Team Shift Happens; the human side of things
in collaboration with @Knugcab
While Valentin was away trying to persuade the race officials that he can run his experimental vehicle after the race is concluded, Norse went out to make some friends along the pit lane. Dodging a rather curious cat on his way out of the garage, he went down near the garage doors, passing various teams and their cars, eventually arriving at the Trafikjournalen garage.
He takes a peek inside, and upon spotting that they did not seem too busy at the moment.
As a result, he takes a few steps in and makes himself known:
“Hello there. Hope i’m not disturbing you in whatever it is you’re doing.”, he said, taking a glance around the garage.
“Hi”, Filip answered. “Nah, not really, we’re more or less done with most of our stuff now, I guess. Which team are you a member of?”
“I… don’t actually know the name of the team itself.”, Norse admitted rather sheepishly. “But it’s the giant furry-costume-type people a few boxes further down that i am kinda a member of now. Truth be told, i’m mostly watching with another close friend of mine. How about you?”
Filip looked at Norse as if he had seen some strange creature. “But…you look…normal?”, he said and laughed. Then he pointed at the giant “Trafikjournalen” stickers all over the Saarland. “Well, we’re the magazine staff team, so…smash our car and you will get a subscription for twice the regular price! Only today!”
It was only now that Norse noticed the massive stickers being present, which was made obvious by him facepalming.
“God i’m stupid.”, he muttered, as the hand went back down and into his pocket. “Though wouldn’t it be more logical for the magazine to run about and… do journalism stuff?”
Erik Carlén looked up from underside the Saarland where he was doing some final checks. “Oh, don’t worry, there is some guys having that lazy job during the 24 hour run…and then there is us poor blokes that they send out to humiliate ourselves, as always!”
“Oh, so it’s a separate team doing the data-gathering. Anyway… looks like you got a massive yacht of a car similar to our… well, their US police cruiser.”, Norse said, in reference to the Bricksley Grand Warden that they brought along.’
“I didn’t have much of a say in car choice, with me being a last-minute member and not even having a license and all.”, he added, dragging his right foot across the floor a bit as if he just admitted to having done something terrible.
“Probably as big as an european will get if you exclude S-classes and such”, Mats Hansen said, having listened to their conversation for a while. “But unlike the Bricksley, no V8 here, haha. At least it is the 2.6 litre inline six, so one of the better models. Yeah, there was always the ES-24, the 3 litre 24 valve, but when was the last time you saw one of them?”
“Huh… To me it looks like a worn-out wagon that was fetched off of some scrapyard and then about as haphazardly stitched together like my bicycle is. Visually at least, not trying to diss the mechanical work that was done underneath.”, Norse remarked, thereby exemplifying his lack of car-specific knowledge.
Filip Andersson laughed a bit. “We haven’t done much, really. Just a regular service and removing some unnecessary crap, other than that it is more or less stock, so diss it all you want.”
“As said, my bike is a clusterfuck of parts that somehow works, so it might also do it here.”, Norse commented, shrugging as he simply doesn’t know any better. Though he still was curious about where they got it from. “So… is it a junkyard find or was it actually roadworthy when you got it?”
“I more or less took it from the hands of my grandmother”, Filip sighed and kicked the red front bumper. “Guess why it looks like this?”
Norse then started to think hard, getting stuck in the process for a good minute or so.
“Uhm… lack of care?”, he eventually blurted out, still confused as to how a car could’ve ended up like this.
“That’s one way to see it”, Filip said. “She drove it straight into the flagpole in some guys yard, don’t ask me how she succeeded to do that, so I had to get a new bumper from the junkyard for her, but they didn’t have one in beige so I had to take a red one. Then she started to hit about everything that came in her way, hence all the scratches and dings, so I finally decided that it was downright dangerous for her to keep driving, and I think that I managed to convince her too…”
“There’s the dickheads that think they own the road and then there’s the oblivious elderly people that think they can still drive with the reaction times measured on a calendar…”, Norse grumbled, just as Valentin was walking past the Trafikjournalen pit box.
“Hi there. Got the green light for half an hour after the race finishes.”, Valentin said to Norse, stopping to take a look into the Saarland’s garage as well. A view which consisted of 85% wagon roof.
“Sweet! Wanna get your car out then?”, Norse replied, which was met with a dismissive hand-wave.
