The Pinewood Derby

Are you ready to race?

WARNING:  This post documents some of my negative attitudes about planning and running the Pinewood Derby.  Try not to judge me!

I'm a cub scout leader for the pack associated with our church and this weekend we held our Pinewood Derby.  Normally I have a mostly administrative job (pack committee chair) but we are currently sans cubmaster so I've been doing that job too.  We lost our cubmaster over a month ago and I was hoping we would be able to get a new one in time for him or her to at least MC the event.  I don't really mind working to plan something or even being in charge, but I don't like being the center of attention and/or being the one on the microphone.  So doing this cubmaster job has been kind of a pain.  Also two of my three den leaders were out of commission for the pinewood derby (one with a new baby and one on a scout camping trip) so that made it more stressful...plus Scott had to work that day (it was on a Saturday morning) so I had the three kids with me.  I didn't have a great attitude about it - I kept referring to it as the "stupid Pinewood Derby" but in the end, by some miracle, it all came together and I'm glad it's over.  Here is Matthew posing as a race car driver.

 

Some of the decor.  I brought the food.  Our race was at 9am so we had breakfast things - donuts, bagels, pastries, muffins, fruit and drinks.  The food was a hit!  That's the food in the background...you can't really see it.

 Part of our race track.

 Some of the boys weighing their cars

We had nine boys show up to race that day out of about twelve.  We had tools and things to add or take off weight for the cars.  Most people were scrambling to add as much weight as they could up to the limit to make their cars faster.  The dads and grandpas who came were all very into it with the boys.  It was fun to see.

Here are the cars waiting in the pit garage - they sat in their parking spots there after being inspected and before and between races.  Our track is electronic and we had it set up so the standings of each race would be projected up on a screen behind us.  It was a pretty nice set up.  The races were going so fast that I was only announcing the winner of each race - until I got in trouble for that and was asked to announce 1st, 2nd and 3rd for each race, which makes sense.  The boys all want to hear their names.  I wanted to say, "Would you like to announce this?  'Cause I'd be happy to let you!"  This was while I had a fussing Grant on my hip and the microphone in the other hand.  My bad attitude again.  So I'm a bad MC and I hope I don't have to do it again next year.  Stupid Pinewood Derby!

Here are some of the boys showing off their cars  The boy holding the blue car in front was our first place winner overall!  So the Pinewood Derby is over and it actually turned out really well despite being run and condcuted by me.  For the most part the boys had fun and that's what matters.