{"id":273,"date":"2008-01-20T20:04:57","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T03:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2008\/01\/20\/gerrits-green-lightning\/"},"modified":"2008-01-20T20:04:57","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T03:04:57","slug":"gerrits-green-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/2008\/01\/20\/gerrits-green-lightning\/","title":{"rendered":"Gerrit’s Green Lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cub Scout racing events have definitely been down and up\u00a0for our family. Ethan’s pinewood derby car came in last place in every race, but his raingutter regatta boat was unbeatable<\/a>. We missed out on the rockets — I think we were out of town — so the next event was pinewood derby again. Of course, Ethan has moved on to the eleven year old scouts, so it was Gerrit’s turn to give it a go.<\/p>\n

Gerrit’s attitude about building his car differed from Ethan’s in that\u00a0Gerrit actually wanted<\/em> to do it and enjoyed taking a little time. There were a few more cuts involved in Gerrit’s design\u00a0but\u00a0the car’s heritage as a rectangular block of pine was still fairly evident. That’s not to say that\u00a0we would have been capable of much more. It’s hard to be fancy when\u00a0all you’ve got is a coping saw and a dad who’s own\u00a0Cub Scout derby experience was using his brother’s car (thanks, Alan).<\/p>\n

Gerrit and I worked together cutting out the car\u00a0in the freezing cold garage while\u00a0Afton, thrilled to be out of the house, wandered around whacking things with channel locks that she declared was a hammer. We had to move to the basement when it came time to paint in order to be within the recommended temperature range. To finish things off, Shannon took Gerrit on a date to pick up some stickers, weights and graphite.<\/p>\n

\"\u201cGreen<\/p>\n

At the weigh-in, a neighbor showed some concern about the weights we had, and assertively suggested that we use some stick-on weights that he had. I thought we’d be OK, but since he seemed to feel pretty strongly about it, we used the proffered weights instead. The car ended up at 4.8 ounces out of an allowed 5 so we called it good. Gerrit parked his car, which he christened\u00a0“Green Lightning”, in his homemade garage\u00a0made from an old french toast sticks box and waited for the race the next day.<\/p>\n

We raced furiously the next night — but that was just to get dinner before the derby because of a little confusion about the start time. Finally the moment had come, and Gerrit got his chance to put his car up on the track\u00a0with three others out of the thirty cars racing that night. As he was putting his car on the track, it occurred to me that his car had never even been rolled before. I hoped that it would hold together and at least not come in last in every race. I was a little shocked when his car\u00a0easily won the heat.<\/p>\n

\"Gerrit<\/p>\n

One of the other dads was saying to me, “Looks like you’ve got a winner there.” I kind of shrugged it off, still having memories of Ethan’s car. But then Gerrit’s car won its next race, too. And the one after that. Gerrit was ecstatic. He gave me a hand tingling high-five. In the next two races, though, his car came in second, and I hoped that he’d be able to place in the top three for his den after such a good initial showing.<\/p>\n

After whatever calculations by the race officials, Gerrit ended up in the finals for the Wolf Den. Somewhat to my surprise, his car won! He had\u00a0won\u00a0first place for his den. After the winners for the Bear and Webelos dens were determined, there was a final race to determine the overall winner. The video below shows that race. Gerrit’s car is in the leftmost lane. (Sorry the video quality is so atrocious…)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Windows
\nPinewood Derby Final Race (Windows Media)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

After the race, some dads were questioning me. “You didn’t buff your axles or your wheels?”<\/p>\n

“No.”<\/p>\n

<\/a>“You just basically put it together and put some graphite on the wheels?”<\/p>\n

“Yup, pretty much.”<\/p>\n

The neighbor who had given\u00a0us the weights turned Gerrit’s car over in his hands saying, “You know. If you look at\u00a0the information on the Internet, this car is all wrong.\u00a0Sometimes the stars just align.”<\/p>\n

Maybe so. Maybe we just happened upon a fast block of pine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Gerrit\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cub Scout racing events have definitely been down and up\u00a0for our family. Ethan’s pinewood derby car came in last place in every race, but his raingutter regatta boat was unbeatable. We missed out on the rockets — I think we were out of town — so the next event was pinewood derby again. Of course, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Gerrit’s Green Lightning”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-familynews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1804,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/1804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esmithy.net\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}