GERMANY: German cycling fanatic builds "world's largest biking fish" out of 10,000 bicycle bells

Didi Senft from the eastern town of Storkow (pron.: SHTORK-oh), near Berlin, has already built several unusual bicycles since giving up amateur cycling 30 years ago. Senft hopes to break a world record with his latest creation which took him more than 4 months to complete. On Saturday (March 3), Senft took his new vehicle for its frist test drive to the neighbouring town of Philadelphia, an 11 kilometre trip to -- a fish restaurant. Senft was thrilled. "The trip here was really tiring, with all the potholes through the woods. I was very concerned that the axle might break," Senft told Reuters Television, sitting atop his fish bike. "But once we arrived in Philadelphia, it rolled beautifully. At the intersection there, I had to be a little careful with all the cars but then it all went really well." "This was a great test drive. It worked the first time, yeah!," Senft screamed with joy, sitting on top of his "If you work on something for almost half a year then this is a really special day. I was awake at 3:30 this morning," he admitted. "There are more than 50,000 welding seams and because of the aluminum the fumes were poisonous. But today, I'm just extremely happy to be standing here with this fish outside the fish restaurant." When Senft isn't busy building bicycles, he travels to cycle races and events such as the Tour de France on his wacky bikes, wearing his trademark red devils costume - to fire the hearts of the fans, he says. On Saturday, his two grandchildren were with him who naturally did not accompany him on ordinary bicycles. They both proudly steered their own mini fish bikes -- made by grandpa. (1 U.S. dollar =.7597 Euro)

ITN Source | March 10, 2007

Tags:. .saturday. .both. .town. .hearts. .complete