Team Shift Happens; the human side of things
OOC: once again, not race-cricital, hence hidden, read if you want, but nobody can force you 
The actual text
With the first four hours having passed, Valentin’s phone emitted a faint, but still noticeable “pling”, upon which he pulled out said phone.
It displayed a calendar reminder, containing info on what he was to do regarding physical recovery.
“Excuse me for about an hour or so. I’ll head out back and do some therapy stuff…”, Valentin announced to the others, before getting out of his chair and leaving the garage out the back door.
This left Norse to be the only human in the entire Shift Happens pit area. Having nothing better to do, he went about the place trying to learn something about his teammates.
A few laps around the garage later, he eventually stops somewhere near the twins of Kaylie and Kayden, mentally fumbling with words before mustering up some courage to speak to them:
“So… the car’s doing good?”, he asked meagerly trying to get something in the way of small-talk off the ground. After all, a group of bipedal animals was a new experience even for the open-minded Norse.
When Norse approached with a question about whether the car was doing good, Kaylie smiled and turned to face him. “Yeah, looks like it’s holding up well. Rukari is our most aggressive driver, but it seems like he’s not yet ready to trash the car,” Kaylie said.
“For now. I saw him threaten to spin out the Rogue Traders’ pickup. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides to use the nudge bar for a bit of “fun” out there,” Kayden added.
“How are you doing?” Kaylie asked. “I know it can be a bit boring in the pits if the car’s doing well out there.” For a brief moment, she checked to make sure her plain titanium ring was still on her left ring finger, still a little new to it and not wanting to risk losing it already, then looked back out at the track as she heard a crash, noticing two competing teams had crashed into each other. “Well, that was predictable. Those “If it’s not Punk, it’s Junk” guys seem to drive like junk,” Kaylie said.
“Not sure why i agreed to this, to be honest. There’s nine of us here. I don’t think nine people are necessary to watch a car go round a blown-up go-kart track.”, Norse replied as he watched the remaining teams do lap after lap, occasionally bumping into each other or spinning out.
“Plus, i wouldn’t call myself a ‘petrolhead’ or anything… Like i don’t even have a license…”, he added while sheepishly scratching his head.
Kaylie chuckled. “Yeah, there’s a lot of us, and we’re capable of fixing most issues on the car without too much trouble,” Kaylie admitted. “Still, it’s better than lounging around in Nevada with nothing to do but fix customers’ cars and count cacti all day.”
When Norse mentioned he didn’t have a license, Kaylie added, “There’s no shame in not having a license. You live in an area that supports cycling a hell of a lot better than where we’re living. And if it wasn’t for the fact that we need them for our jobs, well… I know I wouldn’t have bothered getting my license, and I know for a fact Jayde only got his because I insisted he do so. Otherwise, he’d have kept on cruising around on his city bike, or his new custom-frame road bike, and never bothered getting behind the wheel of a vehicle.”
Kayden chuckled. “He got a bit of a crash course in driving earlier in the year, and Valentin managed to teach him to drive stick.”
“Yeah, and you should have taken him up on lessons,” Kaylie quipped to her brother. “After all, “Customer states the engine revs, but the car goes nowhere.” I pull the transmission off and it looks like a bomb went off while attached to the flywheel.”
Kayden grimaced. “Yeah, that was my bad.”
“That was also your second clutch,” Kaylie added.
“Possibly… Never been to the States.”, Norse remarked as they mentioned that it was better than being in Nevada.
“And i’d like to get a license simply because of career opportunities, but holy hell they are expensive here…”, he added.
As the two twins kept going about ‘customer states’ and ‘clutches’ and ‘how to drive stick’, Norse looked completely lost, never having sat in the driver seat of a car, let alone actually driven one.
Kaylie looked over and realized Norse seemed lost. “Let me guess: Never actually driven before?”
When Norse shook his head, Kaylie smiled.
“It’s not a problem. We got here a while ago and had to learn the hard way. Our first experience was a cross-country trip in an old Sinistra Traville, and we didn’t even understand how the climate controls worked,” Kaylie said. “We had to learn everything. How to maintain a car, how to fix it when things break. Ended up opening a garage to fix cars for other people once we had it figured out.”
“How could i? It’s hard to go to a driving course rink-thing where unlicensed people can at least try their hand at it when your monthly disposable income fits into two digits… That’s the reason i cycle to begin with. It’s simply cheaper than any other transit method, barring walking…”, he replied, turning imaginary pockets inside out to exemplify the point that he’s broke.
“Anyway…”, he said, pulling out is run-down phone to look through the incoming call logs. “So you were the one… ones? Having called me half a year ago about Val?”
Kaylie chuckled. “We had… A friend of ours place the call, but yes, we were there. We’re the reason you asked if you were on speaker-phone,” Kaylie admitted.
“So about that ‘event’ Val was apparently part of. Mind telling me about it? Val kept his cards close to his chest and seemed rather… disappointed in how it went.”, Norse inquired.
