To finish the story on Tyler’s inaugural Pinewood Derby run, Tyler’s Yellow Racer represented the Tigers well, placing second at the Blue Gold Banquet held earlier this Spring. Tyler finished second to the Pack’s reigning 3-time champion, who also happened to be the kid who helped Tyler with his jump rope skills in karate. This was critical help that helped Tyler pass his last requirement for his Green belt test. So, Tyler already thinks this kid is a good guy, and finishing second to him is as honorable as if Tyler had won the whole thing.

The banquet was emotionally very difficult, yet cathartic, as our Packmasters’ youngest son had unexpectedly passed away earlier this year, between the two Derby events. Thomas’ car was symbolically driven by one of his older brothers, and an annual award related to the Derby was created this year in honor of Thomas; his car will become a permanent part of the award.

Scouting has already brought so many lessons to our lives in just this first year.

…so when the Pinewood Derby was approaching, I felt a bit of unease and apprehension. I wanted to ensure that Tyler had a suitable father figure in this scenario, since I distinctly remember joining Cub Scouts in second grade, yet not being involved in the Pinewood Derby at all. I have wonderful parents, but I think this was a case of redirection. “Let’s not go to the den meeting tonight, or in two weeks, or to the thing on the Saturday after that, okay?” I don’t remember the Derby at all, except that a lot of my friends got awards during the Blue Gold Banquet after the great race.

So, we procrastinate just the right amount, and then the weekend before the Saturday morning race, we begin work. Tyler had a design picked out (the Lamborghini Gallardo), and a color (Yellow). I think this is great initiative on his part, but to be sure, suggest that maybe Lightning McQueen would also be a good choice - timely yet unlikely to be duplicated in his Tiger Cub division - but Tyler confidently sticks to his guns. On Saturday, after a trip to THD( were it not for a couple of great sales associates, we would be Lowe’s shoppers), we make the first cut, and Tyler tries out the hack saw. He does pretty well with it, but decides after awhile that sanding is his specialty. So, I make the other big cuts, and Tyler gets out his sandpaper block. On Sunday, Tyler continues to sand away, and we both gain confidence in the idea that we might actually know what we’re doing. We skip a few days, then Tyler sands more mid-week, and then it’s Thursday. I prime the axle slots as the directions direct, and then Kat sets the boys up with the selected paints. Connor has a pre-fab pine wood car that he paints red, and Tyler does a superb job with his car, giving it several coats. On Friday night, I lightly lubricate the wheel hubs and axles with graphite, and we tap in the axles, securing the wheels. We then place the car on an old kitchen scale, and it looks like 5 ounces (the limit) with the pre-fab weights we bought. Whew. Close. These weights have pre-fab cuts to aid in the careful work of reducing just enough weight, but I decide that we might just make the weight without any cuts. I confess that this is laziness on my part; I was not sure about the whole hack sawing zinc concept, so I punted.

We get to the Derby on Saturday morning, and Tyler is very proud of his effort. We take the Family and the car to the school cafeteria/gym. Some of the cars there are amazing, and the kids should be commended. In other cases, the cars look amazing, and the parents should be commended! The Pack has this down to a system; there is an impound area as well as a repair area. Tyler brings his Yellow Racer to the registration desk, where they check the tolerances on a section of test track, and it passes. Then, the postage scale. I felt a sudden panic as I glance over at a few fathers furiously fixing their sons’ out-of-regulation cars. The registrar takes the car, places it on the scale, and the magic number is displayed: 5.0. Whew! The registrar says, “Perfect!”, and the car is impounded.

Tyler’s Tiger Cub den has about ten first graders, and seven of them made cars for the Derby. I was filming and taking pictures, two activities that we are terrible about doing consistently, so honestly, most of the racing was a blur. I distinctly remember the first race, when my next door neighbor says to me, “Watch carefully, because the races will be close.” Tyler’s name is drawn to race the opening race for the entire Derby, and I find myself unexpectedly nervous. I don’t see myself as a LittleLeagueDad, complete with ObnoxiousBehavior and bonus LivingVicariouslyThroughMyKids, yet here I am, thinking, “Oh man, let him win at least once…” The Derby is set up as a double elimination deal, so he will race at least twice, but having never done this before (some of Tyler’s denmates are younger brothers), I am not sure what to expect. The two cars are released, and they get to the finish line in about 4 seconds. Well, 4.001 and 4.002 seconds, actually, except we were using fathers as judges rather than electronic timing, so the two dads look at each other as if to say, “Uh-oh, this is going to be much harder than I thought…” So, a re-do is ordered, and this time, Tyler wins by a nose, literally. Unbelievable.

