Charles’ run of not so successful sporting events continued today with the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. This year Charles went with a school bus design, which I mistakenly built by taking two basic blocks and gluing them together. It sounded like a good idea, but the blocks are heavy compared to the maximum allowed weight so I spent a lot of time drilling and carving out wood to get it under the limit. We didn’t add any weights at all, but at least that meant that we could get the weight absolutely maximal. It didn’t end up helping that much, although Charles’ car was in the middle of the pack. I think it might have had a problem because I messed the weighing before putting on the wheels. I ended up having to do yet more carving, which may have misaligned the wheels or got sawdust in the axles. Charles was a bit bummed, because I had him carefully grind and polish the axles.
Charles did like the end result. We found some paint labeled “School Bus Yellow” which we used to paint the car. I would paint one side to show Charles, then he would paint the other sides. I actually made him prime it first, so he would know how that was done. Charles favorite part, though, was using a Dremel because that’s a power tool. He did like the other wood working parts, sawing, sanding, etc., but power tools — that’s the pinnacle.
The event itself was very long. It ws originally planned to start at 12:30 and end at 2:30, but I think we ended up not leaving until just before 5. It was done as a double round robin, so every car raced every other car twice, switching tracks between heats to even things out. Some of the races were very close and I ended up taking pictures to verify winners. You can see Charles’ car winning by a very slim margin. Unfortunately, he also lost several this close.
Alice and Corwin endured. I think Charles and Alice had a lot of fun with two water bottles and Mom, turning her into jet back pack Mom and other things which I couldn’t figure out, but involved bottle popping in and out of Mom and waving about.