In the Beginning Do you ever wonder at what point it was that many of your interests and passions took root? For me, tinkering with things mechanical started at a very early age. I was four or five years old when I received as a birthday gift a collection of small cars packaged within a container that looked like a garage. I remember those toy cars as being made of brightly painted stamped sheet metal, held together simply by tangs inserted into slots and bent over (no doubt by today's standards a potentially dangerous desig As I grew older, my desire to create with my hands continued. I built a number of forts both on the ground and up in trees. I also constructed the classic push cart. When I got my Tyco HO scale slot car set, I built an elaborate model in the garage. I designed and built mountains and towns, and then added miniatures of people around the track. I installed it all permanently on a large sheet of plywood and then invited friends over for competitions. But one of my greatest childhood projects, and the one that I remember with greatest pride, was the realization of a cartoon creation. It was an issue of CycleToons that inspired me to build a tricycle. Not just your typical everyday tricycle, but one that would be powered by an internal combustion engine. It would be the coolest thing on three wheels my neighbourhood had ever seen.
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n). Although I probably pushed them around on the floor at first, I quickly became engrossed in their construction. Before my mother was aware of what I was doing, I had taken all the cars apart in order to simulate a junkyard. I was very pleased with myself and looking forward to making the now necessary repairs in the toy garage, when I was discovered and my hard work was quickly deposited in the trash.