2009 Pinewood Derby

As I mentioned before, tonight was the big Pinewood Derby race for Donovan's Cub Scout pack. There were twenty cars racing tonight. When I took this first photo there were seventeen checked in. One car was brought about ten minutes late and another twenty minutes late. It is a good thing the track wasn't quite ready or the race probably would have started without them!

Car 16 was my favorite -a Spongebob Squarepants car. It was pretty fast, too.

The opposite view, taken a bit later. Donovan's is car 1. The best of show winner was car 4.

Why, in fact here they are getting ready to vote for best of show. The Cubmaster is handing out ballots for the boys to vote for their favorite cars.

Donovan and Samantha took time out of their busy schedule to pose for a picture.

Donovan's car took first place tonight! That is great - he was so happy. The car took first in every heat it raced in. You know, we are happy Donovan won but we really didn't put all that much extra work into the car. Gerrit and I worked a lot harder on his car last year and, while it also won each heat, the races were a lot closer. I guess Donovan's car has a good set of wheels.

Donovan with his trophy and car. Congrats, Donovan! (Samantha tried to get herself into the picture.)

It was a very well run race this year with only a couple minor glitches. The awards ceremony was perfect, unlike last year's fiasco. Thank you, Tony!

I've Been to Montana Once More

I was gone all last week working in Montana and I made my triumphant arrival, as is my custom, back in Bismarck at about 5:45 pm on Friday. I put 750 miles on my car and visited Wibaux, Glendive, Richey, Vida, Wolf Point, Glasgow, Fort Peck, and Sidney. Whenever I say Wibaux I think of the slogan "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down." I inspected a bulk fuel dealer, a truck stop, a car dealer, an investment office, a post office, a school, a senior citizens center, several apartment buildings, and a large medical facility.

On Thursday and Friday I spent a total of about six hours at the medical facility. This is the first time I had been there. They have had several additions to the building and I noticed some previously obtained building dimensions were incorrect, so I decided to go ahead and redo the measurements for the entire building. Often times when there is snow on the ground or there is some form of inclement weather I can do my measurements inside the building. However, this building has a lot of irregular shapes and different wings shooting off in all directions so I wasn't able to do so. I donned my snow boots and trudged through the snow banks in the subzero weather to get all of the outside dimensions. Yes, you can feel sorry for me now. Ha.

On one leg of my trip I took the highway from Beach to Sidney. That was a nice drive with pretty scenery, lots of hills, and a curvy road. On the route was a natural gas plant in North Dakota I never knew existed. The plant is southeast of Sidney and only about 1/2 mile east of the Montana border on CR 32. County road 32 joins ND Hwy 16 with MT Hwy 23. With some research I found out this is the Bear Paw Energy Grasslands plant and they produce about 100 million cubic feet per day. Below is the Google aerial view.

Since I've been home my theme has been Donovan's pinewood derby car. He is too young to do much work on it yet - pretty much all he could do is paint the car. I asked him if he wanted to paint and he was not interested. He knew exactly what he wanted though, which was a black car with yellow stripes.

Last weekend I cut the vehicle, a pickup, spray primed it, and then painted it yellow. This morning I taped the stripes and spray painted the black. I think it turned out OK.

Last year I purchased a scroll saw and am so glad to have it for this project. I used the saw for Gerrit's last car and for his car the year before I borrowed my uncle's scroll saw. Prior to that I had worked with a coping saw and that took seemingly forever but was really probably about an hour. It is not a soft wood. The scroll saw made the cuts in five minutes.

This evening I started work on the wheels and axles. I'll post a picture of the finished car some other time. Donovan's race is this Tuesday evening!

Oh, and the picture at the top is from Wibaux.

Pinewood Derby Videos

Here are videos of a couple of Gerrit's heats from the Pinewood Derby last night. Enjoy!



