Yet Another Day at the Races

What's goin' on, America.

As some of you know, Abby has had some pretty impressive feats of prowess in Pinewood Derby (er, 'Powder Puff Derby,' if you're a Girl Scout) racing through her Girl Scout troops. 

She and Papa John have a definite system down for how they create their race cars.  First, she picks out the design by Google image searching race cars, then he creates the car in his workshop and coats the body in a graphite lubricant to create an air-tight, heavy aerodynamic exterior.  She the sands down the graphite to fill in any holes in the wood, picks a color, and together they spray paint it.  He then takes the car and adds weights to it, removes access wood, and adds on the wheels.  She then paints the finishing touches on it, and it's ready to go.

The first year they worked together on this, Abby's broke multiple speed records and captured the Gold Medal for speed in her designated category (they break down the top three in speed for each level of Girl Scouts - Daisies, Brownies, Juniors, CSAs, etc.)  This was pretty impressive, so we weren't expecting to hit this goal again.

Little did we know we'd surpass it.

Check it out. . .

These races were supposed to start at 2:00pm, with check-in/car-weighing slated to start at 12:30.  Abby and I showed up right at 12:30 in order to snag front-row seats for the afternoon races, and therefore sat around for quite a bit while the gaggle of moms who were running this shit-show bumbled through every step of the process.  We didn't get underway until nearly 3:00pm (yes, you read that right - I had to sit in a chair and wait for nearly two-and-a-half f***ing hours.)  Didn't help things that between each race they had to rely on a couple idiot boy scouts to fetch designated cars from an ill-placed table at the far end of the church.  This meant there was about five minutes between each of the 60-plus races.  This is the very definition of a clusterf***, folks.

Abby, racing in the Juniors Bracket, didn't actually start racing until an hour or so into the races.  They burned through the Daisies and Brownies first, which took a long-ass time because there's far more Daisies and Brownies than Juniors.  In the very first race, Abby laid waste to her competitors.

By the time the Juniors took the track, the top speed recorded that day was around 210 mph.  Right out of the gate, Abby's car showed promise. . .

Second race.

She set a new record for the day with her second race (I missed the pop up window that displayed this notification, sadly.)

Third race.

Her slowest race.  Still faster than nearly all of the other cars that had raced that day.  Just sayin'.

Ella and Abby, on the edge of their seats.  All of the chairs in the front row on either side of the race track had kids sitting in them, but I refused to move - I wanted my vantage spot.  F*** those kids. 

Yet another record set, in her fourth and final race of the afternoon.

Abby took 1st Place in Speed, yet again, this time for the Juniors bracket, but I kept track of race times throughout the afternoon, and she had the second-fastest car there (the fastest car belonged to some high schooler.)  I was pretty pleased with this.

Showing off her new hardware.  She's back-to-back Champion of her age group - second year in a row she's taken Gold.

Had to get a pic of these two BFFs in front of the sign. . .

The winning team, after the races (I didn't realize that she wore the exact same sweatshirt last year at this thing.)

- Brian