Resolution 2014: How do you keep your racers?
Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 7:52 pm
Underneath a table in my home office are nine Girl Scout cookie boxes. In those nine boxes sits about 42 derby cars. That represents my original PWD racer my dad helped me make as a boy from the 70s, and then a bunch of cars from 2007 up until today. All five of my children (1 boy/4 girls) have been involved in AWANA, my son was in Cub Scouts and of course I had to make something every year (just to keep me from doing too much work on their cars). One (and only one) year I convinced my wife to make a racer for the AWANA Grand Prix Leaders & Cubbies race.
So these 40+ cars are mostly a mixture of AWANA Grand Prix cars and BSA Pinewood Derby racers with a smattering of ‘other’ style kits – Canadian and BSA 18 wheel big rigs, GMC motorhomes, BSA Blast Car and such. The cookie boxes are the right size to transport 4 or 5 cars at a time to an AWANA Grand Prix race, which is how the practice started. The cookie boxes are the right width and the built-in handles make for very easy carrying. At the end of the race, the transport box turned into a storage box. Sometimes the cars in the various boxes would get shuffled as my son or I took specific racers to a BSA PWD race or to an AWANA build workshop as examples and for inspiration.
Anyway, as I put the 8th box down with my girls’ 2013 AWANA entries and thought about the additional four cars they’ll make in the new year and contemplated my son’s 2014 Cub Scout racer yet to be built (he’s now a Boy Scout Eagle, but is also a Den Chief for a group of Bears and they gave him a kit to race as a leader) and the four or so partially completed racers of mine on top of one of the tables, as well as the dozen or so kits that I have yet to even start, I resolved in 2014 to find a better way to keep them all. So I am prompted to ask all you derby maniacs - How do you keep your cars?
I have thought about taking one (or two) of those plastic Rubbermaid holiday wrapping paper tubs, buying some 2 or 3” foam to line the bottom and then cutting holes in the foam for each car to sit in. But so far, that’s it for my ideas. I know from the photos I’ve seen on here and the conversations in the forums, you all are an EXTREMELY creative lot. So help me help myself.
So these 40+ cars are mostly a mixture of AWANA Grand Prix cars and BSA Pinewood Derby racers with a smattering of ‘other’ style kits – Canadian and BSA 18 wheel big rigs, GMC motorhomes, BSA Blast Car and such. The cookie boxes are the right size to transport 4 or 5 cars at a time to an AWANA Grand Prix race, which is how the practice started. The cookie boxes are the right width and the built-in handles make for very easy carrying. At the end of the race, the transport box turned into a storage box. Sometimes the cars in the various boxes would get shuffled as my son or I took specific racers to a BSA PWD race or to an AWANA build workshop as examples and for inspiration.
Anyway, as I put the 8th box down with my girls’ 2013 AWANA entries and thought about the additional four cars they’ll make in the new year and contemplated my son’s 2014 Cub Scout racer yet to be built (he’s now a Boy Scout Eagle, but is also a Den Chief for a group of Bears and they gave him a kit to race as a leader) and the four or so partially completed racers of mine on top of one of the tables, as well as the dozen or so kits that I have yet to even start, I resolved in 2014 to find a better way to keep them all. So I am prompted to ask all you derby maniacs - How do you keep your cars?
I have thought about taking one (or two) of those plastic Rubbermaid holiday wrapping paper tubs, buying some 2 or 3” foam to line the bottom and then cutting holes in the foam for each car to sit in. But so far, that’s it for my ideas. I know from the photos I’ve seen on here and the conversations in the forums, you all are an EXTREMELY creative lot. So help me help myself.