4 Dicks in a Truck, Part 1: The Cast And The Characters
4 DICKS IN A TRUCK!
(IT’S FOUR DICKS IN A TRUCK! IT’S FOUR DICKS IN A TRU~U~UCK! THEY’RE DOM, RILEY, CHRISTIAN, ROSE, AND THEY’RE 4 DICKS IN A TRUCK!)
(STAGE 1 CAMP (ft. VSmgAB / @Elizipeazie !)
< Norse and Valentin meet some interesting people >
It can be said that none of the team were particularly well versed in the art of driving a truck on the order of 50,000 lbs through icy mountain passes, however doing so seemed to be rather necessary in light of the trip they were taking. Dom drove through the switchbacks with apparent ease, Riley gawked at the scenery, and Rose and Christian clutched the back of their seats the whole way. About halfway through the trip the truck found its way through a patch of black ice, resulting in rather loud screams from 3/4 of the team, and a few cracked plates.
Finally, after about 7 hours of long (though fun) driving, the team found themselves driving into camp at Silvercreek. Dom meandered the truck off to the side of the clearing, and ordered the rest of the team to help set up the RV to hunker down for the night.
With Valentin remaining close to Robert to make sure everything was running smoothly, Norse took a walk around camp, taking a look at the various vehicles other teams have brought to the event. Anything from barely-held-together shitboxes to old luxury landyachts to massive military-style vehicles could be found already strewn across camp.
What truly sparked some interest to him, though, was a massive US-style semi truck consisting of at least 85 percent rust with a pristine-looking trailer attached.
Norse approached the first person that obviously was part of the team operating this behemoth of a vehicle, a blonde, slim person marginally shorter than Norse who was currently rummaging through some containers attached to the outside of their rig.
“Uhm Hello there! You seem to have brought more than enough in terms of living space…” Norse spoke to the as-of-yet unknown participant while inspecting the full-size semi from afar.
Dom turned, apparently undisturbed, towards Norse. “Yes, sir. We thought it to be a good idea to bring enough to spare. We also tend to take up a fair amount of room.”
“Certainly beats sleeping in a glorified tic-tac, hehe,” Norse chuckled, pointing at the orange trailer he and Valentin share for the trip before turning back to face Dom, “still, could be worse. Some elected to use tents.”
“I imagine so,” said Dom, pausing for a moment to inspect the trailers that the man had pointed out. “Are you with the people we corresponded with about power generation?” he finally asked.
“Yeah. Njordal Eikeland.” Norse confirmed, aware of his hard-to-pronounce name and expecting the worst. He reached forth and offerered a handshake, “Are you even using power from Robert?”
Dom reached out to meet him. “Dominik Shinkarev. Though you can call me Dom. And to answer your question: No, sir. We ended up bringing an onboard generator.” He retrieved a walkie talkie from his belt and asked, “Hey, Riley, are you done with the generator?” A muffled response in affirmation was heard from the other end.
“Ah that makes sense, I guess. Also, no need to be all formal with ‘sir’ and such. People default to ‘Norse’ because they butcher my name all the time,” Norse commented, once again turning around, now curious himself as to what Valentin was up to. As expected, he was still busy getting power to the people as he served the participants and their requests for the juice of electrons.
“If that’s what you prefer, sir. Did you have any troubles on the journey up here?”
“Not at all! Valentin, being the mastermind that he is, put our entire fleet of cars on rails and controls them all with a massive remote of sorts. Needless to say, watching the landscape for 5 hours did not get boring here. How about you?” Norse replied with a smile.
“As a whole, it was great fun driving the truck,” he patted the trailer, “however a couple of us were clutching their seats the whole ride. There was also a small hiccup involving a patch of black ice. I will admit that I’m a bit envious of your ability to not have to actually drive on these roads.”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t. I don’t even have a scooter license…” Norse admitted rather sheepishly, “and on rails, Val is the only certified member that can run the train, so we are at his mercy there as well.”
