“Are you all good?” Mabel asks, resting a comforting hand on my arm.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I shake it off and start walking towards the entry.
She jogs up to my side. “So, do I need to work on hands signals to talk to you? I know it’s loud in the pit, surely it’s louder on the bike?”
“We have some helmet radios, so you’ll hear me loud and clear.”
“Oh, embarrassing. So everyone will hear you teaching me?”
“I got you covered. They have a few frequencies, so they will stay on one and we will be able to talk on our own line.”
“That’s a relief!”
Bumping my elbow into hers, I say, “You’ll nail it.”
She tries to grin but grimaces instead, causing me to laugh. My laughing jolts her out of her head as I see her body relaxing.
The cool breeze whips through the material of my motocross gear as Mabel and I sit on our bikes on the dirt track.
“You can hear me okay?” I ask.
“Yup. Copy.” Mabel’s voice crackles in my ear. Her helmet nods in conjunction with her reply.
“We are going to take this really slow. Basics first. Don’t focus on the other riders on track. Shut them out and just worry about what you are doing.”
“Okay.” I hear her tentatively agree. Her eyes bounce across her handlebars, the track, the foot clutch.
“Mabel.”
She looks up abruptly, locking my eyes to hers.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, her voice sounding more confident.
We spend our time going through gears and building her confidence, moving the bike on the flat dirt terrain until she is shifting gears with little thought process and starting to flow through her turns smoother. She didn’t fall over, but she put her feet down as soon as she wasn’t happy with how she was going.
This is one of the smaller MudPit courses with a flat track; a junior track which resembles a competition motocross track, but smaller for the kids and novices getting used to everything with some subtle bumps thrown in for confidence building.There are bush tracks accessible from here, which the crew have gone through today.
A few hours pass and we manage to move on from the beginner flat track to the junior track. There are several kids ripping it up around the track, but everyone is keeping an eye on each other and no paths cross.
Alongside the peak of an incline, we watch the kids’ jumps, and I can’t help pointing out tips to help them improve their landings.
“You seem like you're finally enjoying this?” I remark.
“It’s pretty fun. You’re a good teacher!”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised!” I reply.
“Sorry. You gave good instructions to follow.”
“I’m used to explaining this to kids. I used to work with younger kids when they were starting out in comps and training academy.”
“Explains it.”
Silence falls through my helmet as we watch the kids get more daring with their jumps.
“That kid is really good.”
