The Bomber made its debut to great fanfare and zgomot... who knew that there was word in Romanian to perfectly describe the sound of thirty cub scouts in a gym?
A dual-car track was in place instead of the quad-car tracks of my Pinewood Derby days, so it was a bring-a-lunch-and-a-book affair while waiting for them to sort through all the pairings. I suspect Ralph had a hand in the track we had as kids, looking back... there must be some rule that enforces the prescence of at least one cabinet maker in any given group of Cub Scouts. Sure enough, we had some suspiciously hacksaw-free cars there today. I'd like to think that we have Scouts capable of triple coats of laquer and automotive-grade paint sanding, but the limits of credulity are sorely pressed after seeing the amount of nasal excavation that goes on when the higher thought processes shut down for any length of time in that demographic.
One track would effortlessly catapult cars into the waiting crowd and the other ran silky smooth into the catch box. There was outright panic when boys found out that they were up on the bad side. The officials let everyone run twice on each side before averaging the times, so it worked out.
Well... unless you were sitting close to the launch point on the bad side, that is. The signal to start the race was usually followed by the small-coconut sound of a car hitting a soon-to-be-sad spectator.
First time I've ever seen timers that would measure to three decimal places, but as every car ran between 2.9 second and 3.15, they needed it. Also, this was the first time I've ever seen Excel calculate the winner of a car race. Insert your own pun on 'mean' here.
Burke drew up the plans himself, and we stayed pretty true to it, other than not being able to find a 1:25 scale .50 cal. He did the paint, sanding, layout and project management. I'm proud of him - he did great, and even more so for doing so well on his first try.
Off to transfer the wee one to her bed so that any leakage that occurs due to her falling asleep at 7:30 happens somewhere other than the couch.
- Ryan
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