While I was at TriFest last weekend, the guys had the annual Pinewood Derby with the boy scouts. Ron was the hero of the weekend and when I volunteered at the school on Monday night, several parents came up to me and told me how wonderful he was and what a great job he had done at the Derby. He complained a little bit about it, but I think in his heart of hearts he had a great time. I do know that Ron was totally thrilled when Andy and Benjamin's cars both made it over the finish line. That had never happened before and was a highlight of the day.

The Pinewood Derby has become a very complicated thing. These days, they set up four different tracks and each car gets to go down each track once and then the times are averaged to see who is the winner. Ron was the only person who knew how to put the tracks together and so he ended up doing that (he was the only one who noticed that they were numbered on the back and all you had to do was put the numbers together). He also set up the computer to record all the times -- there was some kind of sensor on the track that automatically recorded when the car passed over it. Then he had software that took the data and averaged the times for him and compiled them as they were completed. The best thing of all though is that Ron set up the Derby with his computer screen showing on a huge 10 foot screen that everyone could see. This means that as each car passed the sensor, the time flashed up on the screen and everyone in the pack could see it -- even better, Ron had it set up so that the computer also showed how fast the car would be going if it were an actual car. So, for example, when Benjamin's car passed the finish line, the screen would show how many seconds it took to do it, and would also show that if it were a real car, it would be going 231mph or something like that. The pack was THRILLED with this whole thing. Ron is the hero of the weekend, and life is good.

I had no idea that the Pinewood Derby had gotten so competitive. You can go on the web and order special laser honed wheels for your Derby car so that it is faster than everyone else's. You can order any special parts, as a matter of fact, down to specially routed wood that is guaranteed to be faster than the average Pinewood Derby block. It just amazed me when Ron told me all about it. One of the really cool things about this year's Derby was that the family members could also do a car and race it. Many of the dads brought Pinewood Derby cars that they had made themselves when they were in 2nd and 3rd grade -- Ron said that some of them were way cool, and still had a lot of speed left in them. He is going to make his own Derby car next year and participate in the races too.