The Pinewood Derby

Christian has been looking forward to the Pinewood Derby for almost a year now. He was not old enough to participate last year, so this year's race couldn't come soon enough. Jonathon and Christian sat down together and figured out what design to do. Christian really wanted to make his car look like the bad car from the movie Cars 2. I thought it was a really funny idea because in the movie, the bad cars are "lemons" that break down a lot and are poorly made. Haha! It seemed like an ironic choice for a race car :)

Jonathon went along with the idea, and together they figured out how to create it. I was impressed with the design that they came up with. Jonathon helped get the basic shape cut, and then I helped Christian with the painting. We found a picture of the car online and used that as our model. Christian did the base coat and the stripes, and I helped him with the eyes. It turned out really cute, and Christian was sure proud of it. During the week leading up to the race, he graphited the wheels and made sure they were nice and smooth.

Jonathon had a conference in Boston that week, so he was not able to attend the Derby. That meant that I had to deal with getting the final weight right. It was one tenth of an ounce too heavy, so we had to reconfigure our weight structure and take some off. Luckily, we were able to get it to the right weight without too much hassle.

The racing turned out to be very exciting, and the kids loved eating popcorn while watching all of the cool cars. Christian's car ended up finishing in 6th place. It won a lot of races, and Christian was very happy with the results. The night was a lot of fun, and he is already coming up with ideas for next year's car.