“I, and at least one other member of my team, would be very interested in talking to Valentin. Is he free?”
Norse took a moment to look for Valentin again. It was obvious that he was still at work regarding the electricity contracts with a multitude of other teams. “I mean he seems to be working on power distribution, but i’m not him…” Norse said, unsure about how Valentin would react given the unfamiliar situation at hand.
“Ah. I’d loathe interrupting someone while they’re working. Would you be interested in meeting Riley nonetheless?”
“Of course, if you are okay with that.”
Dom once again lifted his walkie talkie, speaking into it, “Hey, Riley. Come around to the other side of the truck. There’s someone I think you’ll be interested in meeting.” A seemingly excited sound of affirmation once again came from the other end.
Dom waited stoically for a moment as Riley came around the trailer, briefly slipping for a moment as he ran around the corner toward them. A long and scruffy mess of hair covered much of his face and a tattered-looking, slightly too large motorcycle jacket hung around him. “Wha’d I miss?”
“Uhh… introductions?” Norse stammered, thoroughly surprised at Riley’s entry to the scene, “Njordal Eikeland. I’m with the team that power most of camp.”
Riley outstretched his hand, “Riley McKinnley. I do… things! Uhh, I’m into cars, ostensibly. I’m the team’s resident mechanic when Dom here has better things to do. I like guns.”
Norse had visible difficulty adjusting to the fast-paced nature of Riley’s personality. As such, the handshake was awkward at best.
“Pleased to meet you… I don’t drive… i have no role within the team beyond vacationing… I like cycling?”
“Cycling is fun! I brought some Bike!” Dom nodded, his face stoic and clearly judging, “Yes. Riley brought a bicycle. And a couple motorbikes.”
Norse wasn’t sure if Dom was judging him or Riley, making him rather insecure in the moment… “Yeaaaah… ummm… any particular reason that ended in you joining this event?” he eventually inquired in an attempt to steer the topic elsewhere.
“Oh yeah! Rose dragged me along. Really she dragged the whole team along but me in particular.” Dom continued, explaining, “Last year, Rose, one of the other members of the team, found a forum post detailing last year’s Rally. I helped restore the truck and get supplies ready, and Rose and Riley helped on the intellectual side.”
Norse decided to dig a little further: “I assume a lot of work went on underneath that thing, then? I mean… I am no expert, or even vaguely knowledgeable, but looking at it has me think that this took some pain and suffering to fix.”
Dom looked back at the cab and explained, “It ended up being a full frame off restoration. We all agreed that the patina was integral to the appearance of the truck, but underneath, it’s all modern. The old engine is now someone’s table, too.”
“It has some charm to it, I have to say… old stuff with a story behind it does create an odd level of connection.” Norse commented. What to them was the truck and it’s story was Norse’s bicycle and it’s story to him. Old, more or less professionally cobbled together, but with an evolution that is unique to that one vehicle.
Dom remembered at that moment that he was interested in meeting Val, as well. “Norse, do you think that Val is free at this point?”
For another time, Norse turned around to look for Valentin, who currently was sat in the driver’s bucket seat of the generator car, seemingly not doing much.
“Looks like it, I think…” Norse confirmed, leading the pair of truckers over to the center of camp where his own team was parked up.
Once there, Valentin knocked onto the driver side window, followed by him opening the door a bit.
“Umm. There’s a couple of people who want to meet you. Dominik and Riley, over here.” Norse told to Valentin while motioning to the two new faces."
Valentin in turn nodded and gently pushed the door all the way open, allowing him to unfurl himself to his full 7’3" height from within the 80s wagon.
“Good afternoon. Valentin Schrant,” he calmly said, reaching out to offer a handshake to both, starting with Riley.
Riley and Dom both shook his hand and introduced themselves. “Christ you’re tall,” stated Riley, and Dom cringed.
Norse could not prevent a mild laugh as he somewhat expected a reaction like this.
Similarly, Valentin also did not hear such comments for the first time and was already accustomed to it.
