Saturday, January 23, 2010

Cub Scout Weekend...

Man, this weekend is all about the Cub Scouts. Last night was our Information Night for the new Scout parents for the upcoming Pinewood Derby (a.k.a. the "Superbowl of Cub Scouts" as it was explained to me my first year). We invite the owner of a local hobby shop who sells Pinewood Derby kits and accessories - and has done so for the past 35 years, including when I was a Cub Scout* - to give a short talk, and we display cars of our own and share some of our tips and secrets as well.

Today we're going over the track with a fine-toothed comb, cleaning and shining off the past two years' worth of graphite, dust, and grime so that the track shines for the upcoming Derby. Our track will also be used for the Regional races, and the Council Finals after that - so it needs to gleam. It needs to be taken down to individual track molecules, cleaned to within an inch of its life, and reassembled into the pieces that go together to form a 40' long track. We do this every other year or so to insure that the track stays in tip-top shape.

Then tomorrow is our January Pack Meeting. We're having the "Humpty Dumpty Egg Drop", whereby the Scouts make a receptable that will cushion an egg from successive drops of 6', 12', 18', etc. TheBoy and I have a clever arrangement of a box-inside-a-box, with levels of old mattress egg crate material and bubble wrap in between layers. Rather ingenious if I do say so myself. The plan is to have each rank line up to have their box dropped, and whoever has an intact egg moves on to the next height. We've enlisted the eager help of our town fire department, who will use one of their bucket trucks to achieve the height for the drop.

* Happened to find this picture while cleaning out some old stuff. Enjoy!

Cub Scout JayG

Yes, even back then I was a dork...

That is all.

8 comments:

Andrew said...

What's all that stuff on top of your head?

Top of the Chain said...

Ah yes, did your shirt have the collar, or was it more of a henley type collar. Mom was my den mother and later on dad was an asst scoutmaster

Anonymous said...

No knife on the belt?

agg79 said...

Same demented smile just with hair.

Even back then we can see a little of the troublemaker peeking out.

Old NFO said...

But the acorn didn't fall far from the tree :-) You've done good to bring the young ones along! Thanks for caring and participating Jay!

Michael W. said...

And staring Jerry Matthers as the Beaver..........-grin-

ASM826 said...

Akela is still proud of you. Pinewood Derby duty is the gulag of Scouting. I always threatened to run an open class race for the parents. I figured maybe that would decrease the parents involvement (and ego) in the results of a Cub Scout event.

Anonymous said...

Scouting is good for you! Raises characters! I mean creates Characters! err something like what we see in the photo...
(and this coming from a former scout whom was banned after he bounced the older son of the Den mother off the wall when he came down stairs for his ritual of picking on the younger ones when Den Mom was upstairs making goodies for us and the skinned knuckle did not do my case any good!)