Insanely Awe-dical

I have a confession to make.

I never made my own pinewood derby wooden car.  I'm a bit ashamed.  My dad helped me a lot (meaning I helped him a little), and you know those engineers -- they know how to build pinewood derby cars.  I won 1st place in my den.  I even went to a SoCal tournament and placed 1st or 2nd -- I don't quite remember.  The best trophy on my shelf, but I didn't really earn it.  I don't know what my deal was.  I was interested.  I honestly was.  I watched the races, and I saw the 2-loss bracket chart slowly fill up to create the final race of 3, and when I won, I loved seeing my name move from left to the winner on the right.

But I do remember one year, I wasn't interested in watching, and I don’t remember why.  I rememeber sitting on an opposite bench reading an Encyclopedia Brown book I've read 10 times already.  Hours later, I had won another year.

I remember drawing the black line on the side of the block, and doing the initial whittling.  I remember helping my dad sand-down the edges of the wheels for a smoother slide.  Minimize friction is the key.  Lower mass to let gravity do more work, but place the more mass in the key position so gravity has more mass to push.  Only 3 wheels touched the ground -- a mistaken unbalance led to a revolution of thinking that one less wheel friction gave my car the edge.

Thanks Pop.  It's not that I wasn't interested in the races.  I don't know what it was -- I just didn't build my car.  I suppose he was interested in a project that was simple enough to be creative and didn't have any sort of job repurcussions, but complicated enough that an engineer would have fun.  Just like math, computer upgrades, and wondering what would happen if the sun and a mass of water of equivalent size would collide into it.  It's fun because it's not super important.  Of course, my dad wants me to win, but if he won the award, that would be lame.  He's probably happier his son won, and that's the pride he can take.  Take this too Pop -- thanks for being really cool.  Even though it is years later, I'll still remember that it's more than just the race or the car.

I hope someday there will be a competition that will give you a simple budget to build a benchmark-destroying computer, and my son will enter, and I'll help him dominate that competition, so he can write a post in his blog 15 years after the fact.