks on the wayside water towers. They even have distilled water there, probably for ease of cleaning reasons.”, Valentin replied while swaying around a bit in an attempt to get reasonably comfortable standing on one foot and in crutches.
“Kaylie’s been irritated at the lack of suitable sources for radiator water around here, so distilled would be very helpful. Some of the towns we’ve been to, the well water isn’t fit for drinking, let alone pouring into a radiator,” Kayden said. “I mean, as long as we can fill up a few containers, we’ll be fine, even if we have to use a hand pump, but if you’re willing to help with this, we’d appreciate it.”
Kayden turned toward Kaylie, then said, “Valentin knows where we can get distilled water.”
“Great! While you help him out, I’ll get the Bricksley started,” Kaylie replied. “After all, there’s no point in making everyone carry jugs of water if the truck can still do it.”
“Don’t be in a rush, Kaylie, we’ll have to wait for them as well,” Kayden added, before looking to Valentin and opening up his medical kit, picking out one of the smaller tubes and double-checking the label. “Nova, remind me again, this is the one that was a 100% match for a common over-the-counter pain relief cream, right?”
“Yes. I have cross referenced the chemical structures, and while the names of the compounds are different between the over the counter cream and the one you have in your hand, the chemical structure itself is identical,” Nova confirmed.
“We’ve brought water filter straws along for that reason. And with the rails, water access isn’t even that much of an issue anymore for us.”, Tim remarked from the other end of the car, joining the others in the process.
“Good move on that one. Never know where one might end up.”, Constantin said afterwards.
Kaylie being Kaylie was eager to get going, but equally eagerly reigned back by Kayden as other things needed tending to first.
Valentin simply took the toothpaste-tube-sized cream container and gave it a quick glance, before ordering Connor to steam Robert in the meantime. After that, he returns to the tube Kayden handed to him, intensely staring at it for a loooong moment.
“The fuck?”, he mumbles quietly, thrown off by him understanding what obviously is not a language that he speaks or can read.
Another long moment passes with him sunk into the instructions and ingredient list in a state between confusion and caution.
Kayden gave a puzzled look as Valentin studied the instructions and ingredients list with a look of confusion and caution on his face. “Oh, if you’re having a hard time reading that, I can have Nova print out a label for you in a different language,” Kayden said, realizing the possible reason for the confusion.
Kaylie checked each container for how full or empty it was by tapping it with her left hand and listening to the differences in the sound from each can. Then, after a few minutes, she made sure everything in the bed was properly secured. However, when she went to start the truck, the engine cranked weakly, sputtered, coughed, then died. “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Kivenaal! You left the lights on!”
“Nonono, i can read that. But it’s not Swedish or English… heck, it isn’t even German… but for some reason i can read that…”, Valentin explained, reading the labeling on there a third time. At that point, he remembered that the provided ring had some language functionality. He therefore takes the ring off for a moment, at which point the label on the tube turns into unintelligible gibberish until the ring goes back on.
After that, Valentin just sits there, dumbfounded by the apparent abilities of a simple ring until Kaylie once again gets his attention by shouting halfway across camp.
He looks at the Bricksley, mildly confused as to what happened while Connor went through the process of raising steam, which took longer than theoretically possible due to the alternator valve being left open on purpose.
Kayden nodded. “Ah, that’s something Rukari did so people wouldn’t be completely lost around here, and so he could make sure teams weren’t left behind,” Kayden said.
When Valentin looked over at the Bricksley in confusion, Kayden chuckled. “Kivenaal accidentally left our headlights on and drained the battery. Kaylie couldn’t get the engine to start. I know we have jumper cables, if you guys can still jump-start another car. I know you still have the battery and I think the alternator is in there somewhere, but, I don’t know how well that will work.”
Valentin did not question the ring, or Rukari, all that much and just tried to deal with it at face-value.
As if on cue, a relatively quiet turbo-like noise started coming from the car as the turbine spinning the alternator started to have enough steam pressure to get going. Not long after, that noise stabilizes as the alternator proceeds to keep tabs on the AGM battery that was in the car’s engine bay.
