Mason displays his winning Pinewood Derby car and his first-place certificate
Today was Mason's last Pinewood Derby. Since we missed last year's Pinewood Derby, we decided to go all out. OK, I decided to go all out. I may have been a tad obsessive with my wheel and axle preparation. Mason, of course, did the design. It looks remarkably similar to the design of the last car—close enough that Teressa kept asking if there wasn't something else that Mason wanted to do to make it different. There wasn't. He wasn't interested in any elaborate decorations, either. All he wanted was the spoiler in back and the lightning bolts on the sides. Perhaps I spent more time that I should have on my part than I should have. Between the seven-step buffing process for the axles and the time I spent on applying graphite, I spent many hours on the project. After all the work, Mason was feeling pretty confident. I made sure to warn him that other families had done a lot of work on their cars, too.
Maybe they didn't do quite as much work as we did, though, because Mason took home the top prize. He won every heat he participated in and had the record time for the track. I think Mason was pretty excited about the results. (I have some video of Mason's reaction to the final race as proof. I may have to post it later after I load it on the computer.)
