This post has taken me a few days to write . . . this is about our trip to the Mount Vernon Soap Box Derby race last weekend.
Here we are, back home from another fun weekend of Soap Box Derby racing.
Mount Vernon is a four hour drive north, about halfway from Seattle to the Canadian border, and registration began at 7 AM Saturday morning. Because of this, we made the drive north on Friday evening. We left home after Alex got home from school; after stopping to try to find our favorite spindle lube (Slick 50 One Lube) and get some food, we pulled into Arlington to visit Grandapa and Grandma Kennedy at about 10:00. We visited them at their motel for a while, then continued up to Mount Vernon, found the track, and checked into our motel. We finally got to bed about midnight.
Saturday morning came incredibly early. It was lightly raining when we showed up in the pit area - about 7:00. On top of that, we had to park about 2 blocks away from the top of the hill, and on an angle. Getting the car out and set up without having our car or other equipment roll away was quite a challenge! IN THE RAIN, we managed to put on several of the decals by lifting small parts of the car cover, washing the wax off, and applying the decal. We got the two GREEN SLIME decals on and one of the 426 HEMI decals. The other 426 HEMI decal tore, so we put off doing the rest of them. Also, I did not oil the wheels and spindles as much as I usually do, partly because I wanted to get out of the rain, and partly because I found that the skateboard oil we bought on Friday afternoon was quite a bit thicker than what I had hoped for - I didn't want to put a bunch of thick oil on the wheels.
We managed to get everything set up and ready, and put up our canopy. About this time, the rain stopped and the sun started coming out.
The races started a little late - there were a lot of cars, and many of them were new drivers with borrowed cars, so there was a lot of work in getting the weights adjusted. After the races started, there were enough new dads and city volunteers that the racing did not go extremely smooth, either. We had cars loaded incorrectly onto the trailers at the bottom of the hill, people who didn't know how (or when!) to do wheel swaps, and kids who weren't at their cars when they were called for races. All of this slowed down the progression of the racing.
Alex had a first round Bye. Because of this, during the second round, he raced a kid who had won his first round race. He lost. Surprisingly, he also got a third round Bye. This means that on the fourth round, he raced a kid who had already won three rounds! He lost the fourth round heat.
Out of the 35 cars at this race on Saturday, there were 3 wrecks . . . which is about 3 more wrecks than we've seen all summer long!
The first wreck was the worst. Lexi (I don't recall her last name) is 8, and this was her first race. At the bottom of the hill, she says her brakes didn't work. The brakes on these cars are a fairly Rube Goldberg-ish device, and do occasionally fail to work for one reason or another. We've actually seen it happen a time or two. Generally, it is a non-issue; the kids are given very explicit instructions about what to do if they have a failed brake. First, they are to sit up in the car to increase the wind resistance. Next, they yell at the top of their lungs "NO BRAKE!" When they do this, the people at the end of the track throw cones in front of the car, and the driver is supposed to drive up onto these cones, which will stop the car. If this doesn't happen, the next obstacle is a bunch of cones that are already sitting on the track - again, the driver is supposed to drive straight onto one of these cones. Finally, if all else fails, there is a soft barrier at the end of every track that the kid is supposed to hit straight on. At Salem, it is a wall of tires, and would probably put the car out of alignment, but not cause any permanent damage. At some tracks, it is bales of straw, which might crack the shell, but not injure the driver. In Mount Vernon, it was a foam wall, and probably would not even put the car out of alignment.
At the end of the track, Lexi could not brake. Later, many fathers examined her car and could not find any problem with her brake. The people at the finish line said they saw her brake go down and back up, then never go down again. In any event, somewhere there was a disconnect between Lexi's will to stop and the rubber pad dropping down from her car. She did not stop. The crew at the end of the track threw cones in front of Lexi; she swerved around them. She missed all of the cones in front of the barrier. In fact, the area between the finish line and the foam wall was a two-block long gauntlet that Lexi miraculously drove through. For someone who is only halfway from birth to legal driving age, this was quite a demonstration of maneuvering ability. In an attempt to avoid a collision, she even drove AROUND the foam wall. (This would not have been easy!)
Beyond the foam wall was another city block of closed-off street, then some barricades, then . . . city traffic. Had she gone another block, Lexi would have still been traveling in excess of the posted speed limit!
Luckily (?), that last city block of closed-off street had a single feature which had eluded the before-race safety inspection. Parked on that street was a single car. It should have been towed before racing began, but because it was beyond the barrier, nobody bothered. After avoiding all the cones, and after swerving around the end of the barrier, Lexi managed to hit the only object left between her and city traffic - the parked car. The shell of her car was peeled open like a tin can. The crack extended from the nose all the way back into the cockpit. Alex later said that her car looked like a shark had taken a bite out of it. But Lexi was (physically) okay. In the impromptu driver's meeting before continuing the race, she was noticably shaken up, but was standing, breathing, and not bleeding. After much deliberation, she actually raced her car (with a new shell!) on Sunday. But first, her father told her that he had fixed the brake (actually, he could find nothing he could do to it . . . everything seemed to be just fine!) Before continuing the race, the car was moved and the foam wall was adjusted so that there was no way to drive around the ends.
The other two wrecks were much less dramatic. One boy jumped the curb near the finish line - his car was knocked way out of alignment, and I believe he may have bent an axle or kingpin. Cameron Russell is one of the really good drivers from up north - he got a little too aggressive with the cones between the two lanes, and touched one. As soon as he touched that first cone, it pulled his car toward it and he ended up running over about 20 cones. If one cone in the runout is supposed to stop a car, imaging what 20 cones on the track can do. Yeah, Cameron didn't make it to the bottom of the hill, but his car was probably fine.
After the race on Saturday, the weather had cleared up, so we put the rest of the decals on Alex's car and the trailer. We then met the group at Round Table, where trophies were handed out and Alex received a certificate of participation.
Sunday's racing went quite a bit smoother than Saturday's. There were still about the same number of cars, but since they had all been weighed and inspected on Saturday morning, Sunday's was just a cursory check. Racing started about 9:00.
Like Saturday, Alex received a first round bye. He lost his second round heat, but won his third round heat by 0.041 seconds. He lost his fourth round heat, and was eliminated from the competition. We packed up, collected our wheels and participation certificate, and were ready to head home by 5:00.
It's a 4 hour drive home from Mount Vernon, but we made a couple stops. We had dinner at Red Robin in Tacoma, and stopped at Lucky Eagle Casino in Grand Mound to see Grandma and Grandpa Wiser for a while. Between these, as well as a couple rest area stops, we arrived home about 11:00 Sunday evening.
We were all ready for bed, then school or work the next morning.
