Derby is just starting to wind down, and Scouts, school, then the holidays are just getting wound up!!! I guess that's the Circle of Life when you're a parent!

Alex has to write a mini-bio for school. He has room for a couple sentences. All he has written is "I started Soap Box Derby on June 16th, 2009, in Stock."

Alex raced a borrowed Super Stock today - his first time in a Super. All things considered, I think he did really well. He drove fairly good lines on Saturday despite the steering being crooked and this being a bigger, heavier car. He took sixth. We were at the track until eight o'clock Saturday night tuning the car and running trials. Sunday he drove well again and came home with fourth. Back to Stock for the next race . . . he can't stay in Super Stock until he turns ten.

I thought it would be can funny to post a picture of Alex sitting BACKWARD in the car, and to see if anyone noticed. Alex didn't think it was so funny when he saw it. This is a picture of Alex adjusting the tail weights on Saturday morning. Yes, he knew the front of the car from the back!

Alex and I are watching 'Hubble' at OmniMax.

Alex is proud of his pets

Alex watching the sunset on the Columbia River

I was scared of spending all day at this race on an overpass in the rain. It's actually turning out to be perfect weather!

Blue Belt

Alex earned his Martial Arts Blue Belt last night. He is now half-way to his Black Belt!

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We were up at 2 AM to make it to Alex's race (4 1/2 hours away) by 7:30. If I EVER hear a soccer parent complaining about morning games again . . .

Karaoke!

Tiffany has had an Applebee's gift certificate burning a hole in her pocket since her birthday, and both she and Alex wanted to go to Applebee's this evening. Alex got all ready for bed, then put some clothes on so we could go for their 9:00 happy hour, with half price appetizers. (We Can all eat for less than $20).

We found out that Thursday is Karaoke night at Applebee's; I don't think Alex had ever seen real Karaoke before. We couldn't get him to sing, though . . . He saw that, although the microphone was set up in the restaurant, people were coming out of the bar to sing, and even HE could tell that the singers had a little too much to drink!

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We're not having much luck talking Alex out of Mount Vernon. Evidently it's his favorite track because it's so bumpy.And there's only one race there each year.

The van was broken into last night.  The window was broken, and the GPS was stolen.

Soap Box Saturday

Alex finished sixth place in Stock today. His first defeat was against Tajha Goodwin-Lowell, who won first place today; his second defeat was against Kirstin Vorpahl, who won second place today! That put him in a runoff for fifth and sixth against Kallan Wehrmeister; he lost the runoff.

He had seven runs down the hill and had fun; he also drove well. In fact, in one run we decided to break to the outside, and Alex pulled that move off perfectly, breaking smoothly, and at just the right point. Our times seem to be very consistently .5 seconds behind first and second place, and .3 seconds behind the next several places. I am convinced that this consistency means that we DO have a decent car setup, and that Alex is driving well. If there was a problem with his driving, he would not be as consistent. Because we have disassembled and rebuilt the car so many times, the same is true of the car's setup.

I am convinced that our primary problem is Alex's size. His shoulders don't fit into the Stock body, and he easily outweighs many of his fellow drivers by 30 pounds. Although the cars all weigh the same, this difference means that THEY get to put 30 pounds of steel plates in their floorboard, thereby lowering their center of gravity. Hopefully this problem will be rectified late next Spring when he is old enough to race Super Stocks; the cars are larger, and the drivers are closer to Alex's size.

Alex says he had fun today when he was racing, but not so much after he was done racing; nevertheless, he did come running across the park at one point to tell me that he had caught the Red Gyarados in his Pokemon video game . . . He is still talking about that, and I think it may have been the highlight of his day.

We have checked in to the Rodeway Inn in north Salem, and are looking forward to another day of racing tomorrow.

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Chuck E Cheese

We decided to take Alex to Chuck E Cheese this evening. After work I rushed home to put the back seat in the van, then rushed to La Center to pick up Hailey and Haden.

We got to Chuck E Cheese about seven o'clock and stayed there until about nine when Melissa got off work and showed up to pick up Hailey and Haden. The kids had a blast, but I think even THEY were tired and ready to go home.

Finally, I dropped Tiffany and Alex off at home while I went to feed Tiffany's parents' cats.

We've got to get up about five o'clock in the morning to make it to the Soap Box Derby race in Salem. That is going to be awful early.

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Bandon to Newport

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Penny Presses

Alex loves those 51¢ penny presses in gift shops. He still thinks they really press his pennies, though. He always has to dig for the shiniest penny I've got. He just did one at Ripley's Believe It Or Not in Newport and, since I didn't have a penny that was shiny enough, he took a penny to the counter and asked them to exchange it for a shinier penny!

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Wildlife Safari in Winston

We got started a little late this morning for the Wildlife Safari. I wanted to be there when it opened at 9:00, but that's about when we ended up leaving the hotel, an hour away.

We stayed at the Safari from the time we got there at 10:00 until they closed at 6:00. We drove through the park twice and went all through the walk-through exhibits, but also did lots of extras.

