Tuesday, June 05, 2012

#92. or, Soap box derby day

  Last Saturday, was the annual soap box derby day in our town.

 When our middle son, (the one that's graduating this month.) was in about grade five or six, he came home one day and informed us that he was interested in entering the soap box derby that they hold in our town every year. To be honest, I'm pretty sure the first image to come to my mind was one of the kid, sitting in an apple box with four different sized wheels, aviator goggles, and a propeller beenie on his head. I didn't even know our town held a soap box derby at the time.

 ...... There's a bit more to soap box derby than that.

  You have to buy a kit that basically gives each kid the same car. The box that holds the car parts is a pattern for all the pieces that you need to cut from plywood. Every car has the same wheels and steering. Every car has pretty much the same design, although you can paint them however you like or put on any sponsor decals you want. The kit gives you a couple options for brakes but really, as long as they look like they might work, you're probably going to pass inspection and be able to race.

  Our middle son, being the mechanical sort he is, even at that time, wanted a different type of car. We couldn't change the basic car. That was against the rules. And so was born, what I am pretty sure for our little derby, was the very first, soap box concept car.

It used to be a little spiffier but survived a crash into a spruce hedge.

   I think that he felt like the guy with the Lamborghini in the Wal-Mart parking lot when we showed up with the car that day.

  You race three times against two other cars, best of three wins the heat and you advance. He was a very technical driver, studying the track from each of the three starting ramps. He discovered the middle lane was the fastest, the right lane was the slowest but if you ran with one set of wheels in the dry tar strip where they patched the pavement, you could gain a little speed. The left lane has an approach half ways down and if you drifted left, you could shoot through the dip in the road from that approach and make up some speed.


on the starting ramp

 When our youngest son wanted to race as well, we had to build another car. We tried to make a aerodynamic, fiberglass body. It turned out OK, but is rather heavy.



    Only our youngest has raced for the last number of  years and we use the first car. I seem to remember throwing out my back one time lifting the heavy car onto the ramp. He's more of a carefree driver than his brother was. I tried to impart some of the wisdom his brother had obtained from his time behind the wheel but he asked me if it was OK if he just went straight? I guess it worked, he won gold in his age group.

with the gold medal

  I don't know if my kid will race again, he's getting to that age where it's not all that cool of a thing to do. I had fun with it though and if he doesn't race again, i'll be a little sad.  I'm going to miss the kids, hunched down in their cars to eliminate wind drag, white knuckling  the steering wheel as they will gravity to suck another ounce of speed out of their cars as they cross the finish line. That and the ten year old's talking smack on the starting ramp.

.............The race this year was a week earlier than usual and i'm generally done seeding by then. I'm still not done but as it turned out, i had to wait an extra day for a field i was trying to seed to dry a bit more, which allowed me to go to the races. That's the same field that threatened to open up and suck my tractor and seed drill right out from under me. The extra day was all i needed, as the day after the race, i was able to travel across it no problem. Funny how things work out sometimes.

18 comments:

  1. Looks like so much fun and I can see why you would miss it! It's really too bad that kids have to grow up lol... of course, as you once mentioned, there's being a fun grandpa to look forward to. I loved reading about how your middle son figured out all the advantages on the track - does he like F1 by any chance?

    I've done karting in France a bit and it's loads of fun! My longest race was two hours :) (but I so didn't win!!! lol)

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    1. I hope i can be that fun grandpa......but not for a little while yet! :)

      He doesn't watch much auto racing, i think ATV's and pick-up trucks are more along the line of things that interest him these days. He's just the type that looks at things and tries to make them better. I'm sort of like that myself.

      You are a race driver!! They mystery behind you deepens! ;)

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    2. Lol, hardly a race driver!!! Just did some races with a group of friends. My best finish was in fourth place but half the other drivers were ancient so it doesn't really count ;-)

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    3. .......i think it does. :)

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  2. My sons Cub Scouts does Soap Box and the first year I was so excited that we were going to build a car!! Then he came home with a little and I mean little, like for a Lego man box with his Soap Box Car. I was so bummed! They raced little tiny cars down a ramp. What fun is it if you can't really race and run into bushes?

    Looks like they had a lot of fun!

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    1. They had tons of fun. This year he got to race against his cousin and knocked him down into the 3rd/4th place race. You can see their excitement as they're on the ramp waiting for the gate to drop. It can be pretty intense. :)

      I think i might have seen something like those tiny cars here as well. Probably still some fun there but i suspect it's not quite like getting behind the wheel.

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  3. That's amazing!! Wow!! What a cool car, and fun idea. I've never heard of this. I feel warm inside :)

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    1. They were fun to build. I'm sure i had as much fun as the kids did doing this.

      I feel warm inside too......i think it's the scotch? :)

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  4. I've never seen those races, must have been awesome. My son did the pinewood derbies at boy scouts, where they carve the little wooden cars from wood. He never won, but he had such a great time making his cars. He still has them too!

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    1. They don't really advertise them well enough here i think. This year they had about 35 kids. The past few years though, it was over 50.
      Some community organizations will build cars for kids that don't have enough money to build their own. It allows everyone the opportunity to race if they want.

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  5. These have to be the coolest soap box derby racers I've ever seen! I can imagine how fun it was for your boys to show up at the starting line with these. What a great Dad! I know the Universe was working in accord to get you there this year between rain and planting. :-)

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    1. It was pretty cool. I know there was people there waiting to see what we were going to show up with when we brought the 2nd one. We had set the bar pretty high. Also, we sort of opened the door on changing it up a bit. There was a lot more interesting ideas showing up after that first car.

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  6. Wow. We never had anything like that when I was a kid, but some of the local kids did get together and cobble cars together from whatever they could find and then take off down a steep hill to see what would happen. I'm not sure most of 'cars' survived the trip though. Adult supervision what's that?

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    1. We never had anything like that either. (we got to pick rocks!)
      The paper came out yesterday and it's neat to see the pictures of the kids from the bottom. They always seem to be gritting their teeth with a determined look on their faces as they cross the finish line.

      Nice to see that my site didn't eat this comment. :)

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  7. LOL - "Is it okay if I just go straight?" I love that kid! Hilarious. ...especially that he asked. So polite.

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    1. Sometimes, it's easy to make things a lot harder than they really need to be.

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  8. I always wanted but never got to participate in a soap box derby! Looks quite fun! It would be fun to build a car too!

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  9. My son has always participated in the pinewood derby at Awana at church. How cool it would be to do the soap box derby! The cars are cool. So glad it worked out just right for you to go!

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