“Yes. Yes, I am. 7 feet 3 inches or 2.21 meters, the air is nice up here and I do not play basketball,” Valentin recited like a tape recorder, “should get that written across my forearm or something…”
“I’m sorry for that,” Dom apologized, “however I, and I would strongly guess Riley here, would be very interested in hearing about how your hybrid road train (?) system works.” As Riley heard that, he found himself exclaiming, “Wait they have that?”
“No need to be sorry. I know that I am far away from ordinary,” Valentin said, unfased by the comment regarding height. “For the train, we simply swap wheels for steel ones for rail use. I have a remote control system in place that allows me to use the gas and brake on all four cars from here…” Valentin explained, reaching into the generator car to procure the remote control from within. Said remote is then shown to the two guests. “…one stick is gas and dynamic brake, the other is friction brakes. Put some additional lights to make it look a train at night and off we go.”
With every word Riley found himself more and more interested. “What’s the gauge here that you can just swap the wheels and go? Are the cars attached? Is the remote wireless? Is it regulated as a car or a train or both? How does dynamic brake work exactly?” and all the while Dom simply says “There he goes.”
“Two people found themselves.” Norse added in response to Dom’s apparent annoyance.
Valentin then began a still fairly condensed, but more specific explanation:
“They for some reason ended up running standard gauge, 1435 millimeters. Your truck won’t fit because of native track width being far broader if that is what you are hinting at. Yes, the remote is wireless and directly taps into the receivers, which in turn are plugged into the respective ECU. Well… the communication is wireless, but I have a charger cable hooked up to it as I don’t want to lose control of my train at triple-digit speeds. On earth, it is just a quartet of cars with some more lights. Here, cars seem to not be regulated at all, but I did have to register a train company and list these as rolling stock to be allowed to run on rails. The dynamic brake is essentially a torque converter with a fixed output, integrated into the gearbox. Stopping 25 tons of train from well past three-digits in speed with friction brakes only works well once, after all.”
After that, the remote is returned to the car’s interior and the door to it closed.
Riley’s eyes were lighting up looking at the train of cars, inspecting the mechanics of them. "But how do you switch wheels exactly?" he asked, “Do you physically replace the tire wheels with rail wheels? The track width on those cars looks wider than standard gauge to my eyes.”
Valentin was puzzled at the repeated question regarding wheel change. “Uhm… like any other set of wheels. We align the thing with the rails on a level crossing or other suitable spot and get it jacked up. Power tools to the lug nuts and on go the different rim rings. We have two-piece rims to save on weight, as the rail hoops are milled from a solid block of steel,” Valentin explained, only now thinking about how showing is better than telling. Thus, he led the group (or whoever was willing) to one of the trailers. There, he opened up one of the garage-door-style compartments, revealing two sets of steel rings within, complete with flanges to avoid derailing. “The hub stays on the car, we just swap rings, basically…”
“God that’s fucking cool,” he spoke quietly to himself, before more loudly asking, “Did you have to make any alterations to the powertrain, or is is mostly what came from factory? How much power do these even make?”
“Let me put it this way… what remains of the stock powertrain is the AMP ‘Mars’ block, heads and bottom end, plus some minor things. Everything else is completely re-engineered. Depending on how you measure it, you have about 100 thermal horsepower, 223 at the crank and about 270 peak at the traction motors,” Valentin mentioned, heading back to Robert the second, soon after latching the hood of the steamer.
It was then lifted away, revealing what must be the densest engine bay in the history of ever.
“Oh my god they’re steam cars. These are so fucking cool. Immensely cool.” Looking into the mess of wiring and piping, Riley asked, “Christ, how do you even, like, know what’s what?”
“Fairly simple. Anything ahead of the engine is generator stuff and has nothing to do with the hot bits. Brass is live steam, blue-ish steel piping is water… well, should be water, at least. Black hose with blue sleeve is is generator coolant. No sleeve is 400V DC wiring. Orange cable bits are the phase connectors from the generator to it’s controller. Things you know when you are the head that created it all.”
