On Wednesday my sons tells my wife and I that he needs to take in $5 to buy a car like Dad's because they were selling them this week (he didn't mention a race).  So on Wednesday night he took his own money over to buy the car and that's when we find out that they are having a race and it's the NEXT Saturday at 9AM....3 days away and come to find out that they've been advertising it for the last two months.  Side note:  Our kids go to AWANA at a different church than the one we are members of and attend regularly, Fellowship Church.

I see the excitement in my son's eyes and I'm think of the demo I have to give on Friday and the extra work I need to get done to get it  ready....I was planning on doing it the next night, Thursday night.  My wonderful wife looks at me and says "You know your building that car don't you?".  She was right, it had to be done!

So that Wednesday night I started Googling for tips and tricks to build a car and found some really good resources like  Maximum-Velocity and The Ultimate Pinewood Derby Site and sketched out a design for my son to look at and approve of.  All I knew for sure was that he wanted it to look like the Incredimobile from the Incredibles movie.  The following day I contacted a very good friend of mine asking him to pray for me as I was stressing pretty bad and I didn't want to let my son down (or lose my job).  He pointed me to his AWANA group's page at Midnight Missions and he talked to me about stuff he had done etc..and that helped me to calm down.  I also contacted my older brother who had done work on my cars as a kid and has built cars with his two sons for Boy Scouts.  During lunch I went over to Hobby Lobby and picked up some weights, paint, and a speed kit.  So I felt like I was armed with the info now it was time to execute!

Thursday Day 1
As soon as I got home from work we ran on over my Father-In-Law's house who has a band saw and let us use it to cut out the design.  Brett started sanding away at the rough edges while my FIL and I worked on "de-burring" the axles and making them as smooth as we could.  We finally left there about 8pm and headed home.  We had work to do so Brett got to stay up extra late that night and we were having tons of fun.  We finally finished up the sanding and put on a coat of primer.  After that pretty much dried we put on our first coat of base paint and that was it for Brett as it was now pushing 11pm.  I stayed up a bit later put on a second coat of paint and put the wheels and axles in a bag of graphite so they could start the process of being a well oiled machine....then I crashed.

Friday Day 2
I talk with my wife as I'm getting ready for work and ask her if she would be able to come up with a stencil to use to paint on the Incredibles logo and maybe she and Brett could take a stab at painting it during the day.  I talk with her later that day and they've done both except that the red paint wasn't working as expected and the blue I bought was just too light to cover the black and red paint that it was suppose to.  So I started freaking out a little but I was OK.  After I get home from work I see that we're needing to sand off the paint for the logo and try again but I know we're running out of time with the paint since I know we still need to put in the weights and axles.  These aren't very time consuming but they are the most important piece to a fast car and I could mess up wet paint while trying to install them.

BTW, this night I was taking my wife out to dinner for her birthday - we ate at Kirby's and had a great time.  We're now back at the house and it's pushing 9pm but we chit-chat with my brother and sister-in-law for about an hour before we start working on the car again.

Now that it's about 11pm we begin working again and the first thing is to sand off the painted logo that's not working and put on another coat of black to cover our tracks.  My wife decided we should use home-made decals instead of paint (and she was right).  She used the sketch that Brett and I used earlier to make up the decals using her Xyron and Creative Memories scrapbook paper.  She even found piece of reflective paper that Brett just thought was soooo cool.

After the paint had dried it was time for Dad to test his skills at drilling two 3/8" x 4" holes in the backside of the car.  I know that if I mess this up the race is over... I tried it first on a scrap piece of wood and didn't do so bad but I was still nervous and said a nice prayer before I began on the real thing.  Well, I didn't mess it up and the holes for the weights were complete.  I glued in the weights and put in some wood filler and now the car was weighing in at 4.7oz (limit is 5oz).  My wife put on the sharp decals and we put on a clear coat to hold it all in place and to make a clean/smooth surface.  It was now pushing 1AM, Brett had been in  bed for a while, and all that was left were the wheels and axles.  I set the alarm for 3AM so the clear coat would have a couple of hours to dry and the wheels would have a few hours to dry before race time at 9AM.

