Well, we had the Cub Scout pinewood derby last night. Our car finished pretty far down in the rankings, unfortunately. That’s us in lane 3, looking – amazingly – like a car built by a six-year-old. And that was with a lot of help! Not many of the really, really good-looking cars were made by the most advanced scouts…but that’s all I’ll say about that.
Sam got his patch for participating, and he was consoled by the thought that he has years ahead of him to do better at finishing faster. I think Gabe was just as excited by the races as Sam was; he cheered for the cars, hollering, “Do it again!” every time they stopped at the finish line. Of course, as the evening wore on, nearly every kid there lost his focus and began just running around, goofing off, and being silly, strange boys. 
In the end, that may be Sam’s favorite thing, so far, about being a scout.
I’m doing this race as my first 50K/ultra in July 2012. I’m so tardy to the party but...
Our son’s car was the ugliest, yet won the derby and the regional & came in too low to go to National (thank you Lord), mostly because he constructed it, sanded it, applied weights to it following his Dad’s instructions. He put lead washers underneath the car toward the back and that apparently made it go faster. The living hell of the regional time trials were only relieved by the viewing of vomiting boys who had partaken of too many hot dogs. This vomiting was the highlight of the experience for my son. When it came time to do the aeronautical challenge (they have to construct a rocket that scoots along a hanging line & is “clocked” to determine the winner), we gave the boy NO information so that we could abort a regional final. Alas the child sprayed gray paint upon the styrofoam rocket shape that shrunk and withered the rocket, but enabled it to speed along the hanging wire. Thank you to all the heavens on high the other scout’s “daddy made” rocket eventually beat out the malshapen rocket our boy had constructed and earned the joy of attending the regional finals. We celebrated so much that his failed. Ah the memories.