“Oh, not a problem. We had been rolling this idea around for a while to do a long-distance cross-country event of our own. We called it, fittingly enough, “Shitbox Rally.” Show up with a $2000 car or one worth an equivalent amount in the local currency of your area, bring a team and supplies to survive the wilderness. Unlike a lot of similar cross-country events, we went with the idea of stages, where everyone regroups each night and camps together,” Kaylie admitted.
“Let’s just say it’s fucking boring on long trips when you’re out of radio range of anyone else for days,” Kayden added. “This limited that problem to just part of a day at a time.”
“Well, things were… Chaotic. One, we had a way bigger turnout than we expected. I thought we’d get maybe four or five teams,” Kaylie said, “and we ended up with 17, ourselves included.” She paused to think for a moment, then said, “We had a night stage that wasn’t pleasant, caused by someone stirring up a bit of the local wildlife and, well… That didn’t help any of it.”
“Then Val had a catastrophic failure and had to fix the car,” Kayden said, being deliberately vague so as to not drag Val’s fame into the forefront of the conversation, “and ran the rest of the race with a backyard fix.”
Kaylie smiled, then continued with, “We had a couple of interesting teams out there. A bunch of people who, quite honestly, spent a lot of their camp time keeping their drunken lady under control. She painted their van the most wild shade of pink I’ve ever seen. I swear, it was so violently pink that Takaraya over there would be able to see it. She also drank a lot of alcohol. Including some of Rukari’s rather potent moonshine. There were a few cool cars in the group. One really nice rally-inspired Dauer that looked awesome, but kinda sucked on most of the stages. A Union Magistrate wagon that looked like hell by the end. Couple boring SUVs.”
“Of course, there were also problems. One team got sent home early for driving a stage drunk. Another team had a fatal crash. Thankfully, they were the only two really-bad events, other than the wildlife problem,” Kayden admitted.
“Oh, and Valentin towed our truck for a few stages with a Dione. We blew up the engine,” Kaylie added.
“Doesn’t sound too bad… though i have no say here, not being able to go vacationing and all… Best i managed was three days off to do the Vätternrundan event.”, he said, letting out a mild sigh as he had been stuck in a never-ending loop between work, cycling and home duties. While this was a somewhat sustainable balance of work, sleep and leisure, he did have a desire for some more adventurous stuff away from work.
“We thought the event was a good bit of fun, but… It was tough as hell. On one hand, waking up each day to something new was exciting. On the other hand, tropical hell was tropical hell, and breakdowns just made that worse,” Kaylie said.
“That, and the jet-lag was real bad. Everyone was tired. Well, except Malavera, but that’s just because he sleeps every-other-day,” Kayden added.
“Is it like in Asia or something?” Norse inquired. “Val told me that, too. The jet-lag, that is…”
Norse then pondered a bit about the nature of the event at large, his mind going from japan scenic landscape drive, over to what amounts to the Top Gear vietnam special but with cars, eventually ending in a Chinese version of the cannonball run.
“Something like that,” Kaylie said with a smile. “The landscape was beautiful at times, but driving it was definitely wild. Hell, in one stage, several of us were matching pace with the local trains on dirt and gravel and cobblestone roads barely suitable for animal-drawn carts.”
“Days felt really long on the trip,” Kayden added. “I think part of it was just the fatigue from all of the driving and some less-than-stellar nights. Hell, I don’t know how Kivenaal managed to keep going through it. He has… Some issues with PTSD. I think being in the forests there made it hard for him to sleep.”
“Was asking because even Google Maps doesn’t seem to know where the biggest city is. Val told me something about it being called ‘Trugarde’, but looks like it’s some local name not used elsewhere…
Do you often do such trips?”, Norse replied, digging deeper and seeming highly interested in that place. Wherever that may be.
Kaylie startled ever-so-slightly as Norse mentioned Val had told him about Trugarde, though almost immediately regained her composure. “Yeah, that’s a local city name in their language. Center of their railroad network. Had a big party there, but it was one hell of a bust. I don’t think anyone there actually enjoyed it,” Kaylie said.
“We did the one trip as a trial run, things worked out well enough, so we’re planning another one next year. Kivenaal and Rukari were scouting locations, but getting answers out of them can be very, very difficult. They want to preserve the mystery of the new location. About the most we’ve gotten so far is that it’ll be cold at the start, and end in the warmth,” Kayden added. “We’re hoping for a yearly event.”
Jayde looked over and joined the three of them. “How are things going over here?” he asked. “Heard the mention of Trugarde, and, well,” Jayde smiled, before speaking a phrase in Gand that pretty much no one in earshot would understand, and following it with, “I spent a while there. Wasn’t born there, but spent a good part of my life there.”
“Jayde joined us for the journey, decided to come home with us,” Kaylie admitted. She grabbed his left hand with hers and smiled, then added, “We got married recently.”
As Kayden explained that they are kind of planning on another run next year, Norse’s eyes lit up in optimism and excitement. He didn’t say a word, only staring back at them like a little kid that really wants to go on the big rollercoaster, eventually breaking his silence and going back to ‘normal’ once the marriage was mentioned.
