Cobra Strike!

Luke's second Pinewood Derby was January 22—and like last year's Derby, we had lots of help building the car and lots of fun building it together.

Luke designed the car's shape and its color scheme, silver with a gold stripe. After picking out the Cobra stickers at the hobby shop, and trying out various names, he settled on Cobra Strike! as the most evocative of speed.

We had a car-cutting pizza party with Uncle Jerry, who supplied the saws and the cutting skill. (As a side note, Uncle Jerry's house sits atop the "Coolest Basement" poll in Luke's estimation. A collection of antler trophies, a giant wall of books, and a fully stocked work bench make it a Luke dream.) Paw Paw supplied the car wax for the axles, and Luke and dad worked on sanding the burrs off the wheels and the axle heads. Luke also did the silver spray painting and then used a brush for the gold stripe. Miss Joan (the art teacher at school) helped me with whittling out a space for the weights, and we were ready to go.

Friday night was check-in; Friday morning, Luke greeted us with a "Happy Pinewood Derby check-in day!" upon waking up. (He was a little excited.) Uncle Jerry met us, and we ate pizza and worked to get the car from 4.9 to 5.0 oz.—the guy at check-in suggested taping a dime to the bottom, which did the trick.

Luke decided this year that he wanted to do a few practice runs with his car. And you can imagine how much his excitement grew as he won his first, then his second, then his third race—he turned the car in for official check-in pretty convinced he was going to win the whole thing.

Saturday morning was race day. Each kid gets three races, one for each lane of the track, and then the speed is averaged. Cobra Strike! won its first race, then finished second in its next two heats, one of them to the eventual winning car and the other to his buddy Max's Golden Pyramid (in the middle lane, ahead by a nose).

So would Luke match or beat last year's third place? A few moments of drama, then the results were posted (thanks to Uncle Jerry for this picture; click to enlarge):

Tied for third—at 171.4 mph!

But wait—how would they distinguish between Luke and Jacob, the other guy at 171.4? Look closer, in the time column: Jacob's three runs came in at 8.652 seconds, Luke's at 8.653—and so, by 1/1000 of a second, Luke finished in fourth, and hence took home 1st place—Cub Special. What does that mean? I told Luke it meant the best combination of speed and design. And fun. Another great year.

Some other pictures:

Luke and Max

 Wolf Den 1