Saturday, February 9, 2008

Pinewood Derby '08

He did it! Goof won 1st place out of his Den (6 other kids) in this years Pinewood Derby for his Cub Scout pack!

It started all started out with a 4 oz. block of pinewood...but now it's a fast, purple-racing machine!

I was surprised just as much as he was; out of 6 heats, his car was 1st place in all but one. All the cars were all very close in time speed, so the time difference on these things were measured to the .0001 of a second (yep, the track is high-tech; on a computer monitored aluminum-crafted Pinewood derby track).

He was very excited about winning and had a bigger smile once he realized he was going to win a trophy. Also, seeing he won amoungst his den-mates, he qualified for the Pack Championship race which was about an hour later. During this time of waiting around, we ate candy and hot-dogs while watching all the older cub scouts racing their cars (that were even faster). I tried to elude to the fact that their cars were going after than his so he might now come in 1st place the next time around; we'd just have to wait and see.

Well the championship race began and his car was hanging in there at a tight 4th place. After a few heats his car had trouble on one of the tracks (yeah, they rotate the cars on the track and get an average score so all is fair). After the 1st 'do-over' his car went off again. At that point they give you the lowest time (10 seconds), so when the heats were over and they average the speed, he came in last place. He held his composure but broke down in tears after he got his car and came over to me. I told him he did great considering all the competition and the fact that he should be happy he got a trophy as most of the kids went home with nothing. The tears soon stopped in the car on the way home and was already talking about bringing in his car and trophy into school for show and tell!

Until next year!....Oh, click here, here, here and here for a few more pics of the days event.

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