Pinewood Derby 2007

This weekend was Pinewood Derby for Eli's new cub scout pack, #50. They meet at the Montreat Presbyterian Church a couple of miles from home. It's a very well-run pack, with plenty of enthusiastic parents helping to make things happen. I was very impressed with how the races went today. The event was held at the Grovemont Baptist Church in Swannanoa where we had access to an electronic track and scoring system, which made things move right along. Four lanes, electronically timed, with a computerized scoring system that kept easy track of which boy needed to race on which lane all afternoon. They even had a projector for the computer, so we could see the results as they were posted! Very classy. I had heard of this sort of setup, but our pack in Richmond hadn't gone for it yet. All we needed was a video feed of the length of the track to see the race in the rear of the room!

Eli designed his own racer again this year. He wanted a police car. Top left is his preliminary sketch. I did the cutting based on this. Eli did the sanding (top right), and the painting (second row). We were late putting the finishing coats of paint on, so it was not as neat a job as some of out earlier attempts in years gone by. We added some essential Lego pieces to complete the police car look. The car looked fine in the end, but was not very fast. In Richmond the dads had pooled resources on race day and had a pit row set up where everyone could make adjustments to cars. No such thing here. I had counted on that to provide us with some powdered graphite to lubriate the axles. We were sorely missing that as the heats went on. The car was notoriously slow: 3 seconds to as slow as 3.23. We weren't the slowest car in the field, but poor Eli didn't win a single race in his den (Webelos I-II). He had a fine time, though; he was a good sport. He's already thinking ahead to next year: an ambulance!