Saturday Day 3
It's 3AM and I wake up after a two hour nap and try and figure out what I'm doing.  I check the car and the clear coat is pretty dry and so I go and get the wheels and axles from the bag of graphite.  I've read where you need to have the axle flush with the bottom edge of the car an not pushed all the way into the pre-made groove.  Man, that's tough especially when you're not wanting to break anything.  I get them all in and now I'm rolling it about 10 feet so I can see if it's rolling straight or not (that's huge in pinewood derby since the less friction the better).  I messed with them until I thought they were about right and then glued them in place.  Now time for more sleep until 7:30AM.

7:30 comes quickly but now I'm ready to go and Brett is up and so excited he can hardly stand still.  I'm excited for him too and all I want is for the car to make it down the track without falling a part.  We get up to the church about 8:10 and find out that 9AM means everything starts at 9AM.  I was expecting the racing to begin then and I know we would need to weigh in the car etc.  So anyway, we're there and get to mingle a little and weigh the car.  I new we were a little light so I took some stick on weights to make up the difference and so with them in place we were at 4.96oz...and we find out that there are 101 cars signed up to race...YIKES!!  My wife and the girls get there about 9:40 and the first races begin about 10AM.  We will have to wait about 40 cars before Brett's turn as we're #46.

As the races begin we see some do well and some not so well but the kiddos are all having a blast and I'm so glad we are doing this; I feel like I'm 7 again.  The  four-lane track is a Boy Scout track and is pretty hi-tech in my opinion - starting line and time was controlled from a remote PC and the finish line had a sensor to stop the clock when the cars crossed in each lane.  Each car would run 4 races (one in each lane) and the winners in each grade would be determined by lowest accumulated time.  So far most cars were running about 4.4 secs with some as a low as 4.3.  Then I guess about car 20 or so there was nice little car that was white and had a TCU logo painted on it.  This car was FAST!  It beat all of the cars in its races easily and finished all 4 races in the 4.2's.  This one was here to win and I was just hoping our car would make all four races.

They announce over the PA that it's time for car #46 to race.  Brett goes and gets his car off of the "pit" table and gives it to the guy setting up the cars and then heads down to the finish line.  The moment has arrived.  The race begins and all we see is our Incredimobile taking the lead down the hill and then accelerate when it hits the flat part of the track and win the heat by a good margin.  WOW!!  Brett is sooo excited (you know hopped up on nerves and adrenaline excited) he's jumping up and down and yelling.  I couldn't be more happy and proud of him at that moment.  Then the Dad part of me kicks in because I see his excitement and all I'm imagining was that car flying out of his hand and breaking into little pieces before it runs another race.  So he settles down and moves back up to the starting line.  I then peer over at the times and his car ran a 4.238 time...putting him in the lead for fastest time of the day (ahead of car TCU).  I looked over at my darling wife and we were just dumbfounded.  The car runs another 2 races and each time is faster than the next, 4.198 and 4.167 respectively.  Then to cap it off his final race came in at 4.156.  Brett is still so hopped up and excited we just hug him and give a lot of high-fives and we're all just having so much fun.  Brett doesn't know that his car, to this point, is the fasted of the day with an accumulative time of 16.749.

All the cars finished up and our little car was still the fastest of the day.  Brett still didn't know it until they put up the final times of the day and he saw him name atop of the list up on the screen.  He was so excited and didn't know what to do with himself.  He was awarded a medal for winning his grade and his smile from ear to ear.

Man, from a few days of basically no sleep and tons of stress to being so excited...It was awesome!!  Hopefully we are building life long memories that we will all share and keep with us forever.  The Lord is Good.

ps.  I did my demo and it didn't go as well as it could've but I'm still employed and had a great weekend with my family.