Valentin chuckled a little after having pointed out every major bit of piping, cable or component there is. He took care to not let himself, his equally oversized braided hairdo or Riley too close to anything within the bay as it currently was running to produce power for most of camp.
“How do you even use ICE parts for an external combustion engine?”
“I’m not the first to convert an internal combustion engine to use steam. It doesn’t matter how you push the piston down, really. An explosion of fuel creates force that moves the thing along. Roughly 50 bars of steam pressure also moves the thing along. The pistons do not care.” Valentin commented, carefully lowering the hood again, thus hiding the intricate inner workings of the steam assembly from view again.
“So it’s steam-electric? I assume you just switch the leads off to wherever, or is there a more complicated system than that?”
“Uuuhhh… care to elaborate? The generator and each of the two motors have their own controllers. On my end, I just tell it to ‘give some juice’…” Valentin mumbled, more than loud enough for Riley to hear, but still unsure if that was the actual answer to his question.
Riley cared to elaborate. “Sorry, I just meant ‘is there any special procedure for switching from powering the traction motors to using the engine as an external generator’ - for reference, we just have two different engines, one for the truck and one for the generator. Apologies for the confusion.”
“Aaah okay. The gear lever… well… ‘lever’ has a setting for generator operation. Doesn’t change anything on the engine end and just alters the consumer of the power generated.” Valentin spoke, complete with finger quotes for the PRNDL which was little more than a small rotary dial with some letters on it.
“Oh that’s super interesting. Better than anything I’d have thought of,” he laughed. Riley thought for a moment, before asking, “I would understand if I’m not allowed to, but I would be very interested in seeing the interior of the car?”
Valentin simply nods, opening the driver door a third time for Riley to take a look inside.
Riley chucked to himself. “Hah. I can assume that’s not what it looked like coming out of the factory?”
Just to prove a point, Valentin went around to the passenger side and squeezed himself onto the respective seat.
Folded up like a garden chair, he glanced over to the driver side where Riley was stood:
“I can drive like this. But just because I can does not mean that I should…”
He unfolded himself again and returned to the driver side.
“Apart from that, the only real changes are the center console and the fact that I have a Borosonic for a dashboard…”
Riley looked to the trailer next to the generator car. “Is this for storage? I assume at least one of your trailers is for sleeping in as well?”
“Fuel storage, yes. Thing burns about 75 liters of fuel an hour at full load. This has around 14 hours of fuel, plus added range through not running at full power continuously.”
“That’s a lot of fuel. So do you have RV trailers? From what I remember of the convoy it looked like a number of them had windows, so I assume those are what you sleep in?”
“RV would be optimistic…” Valentin commented as he led Riley back to the trailer where he showed him the rail wheels earlier. “Capsule Hotel is closer…”
Riley laughed, “Yeah that looks a fair bit more cramped than ours, especially given your being rather vertically gifted.”
“I did order a longer mattress to sleep on and extended one compartment to accommodate, so at least I can stretch in bed. But sitting up, even for the shortest people present, is a hard no.” Valentin replied, also smiling a little.
“For once my height seems perfectly adequate,” stated all 5’3 of Riley.
“Would you or Norse be interested in seeing the semi trailer? It has a fair bit more room than your ‘capsule hotels,’ I promise.”
Valentin thought hard for a moment, then relented: “I showed you what i brought, so might as well see what you have as well.”
Riley grabbed the Walkie Talkie from his belt and talked into it “Dom. Reconvene at the trailer. Gonna show Valentin around a bit, and Norse if he wants, too,” before leading Valentin to the trailer. “While we’re outside, may as well look at that first.” He walked up to a large square compartment door on the passenger’s side near the cab, grabbed a key from his pocket, and opened it up to reveal a large generator. “This is the kind of stuff that I do for the team. Mechanical stuff, like getting this generator ready to work while Dom’s busy doing something else.”
