This year, despite several scheduling conflicts, August was able to participate in Cub Scouts much more than last year. I was even able to take him to an overnight camp back in January.
Of course there was still a bit of a mad dash to get his car ready for the annual Pine Wood Derby – but at least we had things planned out more than a week ahead of time. While I don’t have much in the way of tools, we do have a family friend that does.
August and I had a general idea of what the car would look like, but when we got to our friend’s house, he said “No. We’re making a shark.”
And so they did.
This was a little over a week ago. During the week August and I worked on sanding and painting the car and getting the details together. Then it was time to come up with a name for the car. Jaws was too obvious, as were puns on the name. The “ironic” names seemed not nearly as funny when said out loud.
Then we settled on Bruce.
The day of the race arrived. We weighed in. 4.990 ounces, just shy of the 5 ounce total allowed. Then I asked if we could have the car to do some last minute touches, basically adding some graphite to the wheels and making sure the wheels were on straight. We were told once it was weighed we couldn’t have the car back. This didn’t make sense, as not only in years past were we able to make adjustments to cars up until the respective heats as long as they weighed in again, we weren’t notified we wouldn’t get the car back after getting weighed. What if the care came in at 4.5 ounces and we had more weight to add? What if it was over 5 ounces?
Oh well. Out of our control. It could have been worse. One of August’s classmates had to go with last year’s car because as they were putting on the wheels the wood cracked.
There were several cool looking vehicles on display.
How did August do? Not bad. The first heat he came in 2nd. Here’s a video. August literally pops up at the end.
The thumbnail is sideways, but the video is fine. It’s only 9 seconds anyway. He came in a VERY close third his second heat and on the third heat he lost. Still, a good run for Bruce and August.