This weekend Jack competed in his first Pinewood Derby with the cub scouts. We are so proud of him – he really made this car by himself! He made the design, cut it with a jigsaw, sanded, painted, the whole shebang. We gave advice and supervised closely, of course. But you can clearly tell at the Derby which kids benefited from their parents handiwork.
Jack’s car did really well too! Here’s a video of his first heat, where he smoked the competition!
As you can see, the wheel popped off. During construction his front end was cut too narrow over the axle; when the tires were installed it broke off a corner of the car. We fixed it with superglue and let that wheel float, so he only rode on three wheels. So it was no surprise to us when the car smashed in the gate and lost that corner again.
The leaders let me try to fix it with hot glue between races. He was able to complete the remaining waves, but never took first again. I think by the final heat the wheel was dragging instead of floating, with so much glue trying to keep it intact. Even so, he placed 13th out of 30 cars – in the top half!!
He was also overjoyed that his best friend Dylan won the whole competition. Most importantly, he had a good time and learned some new skills.
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