Racing Stripes

The cub scout pinewood derby was on Thursday, January 30. We received the wooden derby car kits just 10 days before the race. Josh and I talked to Jonah and Micah about the reality of the situation: Josh would be gone the only weekend (on a bus trip) between the day we received the kits and the day of the derby. The usual process for creating the cars goes like this: the boys pick their car shape, and draw pencil lines on the block, then Josh cuts the blocks into that shape, then the boys sand it and paint it, then Josh puts the tires on the cars. There was no way I could cut the car shapes or put the tires on, so we gave the boys two choices: either they could decide not to participate in this year's races, or they could use last year's cars and paint them. They thought about it, and decided they would paint the cars.

 

Here's what they looked like last year--Jonah's was white/blue with racecar stickers, and Micah's was red/white with air force stickers:

 

 

 

This year, Jonah decided to have an orange/white/blue one with BSU letter stickers. Micah had a black/orange one with SHS letter stickers.

 

They turned out good! We spent all of one day fixing up the cars: gluing, sanding, taping, and painting & drying several layers. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good enough job taping off the underside of the cars, and some of the spray paint got in the tire's axels, and the wheels weren't spinning right. So, I got some Q-tips and toothpicks and dipped them in fingernail polish remover and tried to wipe off as much as I could. After working on that for a while, the wheels were working better. Then a few days later, Josh took the cars with him to work and put some graphite on the tires to help them spin faster, too. The night of the pinewood derby, Josh had another bus trip out of town (to Ammon's basketball game), so I took the twins alone to their scout race.

Micah

Jonah

When we arrived at the church, we weighed in the cars. They're supposed to be less than 5 oz. Both of the twins were about 3.5 oz, so they weighed less than several of the other boys' cars, which we didn't worry too much about. There was lots of colorful cars this year:

 Last year, Jonah's car beat Micah's car. Jonah ended up getting 1st place last year, and Micah got 4th. But this year, when they went head-to-head, Micah's car beat Jonah's!

They were in the middle of the pack of 11 boys; they won some and lost some. The boys were all encouraging each other, and enjoyed the competition. They all had a good attitude, and it turned out to be a really fun night of racing!

Micah on the left, Kohlbin on the right

Jonah on the left, Cooper on the right

 Afterwards, the scout master gave all the boys some awesome stands he made to put their cars on

Nate won this year with his 3-wheeled car (we've never seen anything like that before). The boys had a great night, and it was on the of the funnest cub scout pinewood derby races we've been to!