On Our First Pinewood Derby

Reagan,

Long sigh….. this one will be tough for me to write. This past week, we had our first Pinewood Derby race with your Cub Scout group. I think it’s best if I set the table before we dig into the main course and whether or not our car might, or might not have, been the only car not to make it all the way down the track.

It all started about a month ago. We’d had our Pinewood Derby supplies for a few weeks prior, but about a month ago, Deb mentioned that we’d better get going on the Pinewood Derby car because it wasn’t the kind of thing that we should put off until too close to the race.

“OK Deb,” I muttered out loud in the privacy of our house with just you, me, your mom, and maybe Koen (he doesn’t listen anyway, so who cares). “Let’s just cool our jets, shall we?” I suppose Oakley could have heard, but I have a “shock collar with the ability to ratchet up the intensity” that says she wouldn’t rat me out. Unfortunately for me, that didn’t stop you from telling Deb, “my Dad says you need to cool your jets about the Pinewood Derby car.”

The next day, your mom texts me. “Your son just told Deb you told her she needed to settle down.”

“Great,” I thought. “Can you please tell her I was kidding?”

Nothing better than trying to explain context to someone who just knows you told them they need to settle down. In fact, “settle down” might be two of the most dangerous words you can say to any woman, let alone the only one who can get Koen to eat anything other than hot dogs and fruit snacks.

Whatever. So we eventually decide we’re ready to work on the car. In the Pinewood Derby kit, you get a block of wood with predrilled grooves for the wheels, four nails (used for axles), and four plastic wheels. We check out a few Youtube videos on how to make the fastest Pinewood Derby car. The basic checklist includes:

• Weights to make the car exactly 5oz.
• Wheels should be spread out toward the front and back of the car
• Speed nails will work better than the basic ones

There were a few other tips, but I had the gist. Taking inspo from your mom, we basically had the recipe and we’d kind of bake the cake based on hunches instead of measurements. I ordered weights, some sweet decals, and the speed nails from Amazon. We went to the hardware store to get spray paint, and we would use what tools we had at home to complete the assignment.

Time to get to work. I thought I had a jigsaw that we’d use to shape the car, but I couldn’t find it. So I asked a few people who either didn’t have one either, or didn’t get back to me in the five minutes after I texted them, so I said screw it lets shape this thing with a flathead screwdriver and hammer. I also had an electric sander that we could use to smooth out the edges.

“Dad can I do the hammer?”

“No.”

“Can I do the sander?”

“No, well, shit, I guess you should do something, right?”

So I let you take the sander and start doing who knows what to the car. By this point, I’m pretty proud of the hammer-and-chisel job that I’d done to shape this thing, and I’m growing a little protective over my our car.

“OK, let me just take that, bud.” So I take over the sanding and get to a point I’m we’re pretty happy with how it looks. We spray paint the car and let it dry. We could have stopped there, put those old nails in those old grooves, and we would have had a perfectly functional car.

This is the part of the movie where the scene stops and my voice comes in as the narrator. “But we didn’t stop there.”

No because I we needed to widen the wheelbase. I saw on Amazon that they had this tool that acted like a small vice with small holes you could use to ensure even spacing on either side and, more importantly, a track to make nice 90-degree pilot holes. I saw that this very specific — what would surely be a very rarely used — tool was $20 or something and I could just figure out spacing on my own. Unfortunately, eyeballing this sequence would be my our undoing.

So I take my drill and I drill some pilot holes — first in the back and then in the front. I put the nail through the wheelbase and I tap-tap-tap it gently into place with my hammer. Then, I set the car on the ground and give it a push for a little test drive.

“Biscuits!” I think to myself as the car crescent moon’s off to the right. One of the wheels, at least one, is not aligned with the others. I pull out that nail and try to adjust the angle of entry into the pilot hole. No dice; same problem.

That’s OK, we’ll just drill two new pilot holes for the back wheels. There is, after all, plenty of real estate back there to work with. New holes, wheels go back on, same issue. This time, I try to use my our hammer to bend the axle into place so the wheel would be flat to the ground and run straight.

This is the part of the movie where time would speed up, the carnival music where you’d see all the clowns getting out of the little car would play, and I’m out there like, “hammer, nail, check, hammer, hammer, adjust, pilot hole, pilot hole, wipe sweat from forehead, pilot hole, hammer, check, adjust, check, pilot hole, check.” Now our car looks like Tupac’s limo in ’96. Then, as I’m trying to manipulate the wheel and nail with a hammer, I crack the little plastic interior wheel base.

Once I check my watch, I realize that the race is tomorrow. Nash’s dad came over that night and brought some super glue we tried to use to put the wheel that I we broke back together. We did what we had to, and I came to the conclusion that we’d just end up having to use the grooves in the base of the car instead of our pilot holes. With that said, we’re now working with a broken and superglued wheel, compromised “speed” nails, and time ticking down in the fourth quarter. It was out of our hands now.

Race Day

We rolled up to Hyatts Middle School the next morning. If nothing else, the car looked like a Pinewood Derby car. It wasn’t like we were rolling out some hamburger-meat looking thing, but we did good with the pain, the stickers, and, at least for now, the wheels visually looked like they were there to carry the car down the track.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting as far as how long the track would be. Once I saw that there was about three feet of inclined runway and about 30 feet of flat track between the bottom of the ramp and the finish line, I started to get nervous. I whispered to your mom, “I think the goal is just to finish.” I was honestly about 50/50 as to whether it would or not.

Fortunately, your interest in your car was much less than that of just running around and being part of the chaos that was going on in the middle school gym. The Scouts had some stations set up for kids to play — marble runs, an air cannon, things of that nature — so we got the char checked in and weighed (5oz. on the dot), and we settled in.

The races began with the siblings division — uh what? Groups of four cars would race in multiple heats for each division. Basically, our car would have to run the course three or four times. There were about 12 heats in the sibling division, which was awesome considering there were like five or six age groups for the Pinewood Derby. So, basically, we were committed for a long day or racing.

Finally, it’s our turn. You come up to the front to get a view, and as you mom senses my fear so she positions herself in a way that she can both see the race and my reaction. I’ll just put it here. Our car, as you can probably see once you see my reaction, was the blue one.

I think if you listen, you can hear my pride leaving my body. I felt my face get hot. I also didn’t mention that Tutu and Grampy came to see your race, so it was nice to have my ineptitude as a father and builder shine though in front of my parents. We didn’t get the videos, but the next three or four races didn’t go any better.

I believe that there is always something to learn in the face of failure — even if that failure is an utter disaster of a failure. So here are my our takeaways after our first Pinewood Derby race.

• If we’re going to spend on the tools, get the ones that are more important. Should have spent money on the vice + pilot hole tool instead of the speed nails
• After seeing how creative and polished the other cars were, we’re never going to win the “best looking car” award.
• We’ll probably never win the speed award too, so maybe we just stick to the grooves and nails that come with the car, and just make it look “nice enough.”

Here’s what I love most about you, Reags. Once we saw our car crawl to the almost-finish-line, you kind of gave me a kick as if saying, “really, bro?” But as we were leaving, you weren’t disappointed about how the race went or envious of the better looking (and better working) cars that beat us. But you were empathetic, and told me that we’d have a better car next year. It would have been nice to win a trophy, but I’ll wear a little shame if it means we got a good laugh and had some fun building the car together.

“I didn’t get it before, but I do now. It’s not about the speed or the finish line—it’s about the ride. And I’m just getting started.” — Lightning McQueen

Love,

Dad