“Not yet. event hasn’t even started, so i’m not in a hurry. So you’re making some friends, i see?”, Valentin inquired, eyeing the Trafikjournalen team members around their car.
“Oh well”, Filip said and looked over to Norse again. Then he looked over to Val and nodded to him as a simplistic way of saying hello to him while being absorbed in the conversation with Norse. “I remember the last time I was riding with her. You remember that nasty accident involving the PB8 Sprinter and some cyclists? Well, I am pretty sure that was the Sprinter that she cut off with her dangerous driving just before the happening of that accident. We took another way so I never saw the accident in itself but I am still pretty sure. So…I don’t really know. That might have upset the driver of the PB8 and taken his concentration a bit off the road, who knows? A dangerous driver was something she was anyway.”
As Filip recalled that the previous owner of the Saarland had cut-off the what was obviously the very sprinter that caused the accident, he went white. A similar reaction was seen from Valentin, though far less pronounced courtesy of him already being the palest person in the pit lane.
“Uhm… about that… i have a hunch that i want to confirm. Did that happen about 15 Kilometers east of Gothenburg?”, he said, anxious about potentially digging deeper than the newly met people are comfortable with.
“Was there another accident of this magnitude?”, Valentin added, having missed a substantial part of the news earlier this year due to hospital time.
“Yeah, exact that one”, Filip answered. “I am sure you have heard about it.”
“Heard would be an understatement…”, Norse mumbled, still about as pale as Valentin naturally is.
“I think this is not the moment to be bothering them with our story.”, Valentin said, taking two steps over to Norse and placing one hand on his shoulder.
“Unless you want to know, that is.”, he added, now directed towards Filip.
“Want to know what?”, Filip asked. “We were never involved in the accident, I didn’t even see it, we took another way, I just remember that she cut off a PB8 Sprinter on the exact same road just a while before that accident happened, one of the few things I remember since I was scared for life. So I don’t need any more details, there is no legal stuff or something involved for our part. I have just been wondering if that might have been one of the reasons why it happened at all.”
“You weren’t, but we were.”, Norse blurted out as a short-circuit reply, before mentally crashing, rendering him basically frozen.
“I don’t remember much of it, but as i’ve been told, i was the first ‘pin’ that was collected by the massive van-shaped bowling ball that was the Sprinter. Needless to say, i’m now full of titanium, riddled with road rash scarring and i owe him my life.”, Valentin explained in a heavily-condensed variant of the full story while giving Norse’s shoulder a light shake. Said shake apparently broke Norse’s freeze-state, as he takes a confused look around the garage once more.
Filip was the other one that almost froze, hearing this and seeing both of them and their reactions.
“Did I say something stupid now?”, was his reaction. “Damn, I always do and say stupid things! Why?”, he said and went into the driver’s seat of the Saarland.
“No…please…NO! Stop acting like a kid now and grow some balls!”, Mats said firmly to him.
“Why does it always end up like this in one way or another?”, he grumbled and hit the steering wheel of the Saarland with his fist.
HOOOOOOOOOOONK!
Erik Carlén came out from underneath the Saarland again, lightly shaken by the horn abuse.
“Great, now I am deaf too! Calm down and be quiet or we’ll get a Salon for the race next year!”
Filips reaction to the story made Norse feel bad that he had spilled the beans in the first place.
“I’m sorry. Should’ve kept quiet.”, he said in what was possibly the most sincere voice he could muster.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Nor did your grandma, at least in the immediate sense from what i know. Everyone’s still alive, i’m here, having taken the brunt of it, apparently, and the accident itself is half a year in the past.”, Valentin said in an attempt to calm down both Norse and the foreign team. “I think we should get going. Has been pleasant to meet you.”, he added, before leaving while almost dragging Norse along with him.
“Yeah, he is a bit sensitive”, Mats Hansen sighed, “so it may be better if you leave so he can calm down. Nice to meet you anyway!”
Norse and Valentin made their way back to the Shift Happens pit garage, with Norse being rather distraught about having mortified Filip in the process of trying to meet them.
As they got to the remainder of Shift Happens, Kaylie immediately noticed something off with Norse and went to apply her usual remedy, going in for a hug.
Valentin meanwhile found himself an almost comically small fold-up chair, which apparently was child-sized by the looks of it as even a slav-squat would have his butt further off the ground than that chair does.
With the race about to start and team morale below optimal for at least the humans, time went on as Norse went out back to collect himself.
