Devin's Pine Wood Derby Adventure

Friday was quite a day at the kids elementary school. The afternoon saw the multi-purpose room decorated for the Fairy Tale ball but by that evening...it was used for some serious racing. That's right...Cub Scout Pine Derby time. This is one of the Cub Scout activities where the dads are every bit as much excited as their boys. Last year having nearly identical cars, Logan and Devin ran well with Devin's car being one of the fastest. This year, Logan is now in Boy Scouts leaving Devin as the McQuearyClan's only entry, the blue car pictured in the number 8 spot.

While Devin had the opportunity to make a new car for this year's race, he and dad decided to enter last year's model. Our decision was based on several factors..1) his car was fast last year, 2) the boys who ran faster last year were no longer in the compitition due to moving on to 6th grade, and 3) devin and dad didn't have to make a new car. Now last year we were at the regulation limit of 5 ounces, exactly. The only modification was to add grapite to the wheels/axels. Thursaday night was the weigh in. His car was 1/10th of an ounce over. With the help of a cordless drill, we removed a little pine...the result...5 oz, our racing weight.

They ran a total of 6 races. The track is state of the art, computerized for timimg down to 1-1000th of a second. The times are posted on the wall with a projector...very exciting. I kept track of Devin's times as well as the times of any cars running any faster than his. This way we would know how much better we would have to run to make up time. (Like we could really do anything, I mean after all it is a piece of wood with plastic wheels.)

There were 36 cars entered and with only 6 lanes on the track, it took a while to run all races. With each race the cars were positioned from slowest car to fastest. Devin's first run was awful. Still much faster than most of the other cars but still a slower time than we were hoping for. With each race his car got better. On the third race, the track record was broken by one of Devin's friends and fellow member of his Den. Devin came in just 1-100th of a second behind his friends time.

Devin's car remained 3rd fastest up to the 4th race. Four races were all that were promised. This is important because the top three cars get to move on to the District Race next month. The father of the boywho is Devin's friend and I were hoping they would leave the night at four races. If they ran more races, our boys could possible drop in placement. Devin was on the bubble. Race 5...same standings. Race six, as seen in this picture, Devin smoked the pack.

The end result, Devin came in second in his age grooup and third fastest car overall for the night. He and his friend Mitchell seen here getting their trophies will be going to District. Way to go Devin!