If you build it, they will roll
<p>Mickey Howard, 14, concentrates as he plays harmonica, juggles and rides his unicycle Sunday at Coeur d’Alene’s inaugural Kinetic Fest. His little sisters Hazel, 9, left, and Lydia, 12, ride alongside him as the youngest, Sally, 6, follows with a wheelbarrow.</p>
<p>Deborah Loy uses a stepladder to reach creative heights Sunday as she and Daris Judd, center, and Karlene Schoedel work on an original kinetic sculpture.</p>
<p>John Michael, 13, pedals a rather unusual tricycle as Max Bolkovatz, 11, walks next to him in the Kinetic Festival Parade in Riverstone on Sunday.</p>
<p>Ross Welburn “lunges” his sharkmobile at joyful bystanders Sunday during the Kinetic Festival Parade. Welburn, a retired engineer, made the mobile shark to entertain kids and because “it’s just plain, good old-fashioned fun.”</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - For an 11-year-old, Gabriel Randles sure knows a lot about engineering.
The Rathdrum 'tween was exuberant to discuss the details of the "Red Tornado," his personal spin on an old-fashioned pedal car, during Coeur d'Alene's first Kinetic Fest on Sunday at Riverstone.
"It was a lot longer, so it would have been like a pedal car, but we cut it off because the front really wasn't doing any purpose," he said, pointing to different parts of his three-wheeled invention. "That actually opened up more of the bottom to show people the structural building. I have a lot of triangles in here, as you can see, to support it."
Gabriel said he named it the "Red Tornado" because "it's red and it goes slow and dangerous." The kinetic contraption took him two weeks to build in workspace at Gizmo-CDA.
"Gizmo helped me with the plasma cutting, welding and the angle grinding," he said. "They also supported me with all three of the bikes that I used and basically everything on this."
The art of movement was at its most sublime as several human-powered, wheeled creations rolled into Riverstone for the Kinetic Festival. It was similar to a local World's Fair, celebrating the ingenuity and talents of inventors of all ages.
Max Bolkovatz, 11, of Coeur d'Alene, worked with a team of other youngsters for about a week to create an eye-catching kinetic vehicle with large wheels. He said he learned how to weld and plasma cut while building it.
"This creation is a giant tricycle," Max said. "You know back in the old days where they had those tricycles with one giant wheel in the front of it? This is basically that backwards. Instead of one giant wheel in the front, we have two giant wheels in the back."
The festival began with a morning parade, where people lined the sidewalks of Riverstone and cheered for the inventors as they skated and pedaled past.
Retired engineer Ross Welburn's gray and white shark was a hit with the crowd as he played the theme to "Jaws" and pretended to lunge toward unsuspecting victims. He wore the "fin" atop his head and pedaled from within the body of his kinetic cartilaginous fish contraption as a fake leg hung from the smiling shark's mouth.
"I wanted to be an animal because kids love animals, then I wanted to put it on a bike because I didn't want to work too hard making a vehicle," said Welburn, of Hayden. "It's just plain, good old-fashioned fun."
The wheeled contraptions didn't need to have more than one wheel. Mickey Howard, 14, of Coeur d'Alene, rode his unicycle in the parade while he juggled and played the harmonica.
"I think it's fun," he said. "It's just fun to go around and do this and see how other people react to it."
He said he spends two hours a day practicing and dabbles with about 10 different instruments. He was excited to say he worked as a mentor and helped build some of the vehicles for the fest, and he was happy to be a part of the first Kinetic Fest.
"It's really fun, and I think they should keep doing it," he said.
The Coeur d'Alene Kinetic Fest was hosted and organized by Gizmo-CDA, CDASk8Prk, and BikeCDA. The day's activities included a skateboard extravaganza, bike rodeo, kinetic sculpture competition, food vendors and more.
"I think the parade was awesome. People were really liking to see how other people took vehicles that were normally two wheels and made them four, made them a shark, a couch, whatever they did," said Barbara Pleason Mueller, co-founder of Gizmo-CDA and Kinetic Fest co-organizer. "I think what was happening was really important for the community to see that there are other ways to think about and use materials. The weeks that have led up to this have been so exciting at Gizmo because young kids, 6-year-olds, were making things out of cardboard, 10-year-olds were making things out of wood, 12-year-olds were welding in the welding shop. They were all rethinking all the bikes that were there, and none of them look like regular bikes anymore."