That's because Gemma seemed not to know what it was and we were just as glad not to put it onto her radar.
That's because each year so far, we have figured we would want to be doing something else on a Saturday morning. Plus, we knew that we would get into it eventually. Later seemed better than sooner.
This year, someone told Gemma about it. And so it began. . .
In each club level, there are prizes for the 3 fastest cars. The club levels include the pre-schoolers, K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and high school. Each car in each level races 3 times and the highest average scores win.
That is a lot of racing, which is why this event lasts Friday night and most of Saturday.
There are also three trophies for best car design (which is determined aside from its speed) and, for the 3 youngest levels, three trophies for best "Dress Like Your Car" entries.
Bryan has never raced these cars before. He knows that there are tricks to it, that many of those tricks are on the internet, and that several different power tools could be used to great effect. (A few different couples host "pit parties" on the weekends leading up to the race and all are welcome to stop by and use the woodshops.)
But we weren't going for speed this year. I think we figured we'd test the waters and come up with a good plan for next year.
This left the design categories open. Joshua dressed in Bryan's fatigues and painted his car with camo-colors. It looked great. But in this town, the military thing is not unique. He didn't win any design trophies.
Gemma dressed as Little Bo Peep (using a costume from 2 Halloween's ago) and made her car look like a sheep. She did the whole project by herself and the finished product was impressive! It took a great exertion on my part not to do some of it for her, not to correct her as she worked, not to improve on it. But when it comes to these creative endeavors, we must shut up and keep our hands to ourselves.
She was very pleased with her own work. I told her to hope for a design aware because there is no way she would win by speed. (The "fleece" was made of cotton balls, of course.)
Josh did all the painting himself, too! I picked out the colors and told him to make blobs, and he did all the rest.
***Friday night, check-in and registration for all cars was from 5-7. We all went together and decided to stay for the older clubs' racing. The track was a marvel. It included electronic sensors hooked up to a computer that calculated the speeds and put them up on the big screen in about 2 seconds.
Gemma and Josh loved watching each race.
I loved seeing the older kids participate. AWANA is a Bible-memorization club. By these older grades, the work is very intense and demanding and it culminates in a national tournament held in St. Charles, IL each year. (AWANA started in inner-city Chicago! Just learned that. . .)
One would expect to find a big crowd of pretty geeky kids populating the older levels. While there's room for maneuver in defining "geeky," it seemed to me like most of them were really great kids: well-adjusted, very social, with so much camaraderie and love among each other. I've never seen anything like it.
The next morning, my kids sprang out of bed, ready for Game Day and, having seen the spectacular trophies the night before, they were now pretty interested in winning. Something.
Joshua's car placed 13th overall.
Gemma's at least got across the finish line each time without needing a push.
And there was a 3rd place design award in it after all.
(That thing behind her is Sparky, the mascot for her level. "Who are we?" "Sparks!" "Who for?" "Jesus!" "What do we do???" "LIGHT THE WORLD!!!!!")
(Speaking of mascots: Bryan put on the Cubbie Bear suit last weekend just to give our clubbers a special treat. The 85 children were either DELIGHTED to see Cubbie in person, or FREAKED OUT, in which case, Bryan popped his top and showed them his real face, which seemed to help in most cases...)
The speeds of the winning Cubbies and Sparks cars beat the champion cars of the older kids the night before by at least 4 points. (The numbers weren't posted in seconds or mph. . .they were just numbers.) Obviously, this was a competition among parents.
And some of the Dads were into it.
One family there had two biological children and two foster children, all in the Cubbies club level. And this Dad grew up racing cars with his Dad and so built the 4 cars that took the top 4 speeds.
I walked up to the fastest car owner, Blake, age 3, and said, "Great job, Blake! Can I see that championship car?" And I inspected it carefully. I learned some things. . .
His older brother came along and I said, "Hey Hudson! Pretty great cars you guys build. Do you do the trick with only putting 3 wheels down?"
He said, "Yeah, but that's not the secret."
"Oh really? What's the secret?" I have no shame about asking, by the way. I figured it was worth the shot. But the kid wouldn't tell me. . .
His Dad told someone, though. He told one of his best friends, Rick, and the two of them have sons in the Sparks club level. Sure enough, Rick's son's car was fast. So fast, the two boys had to have a race-off because their average times were identical. And Rick's son won! Guess he shouldn't have shared that secret. . .
Speaking of which: If you know a super secret squirrel secret that's not even on the internet, please pass it along. We've got less than a year to figure this out.
I knew as soon as I reported all this to Bryan, who is working this weekend and so missed the Saturday morning races, he would be thinking, "There's the gauntlet. Game on." And I was right.
I'm just hoping that rising to the challenge won't include the acquisition of any new power tools.
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ReplyDeleteTJ had to do the pinewood derby thing, so I might have a few secrets...maybe they're worth something? I'll tell you next time I see you and you can experiment ;)
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