Good Morning Fellow Pineheads,
This is a tad long, but a good story (I hope)
Back at the end of February, our sons placed 1 and 2 in our pack race. Well, Trexler District of Minsi Trails council ran their District Race on Saturday, 16 April. It was a very fun day for a vast majority involved, but it was also a very interesting day....
We got there pretty early to register, and more importantly, grab coveted tables for us and the other families from our pack that qualified. One family's mom was sick, so they decided not to bring the boy. Luckily our next qualifying participant just happened to be there with his big brother (who had placed 3rd in our pack) and mom. I was able to talk to the district executive (whom I know from working with him in many aspects) and the race chairman and successfully request that they allow little brother to paricipate in place of the boy who's mom was sick (there was no way that they were coming, so it seems, pity - the boy would have had fun. Had I known, I could have helped in some way). Since our pack paid the registration fee and I was the race chairman for our race and knew that this was the 'next best car', they saw no problem in allowing participation. A scouter is helpful. Well, mom went home to get the car and I helped older brother register. His car was a hair light, so another dad gave him a dime which we crazy glued to the car. Older brother was very particular how to align the dime, and got his finger stuck to the car. I gave it a quick yank before he was permanently bonded!! All was good for him. Mom arrived with the car and we got the little brother registered and we were back up to 4 from our pack.
The race was a 3 track (very nice) 48' aluminum track and double elimination of the 3rd place car was being used. Some commercial canned software was being used (coudl not tell which, sorry) After about 90 minutes of racing , several people (including the race organizers) realized that fraster cars were getting eliminated by raceing against one another rather than having the obviously slower cars being eliminated. Once thy realized that they announce that they were going to start from scratch using the 'tried and true' random index card double elimination method (which was the fairest available alternative that did not disrupt things, but made the race organizer very tired by the end of the day).
Our boys cars did well, with my son's cars coming in 4th (older son, recently crossed to Boy Scouts) and 22nd (estimated younger son). Younger son was upset at a perceived misjustice when he though his car beat older son's car when in fact it came in 3rd that race (pushing it to the loser's bracket). We evenutally got him calmed down by explaining what really happened (a little sobbing and boo-boo face was going on) and a school friend helped cheer him up. The other family's cars did well too, placing 22nd for the big brother (elimination in the same round as younger son) and 54rd (estimated) for the little brother (the one I helped get in the race - turns out he was playing with the car since our pack race and we had to re-glue a spoiler on it!).
The only cars that beat my older son's car were the 1-2-3 cars. Car #1 belonged to a boy that had won last year as well. Car #3 was from that same pack (they are the local pinewood guru pack!).
We did not modify the cars in any way since our pack race except to spin in a little graphite starting a couple days before the race. Thanks again for the good advice.
So all in all, the District Race was good fun.
Rich Boehme
Allentown PA
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