Last night's pinewood derby was run differently from any I have seen before. Our Cubmaster ran only two cars at a time, and he set it up so that everyone would have a chance to race everyone else once (there were 14 cars). Run this way, it didn't take long for it to be obvious which were the fastest cars, and which were the slowest.
In fact, it was quickly obvious that one little guy's car was much slower than all the others. As it lost every race, his little scout face fell more and more.
Now it just happened that his dad and my husband had been asked to be the line judges, and they were talking, and after it had run several races, they took the car and looked at it and did something to it. Finally, the car won a race. That was its second to last race.
Its final race was against the gold car that has completely demolished everyone else. And.. the race was so close they had to run it again. And a third time.
Now, I know that fast pinewood derby cars will wear down after a number of races and eventually become not-so-fast pinewood derby cars, but this seemed a bit extreme to be explained but just that. How did the slowest car suddenly become as fast as the fastest car?
So I asked my husband after, "What did you guys do to it?"
He said, "We added graphite." This inexperienced dad had not known about adding graphite to the wheels, and somehow at check-in (where there were several graphite tubes on the table, for that last minute little bit extra), no one had mentioned it to him. What a difference that one little piece of information made.
This is why Scouters are so stinking great!!
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