On Jul 27, 4:36*pm, willshak wrote:
DerbyDad03 wrote the following:

On Jul 27, 1:39 pm, willshak wrote:

DerbyDad03 wrote the following:

On Jul 27, 12:16 pm, Steve Barker wrote:

On 7/27/2010 10:24 AM, DerbyDad03 wrote:

This is nothing more than a story that shows that there are still some
very nice people left in this world. (Don't worry, it's tool related!)

Last week I was 350 miles from home at a competition with my daughter.
Due to a difference in the interpretation of the rules between our
team and the authors, my daughter's entry was deemed "illegal" at the
initial inspection. We had 24 hours to fix it or she could not
compete. (Said one official: "Look, we're not going to admit that
we're wrong, but we agree that the wording could be clearer. We'll see
what we can do about that for next year's competition, but for this
year, fix it or she doesn't compete.")

Seeing how upset my daughter was, the crew chief of a competing team
came over and said "I live 10 miles from here. Follow me home, use my
shop and tools and we'll get this thing ready for tomorrow."

One of tools we needed was an angle grinder. His grinder was beat -
the switch was broken, the cord was frayed, and the wheel was shot -
but it got the job done. He even joked about the condition of the
tool.

The next day, after passing inspection because of his help, I went out
and bought him a new grinder. He was genuinely grateful - as was his
wife! She told me later that whenever he pulled out that old grinder,
she walked away and wouldn't watch.

As it turns out, they are headed in our direction in the fall and
we've agreed to get together for dinner and some sight-seeing in my
neck of the woods.

They could have stood back and watched us be eliminated before the
competition even began (like the other teams did) but instead they
stepped up and helped us out. They've got a new grinder and we've got
some new friends.

very good. *I'm curious, what kind of project/competition is/was this?

thanks

steve

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Steve Barker
remove the "not" from my address to email- Hide quoted text -

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What's my username? *;-)

Sorry, I mistakenly posted this response to Steve's post
The All American Race (Soap Box Derby) in Akron Ohio??

--

Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
In the original Orange County. Est. 1683
To email, remove the double zeroes after @- Hide quoted text -

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Yep!

Congrats to your daughter (and you) for getting that far.
We used to have an AASBD prelim race in Pearl River, NY
I never participated but did watch it..

--

Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
In the original Orange County. Est. 1683
To email, remove the double zeroes after @

Thanks for the congrats, but this year was as little different.

My daughter has aged out of the regular racing after making it to
Akron 3 times. My son has been there 4 times, bringing home a World
Championship a few years back. I have another daughter who raced there
once. All in all, our family has been pretty successful at Derby
racing.

This year we were there for 2 reasons:

1 - To work in the pits taking care of the final alignments on the
cars from our region (which would include Pearl River - Don't kids
from your area race in New Rochelle now?) Our region took home World
Championships in 2 of the 6 divisions this year.

2 - We entered a car in the Ultimate Speed Challenge, which is a
fairly new division that still allows for innovation and home made
parts and cars. The rest of the divisions are kits built from parts
purchased from the AASBD.

In an effort to limit the construction rules in the USC division to
allow for innovation, they unfortunately also left them open to
different interpretations. We interpreted them one way, which they
agreed could be done once we pointed it out to them. However, in the
end they stuck by what they *meant*, not by how we read them and we
were forced to make some last minute - and substantial -
modifications to my daughter's car. Seeing as this was our first year,
we never expected to place at the top of the division, but we dropped
a few spots because of the modifications.

At their request, I have already submitted some changes to the wording
that should eliminate the confusion for future builders.

In any event, what could have been a pretty bad week ended up with us
having made some new friends and having our faith in the human race
restored.