The Pinewood Derby

Last night was our first experience with the Pinewood Derby. Jenny and I were surprised at how much of an "event" it was. It's definitely a big deal in the world of Cub Scouts. The way its run is each den has their own set of races. So the Tiger Cubs race each other, the Wolf den races each other, and so on. Then the place winners of those races compete against each other in the pack finals. So Ben got to race his red car against all the other boys in his den. Overall he was disappointed at how his car did. Most of the time his car came in 3rd, but he did manage to get a 2nd place finish one time. Going into the event I was worried Ben might get upset if his car didn't do well, and he did get a little sad at one point. But in the end he had a good time and he walked away with a nice ribbon. Anyway, we had a good time watching all the cars race, and we learned a lot of tips for our car next year. One of the races they have is the "sibling race," for all of the brothers and sisters of the scouts. Megan's purple and yellow "Princess" car was the only "girl car" in the race, so it was fun to watch her race against all the boys. She even got a 2nd place finish once. The evening was rather long (got home at 9:30) but we had fun. All in all I was proud of our effort. We built a cool car together and we learned a lot. This was our first time doing this and I think we did pretty good. For lots more pictures of the derby check out my scout blog.