Saturday, March 14, 2009

Pinewood Derby 2009

Pinewood Derby 2009 has come and gone.  I had one goal for this year's Pinewood Derby: I didn't want our car to finish dead last.  In this, we were successful.  We finished second to last.  Nick, I think, was just happy to be there.  He was just pretty excited about having built something.  If nothing else, our car looked pretty cool.  It had lots of cool stickers with flames and stuff.  Awesome.  I was far more concerned with how our car would do than Nick was.

Xander was less excited about the event, although he did enjoy the food selection:


Here's Nick showing off his car:


The real problem with our car was axle alignment.  I knew it was going to be a problem going in and after talking to some other Dads I have a better idea of what to do next year.

Here's how our Pinewood Derby worked.  There were 30 kids entered this year.  Our track has six lanes.  We randomly seed 6 cars for each heat.  The last car in each heat gets an 'X' on the big board.  Three X's and you are out.  Last car standing wins.

The format is tons of fun and it was non-stop action.  I was responsible for putting the cars on the track and starting them.  Let me tell you, I was busy.  By the time we got down to the finals, the two top cars had no X's.  They each won two races, so it all came down to the final race.  Very exciting.  I think everyone had a great time.

I tried to absorb as much as I could this year as I am going to be responsible for the event next year.  Hopefully I will remember how to put the track together...

2 comments:

PizzaMaster said...

Couple of hint: put the axels in to a drill and sand them until they shine, then apply graphite, unless your troop has a rule against it. Get that done a week in advance and don't install the axels until you are ready to walk in. That way Nick cant "test it out" too much and cause the wheels to get unaligned.
Finally, keep having fun. It's only been a year, but I still miss this event.

Nick, great looking car! You did an awesome job!

Uncle Pat

DD4 said...

I'm proud of both you and your son. You're doing a great job.