Wood, Paint and Tears

Jacob, my oldest son has recently joined Tiger Scouts (Cub Scouts for younger boys) As part of the tradition every Scout gets to make a pinewood car to be raced at the highly competitive Pinewood Derby.

Every dad's tradition is to design and build the fastest, coolest car conceivable, then paint with some incredible paint job. Fading flames, airbrushed, mixed custom colors... The works. Well, remembering these days as a young scout myself, I vowed not to let my son fall victim to my competitiveness and be forced to stand by while I made the sweetest pinewood car ever.



So, Jacob designed it, painted it and even sanded it. I did my part on the band saw, and power tools, but Jacob did a good part of it. He was very proud of it. The day of the race came and out of 4 cars racing at a time in 4 rounds of races, Jacob's car got 4th 4 times. And the tears flowed.



After comforting and consoling, I dried the tears and resolved him to the fact that we had a great time working on it together. Of course things did get better when he won the award for Most Original Design. He wanted an aligator for a car, so I cut out an aligator and he painted it up. You can see it below. Not the one being pointed at, but the one above it. Orange and blue colored.


But next year... we're going to win it all.