We had our van washed by an elephant. The elephant squirted water on the van from its trunk, then picked up a sponge and wiped the van, and finally rinsed it by spraying from its trunk again. No, the van didn't get very clean, but Alex LOVED getting sprayed by an African elephant. (Elephants Have ALWAYS been his favorite animals and African elephants have always been his favorite elephants. He's always a little upset because most zoo elephants are Asian because they are smaller, less high-strung, and easier and safer to work with.)

We went on an elephant barn tour where we got to see the inside of the elephant barn, but also feed and pet the elephants. Alex got to ride a dromedary camel. We rode a train around part of the Safari. We went to the Cheetah keeper talk.

I think the highlight of the Safari for Alex was a prank we pulled on Tiffany. We had done this several years ago, the last time we were at the Safari, and he talked about doing it all day. Finally, just before leaving, we pulled it off. Tiffany dozed off the second time through the park; we pulled up next to a female Emu (a very ugly, evil-looking animal that I call a 'Devil Bird') and let it stick its face right up to Tiffany's open window, then woke her up. I know it was a cruel thing, but she took it well, and Alex is STILL laughing about it, hours later.

When the Safari closed we decided we wanted to stay close to Bandon tonight, so I made reservations for Comfort Inn in Coos Bay and we headed out. We pulled in to the hotel about 9:00; we were all hungry, but too tired to go out. On top of that, Alex had some homework that he had to finish this weekend, so we ordered Domino's and he did his homework while we waited for the delivery.

I wrote this blog as I ate the pizza; I'm now more than ready to go to sleep.

Tomorrow we'll be hitting the Bandon Game Farm (billed as the world's largest petting zoo).

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Cottage Grove

We left last night for a trip Alex has wanted to do all summer . . . Wandering around SW Oregon. He wants to go to the Winston Animal Park and the Bandon Game Farm. There's quite a bit of driving involved so we have been waiting for a three day weekend. This will probably be our last trip of the Summer.

We left home last night heading toward our hotel reservation at Comfort Inn in Cottage Grove. We stopped at Harbor Freight in Salem to get some transfer punches for the Soap Box car, but ended up getting quite a bit more, including an RC car for Alex and a 72" level that was on sale for an incredible $15!

On our way south, I was watching the traffic map on my Droid that was showing a huge tie-up in Eugene; the tie-up had been there since we left Portland.

When we hit Eugene about 8:30, it looked like I-5 was almost shut down so we decided this would be a good time to stop for dinner. We went to a Skippers a couple miles East of the highway where a truck driver told us that a pickup had rolled over on the highway. We asked around about how to get South of town without taking I-5, but nobody had any good, easy directions.

When we were done eating we started following any road that headed South but didn't run into I-5; we had the GPS so we weren't TOTALLY blind, but it was dark and we were driving through what looked like extremely bad neighborhoods. I've often said that one of the good things about Portland is that there really aren't any neighborhoods that, as a grown man, I absolutely would NOT walk through after dark. I might be a little uncomfortable, and watch my back closely, but I would likely make it through. We drove through neighborhoods in Eugene and Springfield that I would not walk through.

We finally hit a traffic-free Interstate south of town and drove the remaining 20 minutes to our hotel, arriving about 10:00. Alex and I played in the outdoor heated pool for about half an hour (that boy is a FISH!!!), then we watched the last hour of 'Titantic' and feel asleep.

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AC Nutter

I got Alex out of the house early this morning to visit AC Nutter's shop. AC has been building race cars, race car engines, and race car drivers for decades. He is one of the big names behind Greg Biffle's success, and built every one of Biffle's engines right up until he was signed on by Rousch Racing. Alex was actually pretty excited to meet him and didn't give me ANY problem getting up early to go. Although I have a couple connections to AC (He went to High School with my father-in-law and has built an engine for my brother-in-law), I have never met him. We just drove to his shop and introduced ourselves.

We talked Soap Box Derby for a while. AC remembered there being Soap Box races in Vancouver when he was a kid, and jumped on his computer to pull up the websites . . . He was very interested. He had lots of good tech advice based on his decades of involvement with various types of racing. Much of his advice sounds pretty good, and is a little different than what I hear at the track. And some of it . . . Just SOME . . . Would actually be legal. (Sorry, But no, we won't be rod drilling our axles!) We had brought in a part to ask him to do a little mill work on. Instead of doing the work, he actually came up with a way I can do it myself with a drill press, and it will be just as accurate (or even more accurate).

We ended up having to run to get Alex to school on time. After dropping Alex off, I called back to apologize for running, and to thank AC for his ideas. He wants me to bring the car in for a little show-and-tell. Turns out he has a machinist working for him who has a 6 year old daughter who lives and breathes race cars, and they might want to try this out. I figure getting this guy's eyes on our car can yield nothing but good things. We're going over next week after putting the car back together for the next race, but before aligning it.

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