Pinewood Derby

Last week Tucker participated in his first pinewood derby!  I think Bob has been looking forward to this day since Tucker was born... just kidding.  But Bob does love to build things so this was really right up his alley.  Add in that he is the cubmaster and I am the den leader, it kind of felt like the derby took over our lives for a little while.

I wish I got pictures of them working on it but I didn't.  Here is a picture of his completed car.  This is actually their third car.  The first one was just for practice.  When we went to set up the track the night before another adult told them that their car was illegal.  So we had to go to Lowes at 8pm the night before and could start over.  They were both up late working on it.

On the day of the derby everyone was very excited!

Tucker ended up getting second place out of the three boys in his den.  I thought that was perfect.  I wasn't really wanting to go to districts anyway.  It was kind of funny because it didn't really seem like the amount of time and thought put into the cars translated to what place they got in the races.

Here is a video of a race.  After it was officially over the boys got to play around and race for fun a few times.

After the derby I had Tucker write a paper about it.  He asked me to share, it said:

"Do you want to know about my pinewood derby?  Well, too bad.  I felt excited for the race.  My car is gold.  When I was there I learned to be a good sport.  Also the aerodynamics are better if the car is smooth and smaller in the back.  I got in second place.   I learned in the shed that to make your car fast you need to put weight right in front of the rear axil and that some black paint smells bad.  I used the bandsaw.  I used the drill press and thats what I did at the pine wood derby. "