My nephew's, that is.

He had his first Tiger Scouts Pinewood Derby last night at McCormick Junior High.

I did most of the carving on the block of wood and quite a bit of the sanding, but he did some work on it too, which, because of him being six, wasn't a whole lot - primarily a little bit of sanding on his part.

We added weights; 2 more torwards the middle on the bottom and one more just in front of the rear axle groove.

That car kicked ass against the other Tiger Scout Pinecars, being the only one at the race to get first place in ALL 4 primary races. However, when it came to the finals, the car came in fifth, out of the five cars that qualified for the finals. Because of making it to the finals, his car is going to District in April (at least, that's the target month), so I unfortunately don't have a picture of it's rather poor craftsmanship (I haven't worked with wood like that in about 10 or 12 years). They'll keep it until district.

He took fifth overall, as it was the slowest of the five qualifying cars, but not by much, it wasn't an epic smoke out. Basically, the cars were within inches of each other crossing the electronic-eye for the race. My nephews car was 5 inches behind the fastest in each race, so there isn't much breathing room for the other 2 cars.

First race the car was in, it was in first place by 2 and a half feet, easily. No Contest. Second race was a little less at about 2 feet, third race less than that, and about 2 feet again in the fourth. In the finals races, it was behind the lead car by 5 inches, about an inche behind the third place car and 3 behind the second place car, and a full 5 inches behind the first place car, it kept up. Not bad for a car that took only a few hours of work the week before weigh in. (It'd have been nice if the website with all the information about the race and all the rules actually had worked, as I could have spent more time on the car and possibly gotten my nephew another award from the voting on the cars)

There was some dumbass little girl there sitting there playing with the goddamn cars in the placement boxes (used to arrange the cars to their proper lane on the ramp), I'm not sure if she had he hands on my nephew's car, because that could have affected the performance. But, I actually suspect the graphite wore off, or just because of the race itself, the nails holding the wheels on tightened up a little bit, because the front left wheel was running a little tight in the last 4 races.

His Den leader was pretty excited, it seemed as though that in all of his years, he's never had one of his scouts cars win all four prelimary races every time it ran, especially being the only car to win all four prelimary races, only one other car got that close, it one 3, and it was the one that beat my nephews car.

So, my nephew has a 5th place trophy, and he'll be getting the Pinewood Derby badge here soon. And he made it to District. He did better than my first two cars I did in Weblos before I left that (Long story short - Den Leader was my former-friends father, so former friend got all the badges on the first day of Scouts, without actually having the necessary skills, even after reporting that the council, nothing was done, and thus I was turned off from scouts).

Attending the race with my nephew kinda got me interested in, at least, the pinewood derby again, and since the Den Leaders run it was a family event, family members can enter cars into the Renegade and Open Classes, but not into the official Scout class races. I'm considering entering either the Open or Renegade class next year.

A little half way through the event, many people started to leave, I'm guessing they got tired of losing. Talk about poor sportsmanship there, at least stay and cheer for your childs fellow scouts, sheesh. Most of them were from the Tiger Scouts, same scouts my nephew is in. I'm guessing they got tired of losing to the same car 4 times in a row.

They also had a competition for the SLOWEST car at the competition, basically, if your car didn't cross the finish line, or is the farthest one from it, you get the award. They called it the Troubled Traveller. My nephews friend got that one, as it seemed, right on cue, to stop a foot from the finish line. Humorous really, but the kid didn't leave home empty handed, which was cool.

Certainly was a fun afternoon, and am cerntainly looking forward to seeing the cars peformance at district.