“It is… a generator.” Valentin comments as he inspects the unit installed in the compartment. “Likely much noisier than Robert, but it makes power…”
“It’s mostly backup, to be honest,” explained Riley, “for the batteries. We have an honestly kinda excessive amount of batteries under the RV, enough for several days and nights, and they’re actually charged pretty fast by the engine up front.”
“Feeding one trailer with power is wholly different compared to feeding 30 with 4 kilowatts each,” Valentin chuckled, “should add a buffer battery to better account for peak loads next time around, though…”
“Could use those trailers for it,” Riley laughed
“Not without fudging the generator software. Also, I doubt that it will take 200 kilowatts of charging power…” Valentin protested, crossing his arms and looking at the trailer side panels, behind which the batteries presumably are hidden.
“I suppose,” replied Riley. “Anyway, I should show you the interior too.” He led Valentin around the trailer to the set of trailer wheels, surrounded on both sides by retractable staircases. He seemed to think for a moment before choosing to unlatch the rearmost one, sliding down with a satisfying ku-chunk. He clambered up the too-large steps before opening the door and climbing into a spacious, modern-looking lounge area: To their right was a wall with a doorway, and in the center was a table surrounded by couches. On the back wall was a staircase leading up to an area with a large TV and a number of gaming consoles, under which was an area with a few beanbags surrounded by bookshelves.
For Valentin, the trailer’s steps were on the smaller end of comfortable, but once he ducked through the doorway into the lounge area, he was unable to fully right himself courtesy of the second floor TV area installed overhead.
Still, he took a good look around the place:
“That surely took a while to fabricate…”, he noted, knowing that it can’t be stock due to the size of it in relation to the semi truck up front.
“Yes.” said Dom, and Riley jumped, “Christ! How do you do that?”
“I suppose you’re just not observant enough,” Dom smiled humorously, before continuing, “For the most part it was about raising up the original trailer. My shop and I ended up actually combining parts from a number of different sources over a few months, with at least two wrecked semi trailers and an RV going into the exterior alone.”
“Certainly would have sized up things differently…” Valentin comments, both regarding exterior dimensions and arrangement of interior fittings.
From still within the doorway, Norse peeked into the lounge area, taking in the very comfy-looking seating arrangements.
“They have an entire trailer that you still manage to NOT fit into? Talk about being a lighthouse, haha!”, Norse laughed past Dom and towards Valentin, who himself was not exactly fond of that joke.
“You seem a bit cramped in there, Valentin,” Riley laughed, “Lucky for you, the kitchen is decently big,” he said, leading the group into a kitchen and dining area, finally featuring a ceiling tall enough for Valentin to stand comfortably. The kitchen had an impressive level of creature comfort, with a fridge, oven and range, microwave, large counters, abundant storage space, and even a TV. The dining room jutted out from the trailer with a table large enough to fit eight.
Thoroughly impressed, though a bit lost, Valentin took a look around. He never was an avid cook and thus did not bother getting a massive kitchen with all the creature comforts. The lack of frequent visits at his flat also made a dining area redundant.
“20 bucks on Val not being able to name half of the utensils you have at hand.” Norse chuckled, smiling while opening the nearest drawer, revealing the usual assortment of forks, spoons, knifes and such.
“You still owe me 800 Krona for that shirt…” Valentin commented, despite usually not being pushy regarding finances. Still, not being the guy to place bets upon was reason enough to dig up recent bets.
“Fuck right…” Norse relented, closing the drawer again.
“While we’re here, may as well ask if anyone wants anything to drink,” said Riley, opening the fridge to reveal an assortment of sodas and sparkling waters, as well as a jug of filtered water.
“Thank you, but I am good.” Valentin politely declines. Norse however, did accept a serving of orange soda, happily sipping on it thereafter.
