Pinewood Derby

Ethan recently had his pinewood derby race in cub scouts. We had a lot of fun with it. I couldn't remember anything from when I was in cub scouts so we started off watching a few videos that provide tips on how to make the cars. We tried to not get stressed about making a perfect car though and Ethan and I agreed that we were going to have fun even if his car got last place each time.

After we watched the videos, Ethan got to work on designing his car. There were millions of ideas online. I really liked the fun ones that were uniquely shaped (like a hotdog or something like that), but he liked the race car ones the best.

Then we cut it and spent some time sanding. Then added the weights and painted it. The most stressful part was probably the wheels. There are just so many different ideas of what to do with those and it seems like if you don't get that right the car may not even make it across the finish line. The thing that I was most glad about was that we started a few weeks ahead of schedule, so we could just take our time on it and do it whenever Ethan felt up for it rather than rushing to get it done on the last day.

When we actually got to the race things were pretty chaotic. Some dads were adding weights to their cars to hit the 5 ounce mark and others were drilling holes in theirs. And then everyone was trying to pass around the graphite and I heard several parents give their boys a talk about how to line their cars up right on the track and not to play with the car at all until after all the races were over. I got to be at the starting gate. There were two of us there, which wasn't really needed and so I was wondering if some of the other parents just thought I was being overly involved. I did have a crew pass, so hopefully they saw that. Ethan's car ended up doing well, but most importantly he had super good manners both when he won and when he lost.

The cub scout leaders put in a lot of effort for the race. Their was a nacho dinner and cupcakes and then a ton of awards and trophies for everyone. I thought it was a lot of fun and I think I learned a lot this time from doing it with Ethan so that next year with Christian and Ethan it will be much more stream lined.