Mabel gasps, and play-hits my arm. “Jerk.” But gives me a smile and an eye roll. “I was not hysterical.”
“Your face told a different story,” I argue.
“Anyway. This hotel we have separate rooms, though.Thankfully.”
Which I hate.
“Some knights are in red and white leather clad armour, hey?” Shelby adds. “How are you enjoying it?”
“I'm really liking it. Enjoyed rally, but this is different. A good different,” Mabel replies.
We catch up with Shelby and invite him to the next motocross track before he needs to run off to his meeting. WalkingMabel to her hotel room, we couldn’t be further apart on opposite sides of the hotel and on different floors.
“Thanks for walking me to my door. You want to come hang out? I'm just going to be working watching TV.”
“Yeah. It’s weird sitting in a hotel room alone now,” I reply, because it’s the truth.
Not just because Kiara would have been in the room with me, but because the last two months, it’s been Mabel and me on the lounge relaxing. That routine happened naturally, but quickly. Is too quickly a bad thing?
Heading to the motocross track with Mabel and the crew came out in force for a great time on the dirt. We have all been caught up doing our own things, it’ll be nice to take the day to hang with everyone.
“So you didn’t get to do anything fun like this when you were doing rally?” Fleur asks Mabel on the shuttle bus from the chair in front of us.
“Nah, I was heading home after every weekend. I didn’t get to enjoy any of the extra-curriculum activities with the teams they might have been organising,” Mabel replied.
“Oh yeah. We have a few of the rally people who want to join in on our days here. Gets hard to coordinate between the two travelling and racing schedules, but we try to do a mid-seasonor end of season session with some of them,” Fleur recounts. “Have you ever ridden a bike before?”
“I haven’t as yet! Riley said he will stay behind and teach me.”
Taking this as my cue to jump into the conversation, I nod. “We’ll get her loving these sessions soon enough.”
“I’m sure I will! Unless I am crap at it first up. Then I will despise it,” Mabel scoffs, pulling laughter from Fleur and I.
“I’m sure you’ll nail it,” Fleur reassures.
Entering the South Australian MudPit course, the sprawling greens of the mountains are an abrupt but complimentary surrounding for the gritty, muddy, motocross dirt track. There are a handful of cars and utes already gathered in the car park with the strainedbarrrpppoverlapping sounds of bikes on the course float across the air once we step off the bus.
One of the MudPit owners, Adam Bentwick, is standing by a black ute with a huge grin spread across his face as he watches us all pile out of the bus.
“Bento!” Javi, Shelby, and Cole shout out as they walk up to Adam, using his nickname.
“Heya! I see the season has been treating you lot well,” he beams, shaking everyone’s hand.
“Hey, Bento, this is Mabel. Hopefully, this will be the first of many times she hits the course with us!” I introduce when Bento gets to us.
“Hey, Mabel. Great to have you here. We have some options on the course for first-timers so you can get the feel of things. You’ll be chasing these guys around the full course in no time.”
“Thanks. Nice to meet you. I think I’m excited?”
“You’ll do well. Who could ask for better teachers?” He gestures around to us all.
Everyonewhoopsand cheers before moving towards the course.
Bento looks around the group and asks, “Kiara and Sophia not keen to join today?”
Opening my mouth, trying to find the words, I am surprised nothing comes out.
“Bento! Did you receive the new motocross bikes from Rayna? Are those what we'll be on today?” Fleur cuts in front of me and grabs Bento’s arm, turning him away and leading the two of them towards the entry.
