Hunter's First Pinewood Derby!!

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It's 3/25/06 and today is Hunter's very first Pinewood Derby!  We had a really tough time coming up with a unique car design that was also aerodynamic and hopefully pretty zippy.  I left the creative process to Libby and the kids since that's not always my greatest strength.  Once they had the idea on paper though...I was off and running.  I cleaned up the initial design, drove up to see Grampy Davenport and within 2 hours...we had a really keen car body.  He has more tools than GOD and he's a genius with woodwork and metal.  The painting phase was a nightmare though.  The spray paint we got was really sticky and didn't dry for days.  When I attempted to do the detailing...well...forget about it.  My ham fisted, creaky hands just couldn't do anything productive.  It was so bad, in fact, that we had to go over the body with another primary coat and Libby finally took charge of the detailing.  She did a WONDERFUL job of it too.  It really looks like a guitar on wheels now!  Wheels went on today and we did some test runs.  It's PERFECT!

Hunter Won!!  Well, actually he won in his division.  It wasn't just a win...it was a MASSACRE!  One of the cars couldn't reach the finish line and the other one lagged WAY behind Hunter in all 3 heats.  It was simply awesome.  I was SO proud of him and he was just beaming after the race.  WOO!!  Pinewood Derby!!

The overall race was a different story.  In the Overall Race (Best of the Best from each Division), Hunter repeatedly got or tied for first place...until...heat 4.  It wasn't his fault or the car....it was the stupid lane he was in.  Some gunk had found it's way onto the track and when his car hit it, it wobbled, swaggered back and forth hitting the rails and almost came entirely off the track.  Even with all that, it limped in a fairly impressive 3rd place.  But that was it...we'd lost the BIG trophy.  Little Zach won the race with an overall time of milliseconds faster than Hunter.  Hunter was DEVASTATED.  They didn't announce the results until the very end of the race and he had convinced himself that he'd won despite the little "mishap", but I knew...  He waited for the name to be called, clapped for Zach (which I was even more proud of him for)...and then cried the tears I had to keep inside me - because I'm a 40 year old man and I have no business being that competitive with a bunch of 7 year olds.  :) 

Hunter we are SO PROUD OF YOU!!!  For the record, I NEVER won a pinewood derby despite best efforts by several woodworkers and scientists in my family when I was growing up.  Seriously!  We used all kinds of wind tunnel experiments, careful weighting systems and I believe my Grampy Smiddy even cheated once and found a way to get a fishing weight inside the center of the car body.  At any rate...I always lost.  I think I only won one 3rd place trophy if I remember correctly.  But YOU WON FIRST PLACE!  And had it not been for that STUPID track...I'm convinced you'd have gotten that BIG trophy too.  Well, you know what?  We're gonna get that Big Trophy NEXT YEAR.  WOOOOO!!!  PINEWOOD DERBY!!!  hee hee hee

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