The Derbies

Yes - I meant to use the plural form of Derby. We did our first pinewood derby car in January and then last week we also tried our hand with a space derby rocket. It is a bit ironic - we worked long and hard on the pinewood derby car, in fact I had a huge blister on my finger from trying to whittle out the bottom of the car to put a weight in it - but even after all that work, the car just wasn't that fast. Miles had a blast though - I was worried he would only have fun if he won, but thankfully that wasn't the case, since we only won one race. So when I heard about the space derby, I wasn't too excited - and figured that since the race was right in the middle of finals, I had an excuse to not spend alot of time on the rocket. Miles did most of the work himself - he carved the rocket with a potato peeler (it was a really soft wood) and sanded and painted it. My dad helped us figure out how to put the thing together the night before the big event. Anyway, Miles ended up taking 3rd place in the derby - he was quite excited about it. Here are some pictures of the big night.
For those people who didn't recognize the colors of the rocket, Miles wore his Ducks hat to let them know that he is a big fan. He wasn't able to wear it long however, they asked him to lead the color guard in posting the flags. He did a great job in front of a lot of people!!!

Here he is loading his rocket in the launcher. The rocket is loaded with 3 rubber bands that are wound very tightly. Then the rocket is placed in a sliding "thing" and when Miles lets go of the propeller it will shoot down the track (some kind of fishing line). They measured the distances and took an average to determine the winners.

Here are a few pictures from the Pinewood Derby since I didn't post them earlier. You might recognize the colors - Oregon Duck colors, I did offer to buy another color of spray paint, but the kid is quite the proud "Duck" fan. If you look closely you will see a couple of half dollars on top of the car - we were quite a bit under the weight limit and I was not about to carve any more holes in the car to hide weights in so we just stuck them on top.

And here he is smiling - someone told him it is not cool to smile (and even more uncool to show your teeth when you smile - I have NO recent picture of Miles with teeth)

As we were leaving the night of the derby, Ethan remarked that he couldn't wait until next year. Yep - it had completely slipped my mind that next year he will be in cub scouts too, which means two derby cars/rockets. I think that we will invite their dad to visit next year at that time and see what kind of cars he can come up with:)