And the winner is...

I'm not sure there are adequate words in the English language to express how very glad I am that this particular race is over! We started on the car last night, with The Brain quite sure that he DIDN'T want to race this year. I chalked it up to equal parts fear of losing, and not wanting to race without dad being around to give his pre-race seal of approval. I decided that while he felt strongly about not wanting to do it, that neither of those reasons was good enough to keep him from racing. I believe that I may have raised my voice a little, and I'm pretty sure that I said something to the effect of "I don't care if you stick the freakin' wheels on with silly putty and race a plain block of wood, YOU ARE GOING TO RACE!". Ahem... anyway!

He finally got into the spirit of it last night and decided to go with a standard wedge design and paint it black. He DID NOT want to do anything else to it at all; I even had to fight for the dragon sticker. He did all of the work (with my assistance) on the car with the exception of gluing the wheels on and we had the car about ready to go this afternoon. I had a few brief moments of panic when I couldn't seem to get the wheels to stay balances AND all turn at the same rate at the same time.

Maybe I should warn you just in case it ever comes up, but there is one exception to my general laid-back easy-going attitude. I've been, on occasion, known to become a little.... well, irritable when I am approaching a competition and things aren't ready to go. I think my head almost exploded off the top of my shoulders a couple of times tonight. Not one of my personality traits I'm the most proud of, but nonetheless, part of who I am. A work in progress, right?

The Brain came in first place again this year, despite the fact that I was still working with the wheels and applying glue 5 minutes before race time. I thought I was gonna have a nervous breakdown! He tied with one of the adults that was racing his 11 year old car just for fun. As it turns out, the guy designed his car as part of an engineering competition in college and has been racing it ever since. The Brain won one, the guy won one, and back and forth it went. It didn't really matter because The Brain still won the competition with the Scouts, but it was cool that he was so evenly matched with the other guy. I did get some really interesting ideas from the other car though.

So at least for another year, we're done. He can take his car to the District competition in March if he wants to, but I'm not sure if he'll compete in that one or not.

Here are a few pictures (humor the proud and relieved mama would ya?). I particularly like the one with him talking to the engineer that was racing his for fun. When I asked The Brain what they were talking about he told me that he was giving the guy pointers on how to make his car faster for next year! Gotta love him! LOL!