The Continuing Adventures of Bonnie and Clyde

Our family has been involved in scouting since 1996, when my stepson joined his first cub scout den.  It was fun to do activities with the other boys, but the highlight of the year for my husband stepson was planning, building and racing the little car out of a block of wood to race at the pack Pinewood Derby.

We raced every cub scout year, and each year the guys would improve their technique.  A slightly more aerodynamic design. Better spinning wheels.  Optimum placement of the weights.  Testing, weighing, racing.  And then, suddenly, my stepson had moved on to Boy Scouts, where they don’t race in the derby any longer.

So, Dad was quite happy when Clyde became old enough to race, and the Pinewood Derby tradition could start all over again.   We had the monorail car, the Mater car, the arrow car, and this year, our final year, was a street racer.  We jokingly call it the Al Capone car.  (The second choice was a hamster-mobile.  I’m glad to see that good sense won out on that one because there’s nothing aerodynamic about our hamster.)

As I’ve mentioned in the past, each car races three times.  There are three different lanes on the track, and each car races once in each lane, and then the times are averaged.  Clyde’s car won in its first race, with a great time, and he was quite excited!  Victory was within reach, finally!

And then, as it’s wont to, near tragedy struck.  Another scout picked up Clyde’s car from the track, to hand it to Clyde, and dropped it.

Little car weights and decorations everywhere.  The thunderclouds rolled into Clyde’s countenance, and a year ago, that would have been the end of the Derby for us.  But, a timeout was called, and Clyde was allowed to re-pitstop his car, since it wasn’t his fault.  Dad and Clyde didn’t have time to glue on the pieces, but they were able to make do with some heavy-duty tape and some creative decorating.  Re-weighed the car to make sure it was within the weight standards, and Clyde’s car ran in the next two races.  And won them both.

Here it is, the 2nd race, on lane 2.

Slightly slower times than the first race (we think a wheel went off-kilter when it was dropped, but there was no time to fix that), but no-one could say that he rigged the car to go faster.  And most satisfying of all was that Clyde was able to pull himself together to keep racing.  And that made our final Pinewood Derby the most fantastic race of them all.

Long-time readers of this blog know that one of the perks of homeschooling for our family is the flexible travel schedule.  We don’t worry about the school calendar (except to know when NOT to tour the museums), so after Christmas, we pack up the new things, grab some snacks and hit the road to Florida.  This year was to be a little different, as we were going to fly to Florida:  a quick trip the first day to southern Georgia, a lunch stop near Orlando, a dinner stop near Tampa, and then on to our tropical destination of Naples.

That was the plan, anyway.  Yeah, the plans never quite work out the way we plan.  Long-time readers know that, too.

We woke up early on Saturday, and the weather was a bit questionable to fly our plane.   We would probably have been safe enough to make it, but that’s not quite good enough for my very conservative-minded husband (at least in matters of air travel), so we threw the kids, the toys, and the snacks into the car, and started driving.  We had plans in Orlando the next afternoon’s lunchtime; a quick plane ride, and a very, very, long car ride.  But we did it.  We drove further that first day than we ever had before.  And not one, “Are we there yet?”  Success!

Our plans changed again the 2nd day when our plans near Orlando fell through; we ended up in Tampa a little early.  It was a very fun and relaxing stop.

The kids played on the Wii with their friends, we enjoyed dinner, the adults had drinks and laughs, and we had just a short drive the next morning to make it to Naples.

At first, it seemed that the rest of our vacation would follow the regular plans.  Bonnie and Clyde quickly got into the spirit of card games and swimming.  Then, too quickly, it was New Year’s Eve.

Our New Year’s Eve tradition is to have pizza and shrimp, and then stay up too late watching the ball drop with Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve show.  More change.  We ended up having dinner at Mel’s Diner instead, because the kids were adamant that they have dinner with George Henry on this trip again.  George was very generous with his time; and it appears that he remembers us from year to year, and we enjoyed catching up on his exploits from the past year.  He even taught the kids a new Christmas carol … we’re hoping that they unlearn it very soon.  There’s a reason that George got nuttin’ for Christmas!

So, the shrimp didn’t come out until almost midnight, but we did watch Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest see in the New Year.  We didn’t do much on New Years (the kids actually slept in), but swim. Beats the snow!

Sometimes there’s a little too much leisure time, so it seemed like a good time to take a field trip.   We piled in the car and drove to Shark Valley – Everglades National Park. It had been a few years since the adults had been there, and Bonnie and Clyde had never been.  Count it as a school day!  We saw lots of great Florida wildlife, and the park ranger tried to make her talk interesting for the kids (i.e., she included as many gross facts as she could think of).

An ominous greeter in Shark Valley

Nesting Ahinga

Great Blue Heron

Baby alligators

Overall, the tour was fascinating, but really, did we need to know that turkey buzzards can projectile vomit over 6 feet as a defense mechanism?  Or that they defecate on their feet, and that’s why their feet are white?  Though it was interesting that their stomachs contain enzymes, etc. that can kill off botulism and E. coli – seems like that would be a good field of research to delve into.  I’m sure that part went over the kids’ heads, though, as most of the kids on the tour were still giggling about vultures throwing up …

That’s a lot of school work, and we had planned a very quiet weekend, but our plans changed again.  Our friends in Tampa had their plans change, too, and we decided on an impromptu visit to the beach together.  So, the kids and I piled into the car and made a quick trip up to Sanibel Island to Bowman’s Beach to spend the day in the sun and surf.  The kids enjoyed a day of building sand castles, playing football in the surf, and playing in the sand.  A fisherman a little further up the beach landed a 4′ nurse shark while we were there, even.  Pretty neat to see a bald eagle, too.

We had planned a quiet Sunday at the pool, but again, plans changed, and we ended up at the Museum of Science and Discovery in Fort Lauderdale with friends from Port St. Lucie.  The kids enjoyed taking a simulator ride to Mars, figuring out puzzles, making dinosaur molds.  They did not touch the snake, though, even though he was quite friendly.  A nice little museum – plenty to do to fill the day, but you didn’t leave feeling like you had missed out on half of it.

Feeling the winds of a plane as it takes off:

The future Air Force pilots enjoyed the flight simulators.

The pilots of this plane didn’t notice the thing affecting their wind resistance on take off.

And then Dad figured out that unraveling interpersonal relationships can be tricky.

The rest of the vacation was pretty peaceful – more games and more swimming.  Now that the kids are home, they really miss the 80 degree weather (me too!).  Next week – back to school!