Posted on 09/27/2003 8:49:49 PM PDT by mhking
TORONTO -- A dad-and-daughter team from Edmonton glued together a win in a national Sun Media competition to build a race cart out of bubble gum and household refuse.
Six teams of two chewed their way through the competition at The Toronto Sun yesterday, using gum as the glue to keep things together.
Winners of The Sun's Kart Racer contest found themselves in a sticky situation as the kids, aged eight to 14, raced to win the $3,500 kart used in the Alliance Atlantis movie Kart Racer. The teams were chosen from Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto and had 15 minutes to build the makeshift Kart.
"Ugh, God, it's still warm," Matthew MacDonald, 15, said as his partner slapped down her mouthful of gum into his palm.
Matthew and his cousin Meghan Finn, 12, from Mississauga, Ont.,worked frantically, talking to each other through impossibly large wads of gum.
"Jus' kee' chewig!" Matthew yelled as he tried to glue a paper plate wheel to the box.
Competitors were given pop cans, water bottles, pompoms, scissors, paper plates, pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks and a sea of Dubble Bubble gum to build their carts.
Winnipeg mom Marlene and son Nathan Hornick, 10, tried to score brownie points by writing The Sun's name across the front, but it wasn't enough to knock Team Edmonton's Aubrey Nousek and dad Mike from driving away with the win.
Aubrey, 8, beamed as she sat in her new 2003 Sun Kart Racer. Her dad held up their winning box cart that cleverly used water bottles for headlights, and streamers and pompoms as decoration.
"This is fantastic," Mike said. "We have a go-kart facility near us. We're signing up now and hockey's going to be on the backburner."
The winners arrived Thursday and stayed in Toronto for three nights, where they've already toured the Dubble Bubble factory, checked out the science centre and watched an advance screening of Kart Racer.
Though Aubrey said she had jaw cramps from chewing so much gum, she said she hasn't been turned off by the pink stuff yet.
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