During the rest of the Derby, I generally remember that Tyler’s car continued winning, sometimes by coming from behind. I think, wow, this is huge beginner’s luck; after all, neither of us has ever participated before, and it feels great to see Tyler enjoying the day. To his credit, Tyler was into the racing at an appropriate level without becoming a poor sport, and I think this was equally true among all the scouts that day.

The results? Tyler went undefeated in his Den, and will represent the Tigers in the Blue Gold Banquet in the Spring. Congratulations, Tyler!

Kat calls me around 1pm today, and tells me news that is just too awful to understand. One of Tyler’s schoolmates, a 2nd grader, tragically passed away overnight, quite unexpectedly. It seems to me to be the worst of the worst: no sudden, graphic, understood tragedy like a car wreck, or the slow demise of a terminal disease, but instead, the quiet passing overnight while sleeping. No chance to say goodbye, and the quietness of it makes it so much harder to comprehend.

This hits us hard. The young boy was the son of two wonderful parents who are very active in our school and the affiliated church, serve as the school’s Cub Scouts Cubmasters, and have three other children, who also attend the school. Tyler just started scouting as a Tiger Cub this year, and we became closer and more involved with this family through Scouting. Kat serves on the school PTO with the boy’s mother, and his father is on the school board. Tyler was on a school field trip with his class, so Kat ensured that she was there at the school when Tyler’s class returned, in order to offer Tyler and his classmates the support they needed at a time like this.

Kat and I have been processing this information tonight, and we agreed that the day has just been surreal. I cannot imagine what the family is going through right now, though it sounds as though there were a great many relatives at the home offering their comfort and support.

Hug and kiss your kids whenever you have the opportunity…

I was thinking about friends of mine who have two kids with CP, and it made me wonder: do they understand the idea that they cannot talk but their parents and everyone around them can? I know people who have friends and family who live with CP (and autism), and I just never thought of this angle before. I have thought about the aspect that some of these folks cannot speak, but not about the idea that they might fully understand that they cannot speak. For some reason this is really touching to me, that a person would know that they were unable to speak, or whatever that thing is called that everyone is doing around them that involves opening of mouths and sounds to come out.

Anyway a short thought that I cannot let go of, so I’m placing it here, instead.

My Page - PodShow.com

So, as an OLN (now VERSUS) Tour de France junkie, I was in the minority of viewers who thought Kirsten Gum was entertaining and added a valid, different view point on the TdF coverage. We haven’t heard from her in awhile, but today I did some research and found out she is quite the team adventurer. On top of that, it turns out she had an opportunity to show some McGyver-like ingenuity during a recent race:

Scoop of the Week thus far goes to PQ media teamer Bob Heady, a former cop from the San Francisco Bay Area who described in wonderful detail the water-filtering ingenuity he witnessed near Checkpoint 18, on the San Rafael River. Kirsten Gum was the clever racer.

“The water was brown with silt, so Kirsten poured it through her underwear to remove the silt, then put the un-silted water through their water purifier.

“We presume that Kirsten, the celebrated on-air hostess of OLN’s Tour de France coverage, proceeded to then put her panties back on.

“But we can’t report that for certain. Much as we would’ve liked to, we didn’t peek.”

So, I have put in approximately 110 miles on the new* bike, and it has been sweet! I rode from work to home (28.9 mi) yesterday and home to work (31.7 mi) today, and though my legs are jello, I actually averaged okay, for me. I averaged 16.4 mph yesterday and 16.5 mph today. I ascended 540 ft yesterday and 640 ft today, which makes sense because the ride definitely is slightly uphill going to work.

What does not make sense to me is why this morning’s ride was 2.8 miles longer than yesterdays. Yes, it seems longer because you are ascending a litte more than when going the other way, and there is a killer, long slow climb by the airport near the end, but I actually took what I thought was a longer route yesterday. Guess I was wrong.

Anyway, I am getting serious about this so that I can ride the Sea Gull Century in October. I need more, longer rides between now and then, so riding to/from work is part of that strategy.

On a related note, my two cycling buds, Mike and Doug, each recently acquired new bikes. Mike just got a Giant TCR T-Mobile rig (in red/black) and Doug recently got a Cannondale 6-13 Pro. By comparison, my wheelset and drivetrain upgrades are in the noise, but so far, the upgrade works for me.

So Lance tells us that it’s not about the bike, but I can personally say that when you change out your 11-year-old Shimano RSX 7-speed drive train for a 9-speed Shimano 105 group, it makes a big difference. And, yes, the stock Mavic wheels from that 11-year-old Cannondale R500 are pretty heavy compared to the Easton Vistas that I also just put on the bike.