“Congratulations you two!”, he said, his eyes going back and forth between Kaylie and Jayde. “Imma head back in. Not used to a grid of cars, most of which fart-canned…”
He then politely nodded before turning around and heading back in.
“Yeah, most of these cars are obnoxious,” Jayde replied. “Including ours.”
5:30 PM
As Valentin returned from his therapy, Takaraya motioned to him to come closer. “I could use a bit of help here with the sandwiches, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Uhm… sure.”, he replies, taking a moment to loosen up some joints before heading over to Takaraya.
Takaraya smiled, grabbing the heavy pack containing their food supplies, setting it onto a nearby table and opening it up. He pulled out bread, butter, tomatoes, lettuce, bacon to be cooked, and steak to cook as well, followed by a couple of knives, a stainless-steel cutting board and a cast iron pan. He then set up the gas burner on top of the table, perching the pan on top.
“You and your friend Njordal, both of you are fine with these items?” Takaraya inquired. When Valentin nodded, Takaraya smiled. “I’ll handle the cooking if you stack up the sandwiches. Don’t worry about them looking great, it’s just food.”
Takaraya turned on the gas to the burner, turned the knob up, then sighed, grabbed one of the butter knives, and struck the knife across the back of his left hand, throwing sparks at the burner, which caused it to erupt with the usual blue flames. “Sorry, I don’t carry matches. Or lighters. Tobacco smoke makes me feel ill,” Takaraya mentioned, setting down the knife and settling his cast iron pan over the fire.
While the pan was warming up, he grabbed a sharp knife and started cutting thin slices of tomato and making a nice pile of them for Valentin, who was slowly, but steadily buttering bread. After cutting the tomatoes, he moved quickly to rinse off his knife, then used it to cut up the lettuce as well. By that point in time, Takaraya noticed that Valentin was struggling a bit to keep up with the butter. “Sorry, Valentin. I do this a lot back home for the crew. I’ve gotten fast at some of it,” Takaraya admitted.
When Valentin gave a light shrug, Takaraya chuckled. “You’d be surprised how helpful an extra set of hands can be, especially ones that aren’t covered in fur,” he said. He opened the packages of steak, placing several into the hot pan.
“Do you have any objections to medium-rare steak?” Takaraya asked.
Takaraya’s question had Valentin puzzled. He simply quips back a confused “Pardon?” as he tries to figure out what is meant by “medium-rare”.
Takaraya flipped the steaks over, then asked, “Do you know how done you prefer your steaks to be? If you don’t, that’s okay. If you’ve got a preferred temperature, I have a thermometer I can check with. Have to do that regardless.”
“You can cook them at various temperatures beyond ‘hot’?”, Valentin answered, looking even more confused as he looked at the steaks in the pan fizzling away.
Takaraya gave a light nod. “There are some who prefer a steak closer to rare, where there’s potentially a little more blood on their plate. And some who prefer their steak “well done” where it’s cooked quite thoroughly. Well done is typically the safe bet, but some claim it ruins the flavor.”
Takaraya’s explanation did little in clearing up Valentin’s confusion.
“Uhm… Does a steak even go onto a sandwich?”, he said, trying to avoid having steak altogether.
“It can, but it doesn’t have to. I don’t mind working around that. About the only thing I’d have to know is how you prefer your bacon, and that’s a simple question: Crispy, or not crispy?” Takaraya said. He grabbed the thermometer, checked the three steaks there in the pan, and pulled each of them out, setting them on three of Valentin’s buttered slices of bread.
“About as crispy as you can get without setting it alight,” Valentin answered, relieved about at least being able to provide some useful information.
Takaraya chuckled. “I see we have a similar preference, then.” As Valentin chuckled as well, Takaraya smiled.
It didn’t take long before the steaks were all done, and with most of the sandwiches filled up with steak, leaving two sandwiches without one, Valentin started putting tomatoes and lettuce onto each of the sandwiches while Takaraya started the bacon. As the bacon was cooked to the extra-crispy texture they both wanted, he started scooping it out of the pan, giving Val’s and Norse’s sandwiches a double-helping of bacon in replacement for the steak. Once he was finished cooking, Takaraya turned the burner off, loading the rest of the sandwiches with a smaller amount of bacon and watching as Val put the top slice of bread on each of them. He set the hot pan on top of the toolbox to keep it from being easily bumped by accident, then called out across the pit lane, “Dinner is ready!”
It didn’t take long for the crew to set their tools down and wander over, each grabbing sandwiches and taking hungry bites. Kivenaal made a bit of a spectacle of himself, grabbing the still-hot pan off of the toolbox and putting it on the burner, making a personal batch of fries with a sandwich in one hand, a water bottle in another, and grabbing a plastic drink cup with a third hand to put his fries into it. He reached into a pocket and grabbed a box of matches, setting the cup down long enough to strike a match and relight the burner.
Takaraya finished his sandwich, washed it down with a fair amount of water, then tucked a tea bag into his mouth and chewed it lightly, enjoying the flavor.
