I want to say that I get excited about it, but honestly I dread this time of year. There is the block of wood…the dreaded block of wood with the silly nails to hold in the wheels.
This year with the family being sick and in general just not feeling well, I just did not have enough bandwidth to care about cutting and shaping a Pinewood Derby car. It was not going to happen. We were still having problems with Lance and not knowing what was wrong with him so a week ago we stopped at Ace Hardware and bought a pre-cut car (the block of wood is already cut).
I did not feel like cutting it and honestly the sub-$8 price tag was a blessing in my eyes. I did not care how much it cost at that point. When I picked Lance up from karate that night, he complained of another bad headache the minute he got in the car and I was completely done with the illnesses and complaints. I did not have anything else to give so we stopped and bought the pre-cut car body as the actual race was in 9 days and we had not started on it.
I will admit to the purchase of the block, but while it was pre-cut it was not pre-sanded. Lance had to put all the hard work into that and making it look nice. It was not even cut 100% evenly. He had to make it look good. He did put 100% effort into making that pre-cut block look like we pour our hearts and souls into it. We did, just not over the saw.
Still we had not painted it or anything else. I just did not want to deal with the mess. I did not want to deal with the car at all. I will admit to it. I was totally in a “bah humbug” mood with it came to the car this year. With Kyle being out of school all week, Lance having headaches and vision issues all week, Ben being laid up with a sinus infection, and myself fighting another sinus infection coming on I just did not have the energy to care let alone get anything accomplished. Procrastination kicked in.
It was Saturday before I took Lance out and we bought the paint. It was not that I did not have paint for him to use. I did. I have a bucket of craft paint. I just wanted fast and minimal paint. I wanted to be done in the least amount of time. I also wanted to get the axle guards for the car. So off to Hobby Lobby we went. Amazing what a little trip to the store will do. A can of spray paint (green glitter), pine block chassis weights, wheels, and whatnot…and a $28 price tag later…we were heading back home. We got the car sprayed with green glitter paint and let it dry.
I will tell you that I honestly did not even want to crack out the paint long enough to do stripes with a q-tip on the car. I saw the Sharpie on the table. He said he wanted black and blue stripes. Black Sharpie will do black stripes and it worked. I ran to the store to get a blue Sharpie because I could not find one in the house. Voila! Black and blue racing stripes were done without getting out any more paint. Then we sprayed it with a clear spray paint to seal it and give it a little more shine as the glitter paint was not shiny at all.
In our purchase at Hobby Lobby, we included blue wheels because we could not find green ones, but we also got a set of black ones that included a straight post axle with hubcaps. I was not interested in struggling with those little nails and putting them on the car. That is a pain. I bought the set with the straight axles just so I could have the axles and hubcaps. Trust me there is no expense that I would not spend on a Pinewood Derby car if it means that my sanity is spared…
Turns out that the blue wheels did not work very well with the straight axles on the car design he had but we will just keep them with the Pinewood Derby supplies we have and use them as parts in the future. Not a big deal as they were not that expensive. I have to say that this is by far not the most expensive year we have had. That would be the year we bought the Dremel just to do the cars. That year wins. This year, we also did not walk away with that award among the other Cub Scouts (that is the hush hush award that no one talks about) because Lance’s best friend’s dad bought a jig saw just to cut his car this year. I think they win that award!
Lance showing off his finished car. It is very sparkly. It is ready to race tomorrow night at the Pack 1927 Pinewood Derby. May the fastest car win…
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