A Very Long Day

A very long day...

Up early, Jack and I went and spent a couple of hours helping set up for his Cub Scout Pack's Pinewood Derby. We organized the room, set-up the track and then tested the track and the electronics. As part of the testing, we came to the unfortunate realization that Jack's car was not running very fast.

After we finished setting up, we raced home and picked up Sharon. As part of her birthday celebration, we took Sharon to Chevy's for brunch.

When we finished brunch, we stopped and got some parts for his pinewood derby car. While Sharon took off to spent the afternoon shopping, Jack and I headed home. We spent a frantic 30 minutes tearing the wheels and axles on his car apart and putting them back together. As soon as we were finished, we headed to the Pinewood Derby

My goal for this year's pinewood derby was to "show." Last year, we did terrible; our car had problems making it down the track. This year, Jack's car ended up running very well.

Each den runs a number of heats with every car running once in each of the four lanes. Jack's car won one heat, finished second in two heats and a very close third in another. The times for all four heats are then added together. The car with the lowest total time wins.

When they started flashing the results on the screen, I was elated for Jack to get third! I was also amazed at the results. The combined difference for the four races between the top three cars in Jack's den was 32 thousandths of a second!

The top three cars from each den compete at the end. Jack's car ended up taking 7th out of all of the cars in the pack. I felt like we made a pretty good showing for the day and was very pleased with our results.

Afterwards, we helped take everything apart and clean up the hall. On the way home, we stopped and got some of the ingredients that I needed to make Sharon dinner.

Sharon had requested that I make her Fettucuni Alfredo for dinner. After making dinner and then cleaning up, I finished the evening making Sharon a birthday cake.