Pinewood Derby

[Alk]

Well Grant completed his first Pinewood Derby today. The one thing I took away from this whole thing is that some parents take this whole Pinewood Derby thing way more serious than we did.

Grant is only 7 so he obviously isn't going to be doing any cutting on this block of wood. I drew up several designs and let him pick the one he liked. I then cut out the shape and rough sanded it into the shape it was supposed to be. Then I handed it over to him. He had to sand out all of the saw marks and smooth sand it then paint it himself. He even constructed a pretty cool wing out of Legos to put on the back. After that, I let him smooth the wheels and polish the axels. I took back over from there putting the weights on and making sure the wheels were straight.

Raceday was quite an event. We got in line to weigh only to find that we were .25 oz. overweight. I took out my trusty pocketknife and started popping weights out. The first two came out fine but the third one put up a fight. I managed to slice the ever loving $hit out of my thumb. Wrapped a paper towel around it and got back in line. We hit the 5 oz. right on the dot.

Things started out looking real good winning his first three races including beating last years champion along with a couple other cars that looked like the parent took complete control over. You can always tell the ones because they're the ones that actually get mad when their kid's car loses. He lost his fourth race and headed to the loser's bracket where he won his next race then lost his final race which would have put him in the 4th-5th place race by a nose. We figured he finished either 6th. or 7th. out of about 40 kids. Pretty good time but it's just getting sad how some parents act even at a freakin' Pinewood Derby.

[slowmoe57]

I did one with my boy 8-9 years ago -- came in 2nd place but since neither one of us had ever done one before we were quite proud of ourselves. I still have the car in a trophy case.

[Bugeater]

LOL, Cub Scouts, what a joke. My son was in it for one year and I've never been around a more annoying group of people. And the contests were all such a sham, one of the first ones my son's troop had was a cake decorating contest, and the rules said the kid was supposed to do most of the work. OK so I let him do it, and it was kinda lame but whatever, these were elementary school kids. Well when I saw some the other kids' cakes it was completely obvious the parents did all the work.

So at Pinewood Derby time I had my revenge, I've been building model cars since I was a kid so I had some skillz in that department. I attached a huge dragster engine, gave it a flame job, painted the wheels and letters on the tires, it looked friggin' awesome. It didn't win a single race, but it did get best in show.

[Bob]

I loved pinewood derby when I was a kid. I had daughters, so I missed out on doing it as a dad.

Sounds like you did it right, Alk.

[Maxman]

Pretty cool Alk. My son did a Jets car with Coles # on it. That was a few years ago, before Coles was traded to Washington.

Ironically the car started out strong but finished 3rd. I think it got hurt down the stretch.

[JerryK]

I'm making 2 cars this year. (2 kids in scouts)

We will work hard and be mediocre. You really can't keep up with the guys that buy their kids' cars on ebay or build 4+ cars in a friend's woodshop and use the best one.

It's a good life lesson to show your kids.

"If you can't beat 'em, find out how they cheated and decide if you'll join 'em".

[Bugg]

LOL, Cub Scouts, what a joke. My son was in it for one year and I've never been around a more annoying group of people. And the contests were all such a sham, one of the first ones my son's troop had was a cake decorating contest, and the rules said the kid was supposed to do most of the work. OK so I let him do it, and it was kinda lame but whatever, these were elementary school kids. Well when I saw some the other kids' cakes it was completely obvious the parents did all the work.

So at Pinewood Derby time I had my revenge, I've been building model cars since I was a kid so I had some skillz in that department. I attached a huge dragster engine, gave it a flame job, painted the wheels and letters on the tires, it looked friggin' awesome. It didn't win a single race, but it did get best in show.

There are some people who get way to into scouting. We did it for 2 years,and that was enough. The screaming and running amok were too damn much. The pack had this whole thing where the kids would have a snack at the end of the meeting, but the very last thing any 8-year old boy needs at 8:30 on a Friday night is sugary or salty junk.

I too sliced the living sheet out of my thumb carving up up the pinewood derby car.Got my mechanic uncle with his ultimate set of tools to do it in year 2.

Also, camping to me is more like torture than a vacation. Should either son so desire to commune with the great outdoors on an extended basis, they can join the military.Worse, the level of supervision some parents provide or fail to provide (which is supposed to be constant 1 on 1 during the camping trip) was so lax 2 TIgers were lost for about 3 hours near a lake. I'm told 2 scoutas drowned when this happened at Camp Pouch on Staten Island a few years back. In fairness, the people who run it were very nice, but more than a little clueless.

I have no problem taking my sons to sports-football, baseball, hoops, hockey and have helped out with baseball. But I'm overjoyed we're done with scouts. Word to the wise-there are only so many hours in the week. If your child is involved with sports and doing his school work there comes a point you have to make decisions about how you want to spend your evenings. And too many activities will run you ragged. Also, you find yourself hitting the drive thru and pizzeria way too often rather than cooking a decent meal and relaxing. Athletics makes sense to me,scouting does not.

[ECURB]

I used to sell about $3k or so worth of supplies in a 2 week span... lol

People go CRAZY over it!