Riley also took an orange soda and closed the fridge, “This is likely the most expensive area of the entire truck, so I am very thoroughly happy that the trailer doesn’t count towards team expenses.” Dom further explained, “Though much of this is very similar to standard RV equipment, we ended up setting it up as basically a normal kitchen, as though it were a house. We also took lots of care to make sure that insulation - both acoustic and thermal - are as high quality as possible.”
“Thermal insulation was important for our ‘solution’ as well. Reduces strain on the AC unit we have. Other than that, being low-profile was important as well, since the train as a whole has a design speed of 200kph. Aerodynamics matter at such a speed. The side effect is the apparent lack of space…” Valentin commented, “that said, since trailers don’t count and neither car was built with the express purpose of being ran at this event, our official expenses are measured in pennies, even if Robert alone is worth about 140 grand or so.”
“Turns out, restoration is expensive,” agreed Dom, “but at least money is cheap.”
“Restoration can be. Research definitely is.” Valentin corrected, as Robert II and the other steam cars had little to do with the extremely mundane vehicles they were built upon.
“I suppose so, though I assure you, at least 80% of any proper restoration is research.”
“You lot likely spent more than enough time on either of those. Just went in different directions with different results,” Norse remarked as he went about a trip of discovery, mostly linked to the ostensibly posh kitchen area being WAY above what his pay grade could even dream of.
“And to be fair, given we’re here, none of us had anything better to do,” replied Riley
Valentin just nodded somewhat awkwardly, as he very much had nothing better to do for most of 2022. A notion which Norse also was aware of, forcing him to scramble for a different topic. In failing to come up with one, he simply finished his glass of soda and went over to the sink, rinsing off the glass he just used.
Riley led the team to the front of the trailer, up a short set of stairs, and into a relatively cramped area with a number of bunk beds. Riley yelled “HEY Y’ALL,” proceeded by two heads popping up and immediately slamming face first into the top bunk, immediately followed by an impressive amount of cursing from both parties. “fucking. what do you want. jesus christ that hurt.” sounded a gravelly voice, followed by Rose climbing out of bed.
The relatively cramped area turned out to be even worse than the other end of the trailer, since Valentin now not only had issues height-wise, but also in width even with his relative lack of mass.
While the inverted head-desk of the two other members was amusing to Norse, Valentin was less fond of the apparent disturbance: “Shouting into other people’s ears was necessary?”
Riley laughed, “Had to show the size of the beds somehow, and adding the element of surprise certainly helps.” Dom remained stoic as he told Rose, “We’re meeting the nice men, and since it appears to be fairly cramped in here, we ought to go into the kitchen,” to which Rose mumbled, “ooooowwww.” The group, plus Rose and Christian, the other of the heads harmed in the great Bonkening, once again returned to the kitchen.
“Needless to say, the individual bed of ours has more space than those. Though we have no other rooms to speak of…” Valentin calmly commented, momentarily tip-toeing to exemplify the fact that he can stretch out in full in his compartment, “In any case, I am going to check of more people need hooking up to power. Has been pleasant meeting you.”
“Yes. You’re a good bunch!” Norse added cheerfully, “Talk to ya sometime!”
Soon after, the two more-or-less elegantly headed out of their trailer and back towards their less flamboyant sleeping solutions.
“Riley, for future reference, you should probably tone it down a bit,” said Dom finally after Valentin and Norse were comfortably out of earshot.
And as always, a huge thanks goes out to Elizi for dealing with me while writing this!
TEAM FRIENDSHIP! :D 
Oh, we’re from out of town.”
from 
another planet! 
whole continent! 
Bus! 
” cheered Riley, who seemed to notice nothing weird about this at all. “And actually, we were planning to decorate 
it as we went along, with something from each town we stopped at!”
or art traditions in Silvercreek, that we could use as a decoration?”
Oooh, Silver!” perked Freddie. “I can work with that! 
”
”
, officer! What’s wrong.”
Two 
” The car responded, complete with matching ‘body language.’
”
, sir!” said the car. “You’re welcome to use the ramp on the other side.”
” The yellow one offered.
” The driving one concluded.
”