Down and Derby

Dang, I just typed a very long post that got deleted.

We had our Cub Scout pinewood derby race last night. (For the uninitiated, pinewood derby is a competition where boys (or is it dads?) create gravity-powered racecars from a kit and race them down a wooden track. I am not mechanically inclined, and it was my first time to build one since I was a kid. Also, J and I were up against several engineers, so we were just hoping to finish middle of the pack.

Most of the boys had produced great cars. There was a "hook-'em-Horns" mobile, a Duracell battery, and an engineer-designed car with a u-shaped space and a paper clip on the front, designed to allow the car to start rolling slightly before the other cars as the starting gate is lowered. J's car was very nice, too. His mom had helped cut out the block and paint some multicolor flames, and J and I had gotten a metal driver, car, windshield, and roll bar for the cockpit. Aesthetically, it was the best car there. One poor boy, however, showed up for weigh-in the night before with a car that was clearly not a contender.

His dad has a PhD in engineering, but he hadn't helped his son build a car. Instead, his visiting grandfather* had helped him with it. Whether this was because his wife just had a baby or because he is Scottish and didn't understand how seriously we Americans take our model car racing or some other reason, I can't say, but this car was ugly and not well-built. Sometimes, ugly cars do well, but this one had a wheel on backwards, and an uncarved block, and was twice the legal weight. Most of the weight was in removable magnets, but I still found myself drilling dozens of holes in the car with grandpa at 10:30 the night before the race to get the car under the allowable weight.

I'm happy to say that our J's car performed great. In the preliminary round, his car was the fastest, taking first place five times and second place once on a three-lane track. In the final round, the three finalists kids raced on all three lanes. J had one slow race, so it came down to the final run. J finished second by an inch to an ugly-but-awesome racer, but handily beat the paper-clip jumper. We were both happy with his performance, and he also won the Best of Show award for the nicest-looking car, which made him pretty happy.

All of the boys seemed to have a good time, even the boy with the slow car that took last in every race. I'm glad he's a good-natured kid, because my son (or I) would likely have been crying in that situation. He was content with his Most Fuel Efficient award. Still, I noticed his father taking a keen interest and photographing all of the other cars "to get ideas for next year." Welcome to the American car culture, Brother M___.

* Incidentally, the grandfather's wife was once a nurse for the doctor who was my bishop as a teenager. He was a kind and generous man, and he had one son who later served as my bishop, and another who delivered my oldest child and oldest niece. Sadly, he died quite suddenly of a brain tumor after a brief illness.