Tis the season of father-son dreams

Yes, tis the season all fathers and sons look forward to: Pinewood Derby season.

Boys join Cub Scouts and Indian Guides for any number of reasons, camping, hiking, to learn something new or to spend quality one-on-one time with a parent. But highest on every boy’s list, except for camping, has to be the Pinewood Derby races. That event when a father and son (and more father than son for the younger boys) has the opportunity to turn a block of wood into an awesome, silly, or bizarre-looking race car.

Last year my son said, "Daddy, I want a Batman car."

I looked at the rectangular-shaped block of pine, scratched my head and said, "How about if I paint a Batman symbol on it?" He said okay.

This year he said, "Daddy, I want Speed Racer."

Again I looked at the rectangular block of wood, scratched my head and said, "What if I paint an "M" on the front?"

"Okay," he said "but it has to have curves, fives here and here, a steering wheel, jumpers on the bottom, and a trunk."

"A trunk?" I asked.

"Yes, right here." He proceeded to show me his Matchbox Speed Racer and the line that symbolized the car's trunk. Needless to say this car took me the longest to do in the three years I have been "helping" my sons with their cars.




The Indian Guides’ big race was last Saturday. There are few times more exciting than when your son’s car is placed at the starting gate for its first race. That car you spent countless hours cutting, sanding, and painting to make it look just right. And the other hours you spent on the internet researching techniques to give your son's car that extra little edge that will keep him from ending up in last place at which time you will have to staunch your son’s tears by explaining that it’s not if you win or lose, but how you play the game, even though your stomach tightens when that obnoxious father bellows how great his son is because he won or when the other fathers start giving you advice on what you can do better next year. (Not that this ever happened to me mind you...)

So as I was saying, there are few times as exciting as that first race, when you have no idea how well your car will do. If that fire truck in lane one is really as slow as it looks; if that low-profile car shaped like a domino that is almost nothing but wheels and weights is really as fast as it looks; if the arrow car’s unique strategy of putting the weights on top the car will pay off; or if you added too much or too little graphite to the wheels of your son’s Speed Racer car.



To give you an idea of the intensity of the race, cars are raced multiple times against each other in various lanes to ensure, god forbid, one car doesn't have an advantage over another because one lane is faster than the other. (Lane 3 was the fastest this year.)

Another way to ensure fairness, the Indian Guides have instituted an electronic finish line which lights up the winner’s lane. But don’t think this clears up any controversy about who the winner is. When one car clearly lost a heat, but its lane light didn’t go off, the loser’s father insisted the heat be run again. And in the Cub Scouts, the finish line is computerized. Good thing too. Last year,the difference between the first and third place winning car times for the Tiger Cub races was a tenth of a second. Some individual races ended up as dead heats even though the computer could calculate a difference of a hundredth of a second.

Which brings us to the end of the race. Always in any race room I’ve been in – Guide or Scout -, you’ll always hear intense discussions amongst the fathers about why this car did well, or didn’t, what’s more important - weight placement or aerodynamics, and always the dreaded advice about what you should do next year.

In the end, my son in the Indian Guides reached the quarter finals making him extremely happy. The domino car was indeed as fast as it looked, never losing a heat. And my son received two third place awards: “fastest looking” and the People’s Choice Award for the “best overall car”.



Next week: the Cub Scout races.