I am not a huge upgrade freak when it comes to my bike. Partly because I hate to admit that my new road bike is actually 11 years old. I got the Cannondale in 1995, and I have put a moderate amount of miles on the bike, but nothing earth shattering. Nothing I would actually admit to in the bike shop. My buddies who try to get me to ride more often know how many miles I put on the bike, and it isn’t that much by their standards, either. This year, however, I made two major upgrades out of necessity…
Anyway, I have ridden two organized rides this year: the Eat-A-Peach 40 mile ride for the MD Brain Injury Awareness group, and the Easton Challenge 41 mile ride sponsored by Atlantic Cycling. The EAP is in Carroll County, MD, and is unbelievably hilly, at least to me. The last climb of the day, Kate Wagner, remains my nemesis on this ride; I have dealt with Kate for three straight years, and while I am getting better at attacking her, I have not climbed her from bottom to top without at least stopping once. At least this year, I climbed her in a straight line. Two years ago, I was crazily riding up serpetine-style, which was both humiliating and stupid, considering that oncoming traffic could have crested the peak at any time! Last year, I believe that I stopped 2-3 times. This year, just once, and that will have to do until next year.

This year, about 1.5 miles into the ride, my rear shifter died on me, and I spent the next 25 miles trying to figure out which combination of lever pulls allowed me to shift into my lowest 4 gears of a 7 speed cassette. Thank God I have a triple, otherwise, I would have been calling the sag wagon. As it stood, I cut off 6 miles off the ride, probably unnecessarily as it turns out, because I never was positive that I had the make shift shifting protocol worked out, and there was still this Kate to deal with…

The Easton Challenge was an even better ride for me. I had a new drive train and new wheels, and I felt great doing the full 40 miles. Two years ago, I did 67 miles (the 61 mile ride plus a few extra to make a metric century), but I was drafting my work colleague, Mike Bowman, for the last half! This year, I rode the first 3/4 of the ride alone, and then caught a couple of riders with 10 miles to go. I drafted for about 5 miles, and then moved on ahead. Eventually, this couple caught up to me, thanks to the last light of the ride, but I felt pretty good at the end, and I think the bike definitely helped.

I have been interested in podcasting ever since I bought my first 3G 30GB iPod (White) and shortly thereafter heard about the enclosure tag for RSS feeds. I started listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code (DSC), which I caught via iPodder (Lemon). Since then, I have subscribed to quite a few podcasts, most of which are still active and growing, and I have tested the workflow to produce my own podcast, though I have not released anything to the wild, yet. I standardized on using iTunes as my podcatcher, which works well since I now have a 5G 60GB iPod (Black), and like use it to view iPod-compatible video content, which mostly comes from iTunes.

In spite of using iTunes as my standard mp3/podcasting/video player, I have been following the PodShow+ and PSMN development as these efforts have grown. I have my account with PodShow+, though I am still a listener rather than a producer. I look to change that soon; I am investigating the most appropriate mic for my purposes. I am also trying to figure out what content would be the most compelling around which to build a show.

Some of the tangents along the way have included a foray into SecondLife (SL), where a lot of podcasters and listeners have congregated based on Adam Curry’s interests in this other world. I have not been in-world in awhile, and when I am in SL, I feel like I am just getting started on things. Interestingly, AC indicated that shopping is a major factor for many SLers, but I do not feel that pull, for whatever reason.

Anyway, I am soliciting for input on reasonable priced microphones that work with a laptop and are not overly bulky. If it had to have phantom power, I would still consider it, but I think I’m looking for something that could be USB powered. Nothing over $150, and I would prefer less!

Well, I always knew that journalling has been a difficult habit to establish. In the days of blog, it remains true. I have been busy with a number of things, work and domestic, so that will continue to serve as my excuse.

We are getting the kitchen floor redone, which is a project long overdue. We are in day two of a three day installation. Yesterday, the crew ripped out the vinyl and subflooring. Today, the terracotta tile was initially installed. Tomorrow, the caulking should finish the process.

We also recently had a storm door installed, and it has already proven to be a nice addition. We now leave the front door open, with the storm door closed; the full glass really lets so much more light in than the original door. Also, it is easy to remove the glass section and replace with a full screen section. With two kids and a 90# Golden, I’m not sure we’ll use the screen for a few years.

Finally, we also replaced the slider in the kitchen onto the deck with a much higher-grade French slider. We still need to poly the inside, which is a light pine color. It is amazing what you become accustomed to slowly over time; our slider had become an incredible POS, to the point where it was difficult to actually open it. Unbelievable! So, the new slider is a drastic improvement, and together with the other house improvements, helps us enjoy our home even more than we already do.