“Well we have power now and a mostly new battery in there. Plus raising steam doesn’t need hundreds of amps for a few seconds, but more like 15 amps for 10 minutes. Plus, we took the battery out of the old Dione on the off-chance that this one goes poof on us.” Valentin explained as he looked through the still-open hood onto the alternator spinning away beneath the feedwater tank.
“Yeah, downside of having a large V8, it needs a lot of power to start it. And while I’m sure we could adapt something to kick the engine over if we had enough time, it’s equally likely that we would damage the truck while trying,” Kayden replied.
Kaylie gave a frustrated groan as she shoved the hood open on the Bricksley. “This would be so much easier to deal with if we had a jump-starter. “Oh, we won’t need that. Let’s instead bring twelve bottles of moonshine.” Great idea now that we’ve got empty bottles in the back and a dead battery,” Kaylie grumbled.
“Kaylie, mind your hand around the terminals!” Kayden warned.
Sure enough, despite the battery being dead enough that it couldn’t start the engine, it still had more than enough power to create a great big flash of sparks as Kaylie accidentally shorted the battery to the truck’s frame. “Twin Suns, Kayden, help me out with this!” Kaylie said, her hand no worse for wear despite the impressive sparks.
Kayden wandered over to the Bricksley and grabbed the jumper cables out of the truck, connecting the cables to the truck’s battery, then to the battery in the Dione. “Kaylie, crank it, please,” Kayden said, hearing the change in the Dione’s alternator turbine whine as it started trying to charge the Bricksley’s drained battery.
The Bricksley’s engine rasped to life, and soon after it reached a steady idle, Kayden removed the jumper cables from both cars.
“I’ll give it a few minutes of high idle to put some charge in it,” Kaylie called out. “Otherwise, one stall and we’re back to the cables again.”
As Kayden went about jump-starting the Bricksley off of the Dione’s battery, Valentin took the spare time to make another attempt at entering the car. Though this time the same way he usually exits it as the fireman’s seat was occupied by Connor.
As he made his way into the rear seat, feet first, Constantin helped support him on the way in, preventing another fall from happening. Some shuffling, turning and adjusting later, he found himself on the driver’s seat, sliding it all the way back on the rails like he always does.
Constantin quickly got the tent off of the roof to have something to do in the meantime, similarly to Tim who got cooking supplies from the same place. Once that was unloaded, Constantin slapped the roof panel of the car, indicating readiness for departure, right as Robert was steamed enough to be mobile.
A careful toot of the whistle followed, which, given the digital nature of a starter solenoid, ended up being a full-blast-blip of it, resonating across most of the camp in the process.
After that, the driver window whirred downwards, with Valentin poking his head out of said window:
“Sorry… need to hook the whistle to an analogue signal…”, he excused himself, raising a hand in shame in doing so.
Kayden climbed up next to his sister in the Bricksley, then pulled the seatbelt on and clicked it before closing the door.
“No faith,” Kaylie quipped.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I don’t trust either of the horny maniacs not to take off the moment they hear the door slam,” Kayden quipped back.
“Fair enough,” Kaylie said.
As Valentin sounded the whistle, Kaylie honked the feeble horn in response, found first gear, and set off as gracefully as she could. “Damn. Should’ve gotten Jayde to do this,” Kaylie said to herself.
“Only way you can get better at driving stick is to do it. I mean, I suppose you could ask Valentin for lessons, but-” Kayden suddenly stopped and yowled as Kaylie playfully slugged him across the bench seat. “Ow! Really? It was a reasonable suggestion. If he can teach Jayde how to drive, surely he can teach anyone.”
“I’m sure, given his injuries, he has better things to do than teach me how to drive stick,” Kaylie replied, though the gearbox gave an angry crunch as Kaylie forced it into second gear.
“I don’t know who’s worse, you or Jayde,” Kayden said, trying not to laugh as they followed the Dione back through town and toward the station.
