Pinewood Derby

This marked our fourth year of fun filled Pinewood Derby races. 

Okay, they really are more like stressful, race to finish a car Derby, but inspite of that, we had manage to do well in the past.  Our Lexington ward would have scout nights at the church where people would bring their tools and saws and cut and sand and paint the cars, but it doesn't work like that here in Cincinnati (or anywhere else I suppose).   

I think this year would have been drastically different if we actually owned a saw and had remembered prior to just two days before the race that we never got our derby kits from their leader.  The derby was fast approaching and we were totally car-less.

Feeling the time crunch we searched high and low in the storage room for the boxes containing last year's cars.  We managed to find Josh's car, but Matt's was nowhere to be found.  Josh's car did not do well in the 2010 Derby, so it wasn't like we were trying to cheat the system by using a souped up ultra speedster.  It was more like, find a car to race so I can stop worrying about it thing.

The scout office is clear across town, so I decided to just grab a pre-cut car for Matt from Hobby Lobby.  $20 later we had a cool pre-cut car, an entire car kit (I only needed the nails and wheels), a bottle of green paint and some awesome decals.  It wasn't until the next day that I read the fine print on the car kit and saw the wheels weren't really cub scout approved, and I could only find three of the needed cub scout nail axles.  Frustrated, I gave up.  I had spent hours looking for cars, driving to stores to buy new parts and then they didn't even really work.  I said enough is enough and decided Josh and Matt would have to share a car this year.

Saturday rolled around and I got up early to take Trey to the church by 7:30 am he could go on an outing with the scouts to work on orienteering.  At 10 am we went to Josh and Matt's basketball game and got home around 11:30 am.  Trey got home from scouts at 12:30 pm and 5 minutes later Rich and Trey walked out the door headed to Trey's basketball game.   The derby was looming at 1 pm.

That stinking car from Hobby Lobby sadly sat on the counter, unpainted, unloved and totally unusable.  

I decided then and there, with the clocking showing 12:35 pm, that Matt needed his own car.  

Frantically we grabbed the blow dryer and lathered on a quick coat of green paint and dried it in a flash. Using great care, with a healthy dose of hurry, we used a pencil and applied the decals.  We grabbed various random bolts, washers and other metal objects from the tool box, dug out the glue gun, threw it all into a sack and headed over to the church.

Once we arrived, they shockingly approved our totally illegal wheels on an axle, but I had forgotten my hammer, so we proceeded to pound in the metal rod with a metal bolt from our collection.  We hot glued on the weights (plus a penny) and it finally was ready to go.

Sure, the cars looked cool, but they weren't breaking any speed records.  Our ultra fast car production didn't warrant any time for upping the speed factor and Matt's face fell when he took 4th place (out of 4) the first two races.  Josh's old car didn't fare any better, but he really didn't care, nor was surprised.  Matt managed to get a couple of 3rd place finishes, but one was against Josh, who took 4th place.  I thought it was a bit funny, but I can see the principle of 'you reap what you sow'.  It was a bit harder on Matt.

In the end, they both were able to participate and race cars and I promised them next year we will take the time to make new cars and try to get them to go fast.

I won't be that hard to improve our speeds posted from 2011.

Josh: Stanford Rocket

Matt: (Green) Black Widow

Trey had a basketball game that started at 1 pm and Rich is the coach.  He was too old to race a scout car, but they came over right after the game to support Josh and Matt.  Rich's calling is assistant cub master, so it was great that he could make it to most of the event.

The girls loved playing with their primary friends in the gym and hallways.

This little fella had his own ideas about the Derby.  After an hour he wasn't too interested in the cars.  He quickly directed all his attention on one thing and one thing only: getting outside.  He's big enough and strong enough to push those heavy doors open, so it made for a lot of grabbing and chasing on our part.  He was very, very proud of himself when he managed to break out and make a run for it multiple times.

By 3:30 pm Zach was delusionally tired and I was tired of chasing him inside and outside of the church.  The girls and I took him home for a nap.

Rich and boys stayed after to clean up and vacuum the halls and the foyer for our assigned building clean up.  They got home at 4:30 pm.

Matt burst in the door with a huge grin on his face.  His car won an award and medal for 'sportiest design'.  Looks like our rapid build-a-car-in-30-minutes-or-less paid off.  I was very happy, because it made Matt SO happy.

Two more years, then we get a break until Zach is 8.  Yes, I am smiling.