28 January 2018

Our cub scout pack held its pinewood derby race this week.  

Last year Gibson spent a lot of time building his car and was happy with his design.  At the derby last year he received the "Looks Fast" award and was a little offended.  This year his goal was to build a car that was really fast, didn't just look fast.  He watched youtube videos to get ideas and learned the most important factor for speed is reducing friction.

 As you can tell from Gibson's cheering squad, his work paid off.  He had a smoking fast car.

 Here's a photo of Gibson waiting for his turn to race again.  He won every race he was in, no contest.

Abe and Helen brought cars to race in the family races.

 They brought two of Abe's cars from past years.  Abe built the white car in lane 1 as a Webelos scout and the cow car in lane 3 for fun last year.

 Gibson won first place for his den and first place overall.  He also gets to race in the district pinewood derby in May.  We're proud of Gibson for setting a goal for himself and figuring out how to achieve it on his own.  He was only hoping to win a few races so he exceeded his own expectations.  This is Gibson's last year to race and he went out on top!

 In other news, Gibson is trying to train Lily to navigate a maze for a school project.  Saturday was her first trial.  It turns out she's fantastically good at following a path of red pepper pieces.  We had fun watching her gobble the pepper pieces like they were candy.

 Gibson put a small piece of strawberry at the end of the maze for a reward.  Turtles don't need to eat very much food so he'll have to wait for another day to try it again.  He's going to try spacing the red pepper out more and even try it without the treats.  It would also be interesting to see if she would follow a path of pieces of kale, her normal diet.