Once the arguably adorable horn (in comparison, at least) of the Bricksley was heard, Valentin moved his right foot over to the clutch to select reverse, ending in him rolling backwards a few yards to make room for getting past the Bricksley’s side.
They rolled past and onwards into town, making sure that the other car was close by at all times, eventually stopping a quarter mile away from Addavuul station at a small yard with a coal tower, some fuel oil storage in the off chance an oil-fired engine came along as well as loads of water, both distilled and mineralized.
Another toot announced both cars to the local “workforce”, consisting of all of two people stood there, in charge of helping the engine crew refuel. With little to do, the two people are on break as both cars roll up to the general area. They start quietly talking to each other as if gossiping or at the very least distantly aware of Robert and what Valentin did to it.
He parks up near them, rolls down the window and eyes them for a bit, before stating his intentions.
“Good afternoon. Would you mind if I, or… well… us take on a bit of distilled water here?”, Valentin politely asks, motioning to the Bricksley nearby in the process.
They look at each other, back at the Dione, at each other, repeating the process a few times while unsure on if what they are seeing fits the rumors that have been going among the railway staff regarding a blazing-fast orange inspection railcar.
“Sure thing” the older one replies, followed by the younger one heading off, apparently to get some supplies.
Valentin then turns to Kaylie to the best of his ability.
“Can you get those jugs to the right rear door? We’re gonna refill them through there.” Valentin says, while trying to reach over in an attempt to open said door, ending in him not getting quite far enough and aborting the attempt.
Kaylie stomped the parking brake pedal to make sure the Bricksley wouldn’t go anywhere, double-checked that it was in neutral just to be sure, and hopped out of the driver’s seat. “Yeah, not a problem,” Kaylie said, grabbing two cans off of the roof rack with her left hand and hauling them over to the Dione. She opened the door and set the cans down outside the car, before making her way back to the truck to grab more of the cans.
Kayden, likewise, got out of the Bricksley after quickly checking the gauges to make sure that the engine was, in fact, still charging the battery, and also to make sure the engine wasn’t getting hot after running for such a short time. When he saw the temperature was higher than he liked, he scowled, pulled the hood release, and looked under the hood. “Oh, come on,” Kayden grumbled. “When the hell did that come undone!?” He looked over at Kaylie, then said, “Might be a bit while I fight with this stupid fan connector. We have no radiator fan right now.”
“Not a problem, Kayden, just take your time and don’t break anything,” Kaylie said, heading over to the Dione with another pair of cans.
Valentin felt and heard the rear right door opening, followed soon after by the metal containers clanging onto the ground.
“Erm… somewhere on the roof. There’s a hose which looks like it belongs to a steam lorry, with a firefighting-hose fitting at one end and a crude filter at the other. Can you get that down here? That goes onto the copper fitting between the rear seats.” Valentin explained, aware of that hose existing, but not sure if his description was accurate enough, given the sheer amount of random stuff stored up there.
At this point, the younger person returned with a small tanker cart containing distilled water, which was wheeled vaguely near the Dione for the time being.
“There you go, lads. Take what you need and tell us when you’re done, okay?” he said, taking a seat in his break chair again and watchin intently at what was unfolding.
“Thank you” Valentin quickly answered out of politeness before returning to the happenings in the back.
Kaylie looked at the supplies on the roof rack, trying to find a hose that looked like it could belong to a steam-powered vehicle, but was seeing just about everything except the hose that Valentin had described. “I’m not seeing it. Hold on a moment, I’m going to see if Kayden can spot it,” Kaylie said, before looking to Kayden.
“Kayden, I’m looking for a hose, looks like it’s supposed to belong to a steam truck, with a firefighting-style fitting on one end and a filter at the other,” Kaylie said.
Kayden clicked the connector back together, scowling as the fan kicked on and whacked the back of his thumb fairly solidly in the process, then headed over to the Dione to help his sister look for the hose.
Kayden looked over the top of the roof rack, then reached over and grabbed the hose.
“I thought that was a fucking snake!” Kaylie said, staring at the hose.
