Pinewood Derby

This morning was the 2008 running of the Pinewood Derby for Nicholas's cub scout pack. My husband helped set up the track last night and they had the trials. This is a time to run your car and get it broken in a little. There is a big science to this whole racing thing. It has something to do with the weight in the back of the car, graphite, and axles. I try to stay out of it but the boys in our family have a good time with it and I put up with the tools on the kitchen table for the two weeks prior to the race.

Nicholas prides himself on the paint job. It is always shiny and neat. This year he went with the style car that won the district races last year. Nicholas has gone to districts for the past two years and while doing well in our pack he never does well in the district races. Once you get to districts it becomes a real competition and no one tells their secrets. Basically how do you get a block of wood to go down a track as fast as you can using the standard wheels and axles given to you in the kit. It can only be 5 ounces too. The cylindars you see in the pyramid pattern are the weights.

Nicholas won his den races. 6 races total and then they average your speed to see who wins. There are only three boys in our den so competition wasn't too hard. We had to run three dummy cars also in our races to finish out the lanes. Half the time the dummy cars beat us. In the picture Nicholas' car is third from the right. He is racing against the red hot rod next to him on his right and the "money car" on the end on the right. The three to the left are the dummy cars.

Then the winner from each den race to find a winner from the pack. Nicholas came in second for the pack which is the best he has ever done.

Nicholas loves the pinewood derby and while his car does look really good and it does well in the races the design and the painting is all him. He isn't allowed to use power tools on his own so he can't do some of the woodwork but he sands and paints and puts the stickers on and the weights in and polishes the axles on his own.

Last night I was up late sewing patches on his uniform. The uniform he is wearing in the picture up there was the same uniform his father wore when he was a cub scout. He wanted to wear it today so I cut the patches that he hadn't earned yet and I sewed the ones on that he did earn. I left some historical patches on it like the one on his right shirt pocket which has the 1976 date on it and I didn't replace the Council patch on his left arm. Several years back our council changed their name. I left the old name patch on there. He was very proud of the uniform today.