Mike's Bike Blog

Before I jump right into the play by play of Saturday I'm going to start with Friday night. I've never ridden the Copperas Cove route, in fact I've never been to Copperas Cove which is about 50 miles from my house. I had a little intel on the route from Scott (AT&T Brain & Spine) that it was similar to Parmer with some rollers but no hills bigger than what we ride on the Sunday group ride. I imported the route to Google Earth to get a virtual feel as well as looking at the profile for the route. At about 9pm as I'm going through this Jennifer informs me that Jack's pine wood derby car is too big, it's suppose to fit back into the box when fully assembled.

I wasn't the only one racing on Saturday, the boys Cub Scout Pack was holding their Pine Wood Derby on Saturday as well. I woke Jack up and he sanded down his car till it fit into his box. He was a trooper getting woken up to be out in the cold garage sanding his car down. Once we had it sanded and painted he was back to bed. It was 11 pm now so I got everything ready for the morning. The plan was to leave at 6:30. Google said it would take 1 hour and 30 minutes to drive to the Civic Center where the start/registration was.

At 5:00 am I woke up, had some pasta shells for breakfast, woke Jack up to finish painting his car. I prepped the water bottles with Melon Heed and the gel bot filled with Espresso gel. I loaded the car and I was off at 6:45 am. It turns out that it's about 50 minutes to Copperas Cove from my house so I had enough time to drive the full course. I was getting jazzed as I drove the first 10 miles as I thought it seemed to lend itself to my strengths as there were some rolling hills on the way out. Plus when coming back there was a decent roller as well that I thought I could use to my advantage as well.

At 8 a.m. I got a call from Jennifer that there was a pine wood derby crisis, Jack's car was still too big! It would fit in his box, but the box had been stretched and a bit torn. When she tried to put his car in Ethan's box it wouldn't fit! The pine wood derby check in time was at 9am and races started at 10. There was only one thing to do, I turned around and headed back to offer pit service.

I got back a little past 9 to the derby, both Jack and Ethan successfully checked in. Luckily Jack shaved some off of his car or he would have been overweight, as it was it weighted in at 4.95 ounces (5 oz is the limit). With the boys checked in there was no way I could make it back up to Copperas Cove and make my check in.

Both Jack and Ethan had a good time. In all of their heats they didn't crack the top 3, the best placing they were able to make was 4th. They were consistently placing 4th or 5th.

Well I didn't get to make my racing debut this weekend which really bummed me out, but the boys had a fun derby. There will be other races for me, in fact it looks like I'll sign up for the New Braunfels race. Scratch that, the cat 5 race is already closed. I guess I'll have to sign up for the cat 4/5.