“From your side, you probably didn’t see any of the connectors, only the hose,” Kayden replied, walking around the car and handing the hose over to Kaylie.
With the hose semi-successfully procured, Valentin went about folding his seat flat for some added maneuvering room, finishing the process in less than 20 seconds. With him lying nearly flat and propped up on his right elbow, he had enough room to prepare the pumping.
“Now, could you please hand me the firefighting end of that hose?”, Valentin asked, recieving the correct end shortly thereafter.
That fitting was connected to a small counterpart between the rear seats on the center tunnel. After that, the valve behind that fitting was turned shut with the free left arm that was remaining.
“Now the other end goes wherever you want that water… think garden hose with a sprinkler attachment.”, Valentin notes, pointing at the other end of the hose, which was a brass bit of thin-walled pipe with a few holes drilled into it.
Kaylie drops that end into the opening of the first Jerry can, after which Connor is directed to power the feedwater pump, sending a stream of water into the jerry can.
As Valentin and Connor operated the Dione’s feedwater pump to fill the first can, Kaylie held the hose so that the stream of warm water poured into the can, watching as it filled up quickly.
Of course, between each can, Kaylie was instructed to help them fill up the feedwater tank, using the same water hose to draw water from the tanker cart. With that method, she was able to fill up all of the empty radiator water cans, and then helped fill up the Dione’s feedwater tank.
One by one, four cans of 10 Litres each were filled, during which Robert had to take on water a few times by virtue of only having a 10 gallon feedwater tank. Once every can was filled, they took on water one last time for themselves to complete the process.
“Thank you.”, Valentin says to the workers there, upon which they politely nod back and one of them wheels away the cart of distilled water again.
After that, the valves were set for through-running again and the hose subsequently disconnected, dripping a bit of residual water into the rear footwell in the process.
“Could you please put that hose back up there?”, Valentin inquired, shoving the connecting end over to Kaylie as best he could while being stretched across most of the interior’s length, lying down.
Kaylie nodded, then carefully coiled up the hose and settled it into place on the roof rack, tucking it in behind one of the tie-down straps so it would stay there.
“Thank you as well. It’s been making me nervous, not having plenty of water on hand for the Bricksley. I know I wasn’t out of water, but, knowing these old 427’s like to overheat, I wanted to have a lot on hand.”
Kaylie and Kayden picked up the cans, closed the Dione’s rear door, and then headed over to the Bricksley, where they put the cans onto the roof rack where they belonged.
With Robert ready for the return run and the Bricksley nearing it’s readiness as well, both Valentin and Connor waited for Kaylie and Kayden to enter their vehicles, after which departure was announces acoustically, although this time using the ordinary electrical horn instead of the whistle.
The pair of vehicles headed back to camp, where Constantin had finished setting up both tents and Tim was nearing completion on the cooking department, too, made easier by the rain being a few individual drops, at most by now.
The Dione came to a stop where it took off from, although shifted a few feet to the side to make way for the Bricksley to pass into it’s respective spot.
Connor started with the process of de-steaming, forcing both Valentin within and the others around to wait before approaching the car.
Kaylie grinned as she told Kayden, “Guess what: You’re driving. Yeah, mock me for my shifting, now you get to do it.”
Kayden groaned. “Fine, but I hate doing this.”
“Valentin could teach you how to drive stick, too. Maybe we should both consider that in the future. Our team would do a lot better with less gearbox-grinders behind the wheel,” Kaylie replied.
As Valentin used the horn to signal he was setting off, Kayden responded with the Bricksley’s horn, then promptly stalled the truck. “Oh, come on!” Kayden yelled, before starting the engine again.
“Parking brake,” Kaylie said.
Kayden pulled the handle and scowled as muddy dirt was flung up onto his shirt. “I hate this truck,” he grumbled.
“Next time, put your foot in front of that pedal so it doesn’t throw dirt at you,” Kaylie said.
