While I cannot say I’ve ever been an enthusiastic race fan, except for the annual Kentucky Derby, I was full of fight for our office’s Pinewood Derby race held this day. There are about 150 team members in my department. As a part of the activities for our annual Real Estate Department meeting, we were divided into teams of five, given a Pinewood Derby car kit and told to build a race-worthy car by race day.
Now, really, I hate Nascar with a passion I cannot begin to describe. I’m only marginally less repelled by funny car racing. The only racing I will watch usually involves people attempting insane feats, like the Krispy Kreme marathon one of my co-workers runs – a 3k race begun by the runner ingesting a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ended by said runner ingesting yet another dozen. Tossing the cookies, so to speak, along the way is generally an expected sideshow to the event. Not that I find that fun to watch. It’s just the novelty of watching anyone dumb enough to down a dozen doughnuts in the first place, much less running a marathon afterward.
But on to better thoughts. I counted myself pretty lucky when I ended up on a team with four guys. My mind immediately went to the stereotypical thought process that insisted that at least one or two of these guys was well versed in using power tools, had possibly even made a derby car in scouts as a kid, and would be able to lead us all to victory. So I waited for the first contact, knowing they’d all be so enthusiastic about the project that they’d probably be fighting over who got to do what. I figured I’d just sit back and be a girl, maybe do a little painting or something. Well, DUU-uuhh!
We ended up with one guy on the team who’d made derby cars before and he traveled the entire two weeks we had to prepare the car. Another guy had never done anything like this, had no tools at home to attempt it, and was on vacation one of the two weeks. Still another was willing, but was also traveling one of the two weeks and had no tools. The last guy does body work on cars as a hobby. But he had no carving tools and he also was traveling five days out of the fourteen we had in which to build our car. I had a feeling we were up the proverbial creek.
So I went to the internet. UTube had videos of how to properly prepare the wheels and axles. Amateur derby websites had templates for car designs and great advice for painting, priming, adding weight, etc. It was a wealth of information. We went to work. What came from the effort was a sleek, shiny little red racer stenciled with yellow flames and a skull. The wheels had major ‘spin’ and the weight was well-distributed. It was a beauty!
At the office other teams were also gearing up. Posters began popping up. People talked of cheers, matching shirts and hats, theme music…. It was getting intense. So even though we’d agreed we would just take what skills we had and make the best racer we could, dispensing with the frills and frivolity in which the other teams engaged, we ended up with a theme song, a logo, a car name and a poster. We even agreed to wear black the day of the race. I could tell the guys were feeling rather silly about it all.
Until we went downstairs and realized that we were probably some of the least hyped of all the teams! Our beautiful little car, Skullduggery, looked really fine among the wide variety of entries – everything from a racing wrench to a yellow submarine. We just smiled, realizing that our car may actually be competitive.
After the obligatory speeches and more smack-talk, the races began. We watched each round with bated breath, especially when our little #7 was on the track. We sped past the goat-mobile. We left the PT Cruiser in our dust. The Scooby-mobile didn’t have a chance! Gradually it came down to three cars, one of them being our Skullduggery, in the final heat of the day. It had been making excellent time and depending upon which track it ended up on, we were sure we had a chance to win.
Down the racers went. The sleek white car slid in front. The red Advance-designed car started out a little slow, but gained ground. Our little car ran neck and neck, until the last few feet. At the finish, it was one one-hundredth of a second behind and ended up placing third. Third!! In a track of fifteen entries! Time averages for the nine rounds of races were tallied. We ended up coming in second for time averages! Skullduggery, the experimental car built by five people who didn’t have a clue as to what they were doing, came away from the very competitive field placing second! And none of us tossed up one doughnut in the process.
Now, given that we are a bunch of office workers, not pros, you might be tempted to say, ‘yeah, but what kind of competition was it, really?’ Well, the fastest time our race monitor has ever seen in all of his years of Pinewood derby racing was 2.25. We came in at a reasonable 2.67. The first place winner won with 2.66. Not record-breaking, but not shabby. Besides, we had also won an award in the beauty contest: the “somebody’s got a tattoo and/or a Harley” award. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. We left feeling pretty cocky.
I am still no racing fan. But if anyone ever asks me to bring Skullduggery back to the track, you bet I’ll be there! Today we earned a few bragging rights and I’m taking them out for a spin. Just goes to show you that you can learn to anything by watching UTube and not all guys own power tools. Number 7 ROCKS!
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