Still more Scouts: Pinewood Derby

Carl posted a while back about the boys' cars they were making for this years Pinewood Derby.

The event was a great success.

Alex built the Blue Angel, and Ryan built the Lego Racer.

Its so much fun to watch the cars racing down the tracks.

The boys had a fantastic time that night.

But the icing on the cake was that Alex's car, for the third year in a row, was a Top 10 finisher for speed.

Go Alex! He came in 8th place.

And while Ryan's car (for reasons unclear to Team Danger's engineering division), was nowhere near the Top 10 (coming in somewhere in the mid-forties for speed), he still managed to win the award for Most Colorful Pinewood Derby Car.

His good friend Derek won best Tiger Scout effort, and they could not contain their joy.

The irony of Ryan winning Most Colorful? I had nothing to do with the car or the painting. When I saw the finished product, I politely questioned to Carl (never to Ryan) why the decidedly un-Legoish color was used for yellow, and the un-legoish green and purple were used. To which Carl responded that Ryan had picked them himself, so that was it, and I was silent thereafter. Still... I thought the traditional lego colors should have been used for Ryan's Lego Racer. Amusingly... another lego derby car was at the Derby this year, and I quickly noted they had used the expected four primary lego colors. Since Alex's den hosts the Pinewood Derby, I was privvy to the fact that the two lego cars were the finalists for the Most Colorful Award (the voters didn't know it was Ryan's car). And the reason Ryan won over the other lego car? Because his had MORE colorful colors , and not just the typical ones.

Which just goes to show you that I can, in fact, be wrong every once in a (non-lego colored) blue moon. (Although I will note I was TOTALLY right that we needed to buy a yellow paint pen to write  "1", "US NAVY" and "Blue Angels" on Alex's car. And I'll note that Carl also agrees he was wrong that we didn't need to add the text.)

The best part of the evening, though? Despite the huge amount of work and effort for the den to host the Derby, despite the wrong lego colors, despite the yellow paint pen, despite the fact that one brother's car was WAY faster than the other brother's car... we still came home with two smiling, happy boys, two trophies, and two happy parents.