Kayden sighed, put the truck in first gear again, and slowly drove back through town and into the camp. After several attempts to get the truck lined up where it was, Kayden gave up, leaving the Bricksley sitting slightly crooked in the parking spot. He shut the engine off, climbing out of the truck along with Kaylie, who was just grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s so funny?” Kayden asked.
“You know, if you parked like that on Earth, someone would slap this truck with a “You parked like an asshole” sticker, at best,” Kaylie replied.
“We’re in an open gravel lot. Who cares if the truck is crooked? I didn’t hit the Dione and I didn’t hit the Magistrate,” Kayden grumbled.
Another mighty hiss came from below the Redneck Railcar, the vented steam covering most of the surrounding area before it vanishes into nothing.
With that, Connor almost immediately exited, followed by both Schrants working together in getting the taller one of the two out of the driver’s seat and onto his crutches once more.
The team congregated around Tim and his mini-gazebo’d gas cooker, waiting for the finishing touches to be made to the pasta contained within.
“Constantin, please get the cutlery and all that”, Tim requested, with Constantin heading back for the Dione to collect basic camping bowls and a slew of sporks.
Not long after, “dinner” was served, with Valentin taking the occasional look over to the Bricksley to see if they still needed anything and/ or had something to discuss.
Kaylie and Kayden wandered over to where Malavera and Rukari were sitting, watching as Kivenaal and Jayde wandered back from where they’d been resting to join in on the meal of the day, which happened to be another of Rukari’s camp stews.
“How the hell is it always this good?” Malavera asked after the first scoop out of his bowl.
“I get fresh ingredients from in the town,” Rukari replied, “and Jayde has a lot of interesting spices to work with.”
“Ah. That would do it,” Malavera said.
“I’ve been nice,” Jayde said with a smirk. “I’ve got some spices from Galren’s Height that would make for a very delicious stew, but it would be rather hot.”
“You know, think they’d mind if we brought some of this over to share with them?” Kayden asked, nodding toward the Dione.
“Rain’s stopped, so we can move the pot out from underneath the rain shelter,” Jayde mentioned.
Kivenaal rolled his eyes. “They’ve already made food. Offering to share ours only really works if we save someone from doing all the hard work to start with.”
“Maybe another time,” Rukari said.
“Shit, that reminds me,” Kaylie said, setting her bowl down on the Bricksley’s toolbox and grabbing a pen and notepad from the glovebox, “I’ve got to ask Tim about that sauce recipe.”
Kayden chuckled as his sister wandered over to where Tim was at, watching as she asked a couple of questions and wrote down the recipe for Tim’s tomato sauce before thanking them and returning to grab her bowl.
“Well, we might have to give this a try at some point in the future. However, for now,” Kaylie said, putting the notepad away and scooping up a spoonful of stew, “we have food to eat.”
As the three dug into their meals, they were pleasantly surprised at the taste of the prepared food, given it being 5 minute pasta with a little seasoning on top. Apart from that, not much of not happened, until Kaylie approached and peppered Tim with questions on his sauce recipe all the way back when the initial conversion was made.
As agreed, he happily shared the knowledge on it and went back to eating afterwards.
With how they progressively finished up their food, some ‘attempt’ at doing dishes had been made, with little success given the lack of basic supplies like dish soap or running water. The latter would be solvable, but nobody wanted to annoy everyone with the “almighty snake hiss” a third time.
After that, Valentin went about trying that pain relief cream Kayden gave to him earlier, immediately struggling to get both knees exposed as his pants took a while to dry out and their already slim-fitting didn’t help matters there. Eventually, a dab of cream found it’s way onto either knee, followed by the left ankle and also his lower back, which were substantially easier to access in comparison.
Immediately, the effects were felt as the pain, especially in his left ankle, transitioned into a substantial feeling of heat in the applied areas, which, while initially a bit unnerving, proved to be way easier to deal with than the pain itself.
The remaining afternoon was spent playing card games and other basic time-killing measures, among which was planning the implementation of the railhead brake as suggested by Kivenaal for Valentin and Connor, before they headed into bed for the night.