The Pinewood Derby

Poe joined cub scouts a few months ago.  Scouting is a wonderful activity wherein young boys get together a couple times a month to make more noise than a 747 taking off during an atomic bomb test.  I tried it when I was kid, but figured out it wasn't really for me after about twelve minutes.  But Poe seems to be enjoying it, and my enthusiasm increased somewhat with my introduction to a long-standing Cub Scout tradition known as the Pinewood Derby.

A Pinewood Derby is where the den leader chops down a fifty-foot tall pine tree and makes his scouts carve a large hat out of it.  Okay, I'm kidding.  Actually, the cubbies are each given a kit consisting of a block of pine, four plastic wheels, and four nails.  Then, they must construct cars that they can race.  In reality, their dads (or stepdads) must attempt to find all the wheels and nails that the scouts have scattered about the globe within seconds of receiving their kits, then assemble the parts into something that will go really fast - if it's hurled off a cliff. All this is done as a father-son project which promotes togetherness - meaning the dad builds the car while the son watches Nickelodeon.

Okay, that's not entirely true.  In our case, Poe picked out the design he wanted, I did the rough cutting and shaping, and he did the sanding and painting.  He also assisted with the grueling task of picking out the coolest decals to put on it.  I was left with trying to get it to the target weight of five ounces and getting the wheels on straight enough that it wouldn't stop dead while rolling downhill.  Both tasks proved to be tougher than anticipated.  I managed to get 3 out of 4 wheels precisely where I wanted them, but the fourth stubbornly insisted on aligning itself practically perpendicular to the intended plane of travel.  I shoveled several pounds of graphite powder into the hub and hoped for the best.

The other challenge was hitting the target weight of five ounces.  This is critical, because your only source of power is gravity.  You need to turn the car's mass into kinetic energy.  In keeping with Newton's The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall rule of physics, you're relying on getting that weight moving down the slope of the track so it gets enough speed to outrun the other cars.  Of course, keeping that speed depends on how well you managed the other chore of putting the wheels on straight, so we were already behind the 8 ball.

But the big trouble in hitting that five ounces is...figuring out when you've hit five ounces.  Let's face it, your bathroom scale couldn't measure anything in less than one pound increments even before you tortured it for years with your cheeseburger-laden ass.  So what options are you left with?  You either buy a smaller, more precise scale specifically for the purpose of weighing an object that will be enjoyed for a total of 14 seconds, OR...you wing it.  I, of course, chose to wing it.  I used an old 24 inch level, several bottles of Schlitz, a carpenter's pencil, and 25 US quarters.

Cracking open the first bottle of Schlitz, I placed the level on the pencil, which acted as my fulcrum.  To calibrate it, I placed five quarters on once side of the level and five on the other side.   Why five quarters?  Because they weigh a total of one ounce.  By placing an "ounce" on either side, I could adjust the level on the fulcrum until it agreed that these five quarters weighed as much as those five quarters.  I then put all the quarters on one side and the car on the other side, alternately adding and removing quarters and ballast to each side until I was ready to crack open another Schlitz.

My wood chisels came out, and I removed wood from the car until I had enough space to add lead ballast.  Yes, that's just as strange as it sounds, but it was my goal to concentrate the weight near the back of the car, as I deemed that to be the best way to maximize the kinetic potential.  Also, it was a good way to kill a couple more bottles of Schlitz while making a mess on the kitchen table and feeling all manly and stuff.

I was able to determine later, by using an actual scale, that my quarter-pencil-Schlitz-level trick was actually pretty damn accurate.  Unfortunately, the aforementioned mis-aligned wheel hindered our efforts somewhat.  Come race day, Poe's spectacular racer finished just ahead of the middle of the pack - better than most, but certainly not good enough for a trophy.  He was openly grateful for all the work I'd put in, but still clearly dejected.  I felt as though I'd kinda let him down.

Days later, the actual results of the races were emailed out - 69 cars, 6 heats each - and I pored over the numbers.  During the course of this whole affair, I'd thought a lot of my father, who'd also had experience in the Pinewood arena - with decidedly better results.  His passing, though, meant I was on my own.  It's up to me now to continue where Dad left off, to atone for this year's loss, and to get those wheels straight.  And if several bottles of Schlitz must be sacrificed, then so be it.