This second video below is of a heat that included Gerrit's car, Micah's car (the blue car), and the car that placed second overall. That car, Nolan's car, is the one in the right lane (the video's right). Gerrit was first, Nolan was second, and Micah was third in that heat.

Pinewood Derby Results

We had a great time at Gerrit's Pinewood Derby race tonight. His car took first place in the race! His car took second place in the best of show voting! Best of show is voted on by the kids in the pack.

Each car races in six heats and Gerrit's car took first in all six. The second place car took first place in all but one heat - the heat that it raced against Gerrit's car. The race was scored by finish place. First place got one point, second place two points, and so on. The car with the lowest overall score gets first with the other places determined by next lowest scores. There was no tie, but if there had been there would have been a race between those cars to break the tie.

The cars numbered and in their positions in the staging area. There was one car that came later to make a total of 26 cars.

The crowd screams in excitement for a heat to begin. The ritual was to make a bunch of noise before the starter would release the cars from the gate.

This photo shows Micah's car in the middle of a race. His is the one in the front. Micah took fourth place overall, so we were definitely very happy about that.

Gerrit's car in a race. His car is the one in front, in the second lane from the picture's left.

Gerrit accepting his second place trophy in best of show.

Gerrit accepting the first place race trophy.

My son posing with both his trophies.

I'll upload videos of a couple of races and maybe post those later tonight or possibly tomorrow.

There was a big mix-up by the Cubmaster (Brian) in awarding the trophies. In looking at the score board we knew (or thought we knew) that Micah was fourth place. When it was announced, though, it was a different boy. Confused, we thought maybe he got third. Nope - that was someone else. Same for second - it wasn't Micah. At that point the older boy who had been doing the scoring came up to talk to Brian. After a couple of minutes, Brian announced he had made a mistake for fourth place and that it was in fact Micah.

Someone spoke up and said he thought the other boy should get to have a fourth place trophy anyway, because it was a mistake and not the boy's fault. I don't have a problem with that. Only, they let that boy keep this trophy and Brian is going to order a trophy for Micah. The boy whose car actually placed has to wait for his trophy. I'll never be against giving a kid an extra trophy for a mistake made by an adult, but the kind of unfortunate part of the whole deal is this boy's car tied for last place. Almost every time they had to push his car across the finish line because it never made it that far down the track. As adults I suppose we see it as not being fair to all the other kids whose cars did so much better in the race.

In my opinion it should have been up to the parents to step up and say something either when the boy's name was announced or after the mistake was found. If their boy's car placed last in every heat there is no logical way it could have been fourth. Or they could have said something to Micah like, "You know, your car really placed fourth - go ahead and take this trophy and we'll wait for ours." Although if I put myself in their place I'm not sure what I would have done.

Anyway, all trophies were awarded including Gerrit's for first place. Brian is talking to the group about something else and some parents came up to say that their boy's car placed second instead of the one Brian announced. He had done it again! Same procedure - the first boy gets to keep the second place trophy and the one placing second has to wait for his to be made.

The award fiasco was but a blip on the night, though. Overall, it was a lot of fun to watch. The kids had a great time and were very tired and ready for bed when we got home.

Pinewood Derby Cars Completed

We finished up the two Pinewood Derby cars tonight in time for the big race tomorrow evening. The gold one is Gerrit's and the other belongs to another boy (Micah) in Gerrit's Cub Scout pack. His dad is in Iraq so we helped him out with his car this year.

Micah wanted a car like a top fuel dragster. This is the best I could come up with. It doesn't look too bad. Micah did a good job with the paint and stickers.

For Gerrit's car, he and I were looking online for some ideas for a car design. He saw one with a Star Wars theme similar to this and the decision was made within one-half second. We went off on our own and made it quite different from what we saw online. Looks pretty cool if you ask me.

We are excited for tomorrow night. We hope Gerrit's car does well for his last Pinewood Derby. We also hope Micah's car does very well. I don't think Micah has had much luck in past years. Hopefully we can update later tomorrow night with the results.

Goodnight!