Today is raceday (Saturday, February 16, 1-3pm). Our last two cars, Gisele’s ‘Fire’ and Blake ‘Blue Racer’, the open category were registered on Wednesday. Ivan’s car was registered even earlier the week before on Thursday because it was ready and fit the requirements. The open class I did not realize until that Thursday was not set at a maximum of 5 ounces but rather at 7 ounces, so we took Gisele’s car back to get it to the precise limit, and Blake’s car was not even started at the time.
Our racers right after the race,
no trophies were yet announced.
Raceday was quite an event. We arrived around 1:05pm and the entire room was already nicely setup. Some people had brought some food and drinks and that kept most of the kids busy. They had put up the racetrack in the middle of the room and it was barred from direct access to avoid interference with the race. Spectators were sitting at the track. The setup was quite professional with laser trigger and a proper readout system, a computer to setup and record the races and determine the winners. Quite an amazing thing. After a number of years the Pine Wood Derby has been done all over the US it is of course not that surprising anymore to have such a sophisticated setup. Anyway, the kids and I dove into the crowd and got some food, checked our cars were all in their place and in good shape and watched the first race as it started. We had three cars so we had a number of different models but seeing about 100 cars of all different makes was amazing.
The Racetrack.
The Racer Field – 1.
The Racer Field – 2.
The Spectators.
Our 7 ounces Racers.