Two pinewood derby cars

This year was the first year Michael was able to participate in the pinewood derby.  I got a little excited.  We had a car all designed, cut out, and sanded and ready for painting.  Then Michael and I got some tickets and saw How to Train Your Dragon in the movie theater.  The kid absolutely fell in love with Toothless, one of the dragons in the show, and as we were walking toward the car after the show he said "Dad, we need to change my pinewood derby car to be Toothless."  I said "well Michael, we're almost done with the car, and I'm not sure we can get it to look like Toothless."  That didn't deter him, though, so we gave it a shot.  We drew up the design when we got home, and after Michael went to bed I broke out the Dremel and started carving into the night.  It turned out better than I had expected, and Michael was thrilled.

This year the dads were also able to participate in a "no rules" pinewood derby race, where (as long as you didn't burn down the track or damage the church building) you could do anything you wanted with the car.  So I headed down to Radio Shack and bought two motors to mount the wheels onto, wired them to a switch that was pressure-sensitive to a small plunger that served as a bumper, and hooked everything to a 9-volt battery to power the thing.  (The bumper was designed to rest on the starting pin, so when the pin dropped to start the race, the switch would open and engage the motors.  I then glued some rubber bands onto the back wheels because otherwise the motors were just causing the car to spin out on the linoleum during test runs.

The car absolutely dominated the open competition, beating its next closest competitor by 1/4 of the length of the track.  On its first race, nobody knew it was equipped with motors because from the top of the car it looks like any other derby car.  People were so surprised when they saw it go that many involuntarily stood up and exclaimed "whoa".  That was a high point for me.  The only real downside to this experience was that it turned out that most of the dads didn't bother with this race, so most of the competition was 6-year-old girls who had built cars so that they could race after their big cub-scout brothers...  Have you ever seen the episode where Kramer beats up on the little kids at the dojo?