Sunday, March 13, 2011

pinewood derby 2011

yesterday was garrets first pinewood derby with his cub scout pack. it was a great day at the races :) there were about 33 cars racing this year so it took quite a while. each boy got to race his car 8 times. 4 times in lane 1 and 4 times in lane 2. this is all quite technical. much more than i would have thought. it was all run by a computer program that made sure each boy got the same amount of turns. it randomly picked who you would be racing. it calculated the scores and showed your speed after each race. it was pretty cool.

the boys all arrived early in the morning and had to weigh their cars in. they were allowed to add weights up to certain amount and they were allowed to add graphite to the wheels to make them go faster. however, once you placed your car in the pits you were not allowed to tweak it all for the rest of the day.
garret had a good time drawing out the shape of his car, cutting it out with the saw, sanding it and painting it. he did all the designing and painting by himself.
never doing the races before we had no idea what to expect. would his car be fast or slow? we were just kind of holding our breath to see.

well we soon found out that garret had one of the fastest cars there. i dont think he even knew how fast it was but dave and i couldnt believe it. dave was a very proud daddy. i could see the sparkle in his eye.... i also have to add in here that this year was the most cars they have ever had race and part of that has to do with dave and his dad and his nephew who brought three saws and sanders out to one of garrets pack meetings to help the boys who didnt have access to tools to cut out and sand their cars. i was always under the impression that they would do all that together with the pack, but they boys were supposed to do all the cutting and sanding at home with their dads. only a few boys had the resources to do so at home so dave stepped up and helped out. so proud to be married to him! big thanks to george (grandpa) and hunter (garrets cousin).

after hours of racing, great sportsmanship from all the boys and lots of fast cars, the computers averaged out the fastest scores and we waited to hear the results.... garret got an award for the most artistic car (i was a proud momma too) AND came in SECOND place and received a trophy and will be heading to the regional races on april 9th!!! WE ARE PROUD OF YOU GARRET. WAY TO GO. even though you look just like a Widmaier, i think you might have some Poirier racing blood in you as well :)

the photos of him with his trophy are on daves phone. i will have to post those later. for now here is a little video clip of garrets final race. garrets car is in the right lane.


4 comments:

katie said...

that is so awesome! i remember when they used to shut down the linton bridge for a soapbox derby... it was all very technical, like this one!

Barbara said...

We were very proud of Garrett and all the boys. And a really, really, really big thank you to Dave for bringing the saws and helping the boys. Thanks for all you guys have done to help out the pack this year!!!

Tara said...

How awesome! I love the design he painted on it, and think its so neat that Dave helped the other little boys cut their cars out too. Way to go, Garrett! I believe you are right, Bon, definitely some Poirier in him too!

Big EZ said...

Congratulations to Garrett for building sudh a great car. Looks like the Porier racing gene got passes down to him! Thanks for sharing and thanks to Dave for helping those dads that are tool deficient.