"This is what the barn looked like when I bought it, on the right you can see my dog Amber," Brodie begins his talk and it's worth not clicking away straight away. Because this isn't just a boomer talking about the highlights of his long life. Rather, the frame-building guru lays out the pieces that make up the story of a downhill bike that was way ahead of its time in 1998 and still looks innovative today. What does this have to do with the barn in danger of collapsing? The handyman who built Brodie's new house wanted a downhill bike. Not just any bike, but one with a Shimano Nexus hub above the bottom bracket. He had seen this somewhere and asked the frame builder if he could weld something like this together for him.

Brodie could and the Handyman and he agreed that they would put the same number of hours of work into each other's object. After 100 hours, the house was finished and the Sixty-Niner was ready to drive. The number stands for the steering angle, which was considered very slack at the end of the nineties. This is the beginning of the unique bike, which had to go through a lot before it returned to its builder's workshop 24 years later. The best way to hear what it went through is from the mouth of the gifted storyteller Paul Brodie. And yes, screwdriving and welding aficionados will also get their money's worth.

A legend among frame builders

Paul Brodie was one of the first to weld frames for Rocky Mountain in Vancouver. He himself says he was the first. He worked for the company from 1984 to 1986, then founded his own brand: Brodie Bicycles. He sold this in the nineties. The Canadian is regarded as the inventor of the sloping top tube, which has been a standard in mountain bike geometry for decades. In 2005, the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inducted "the British Columbians" - half a dozen Canadians who exported the first mountain bikes from California in the early 1980s and founded an association and a racing series. Brodie was one of them. The brands Rocky Mountain, Kona and Syncros were founded by representatives of the "British Columbians".

The vintage motorcycles he restores are at least as spectacular as Brodie's mountain bikes. And he has a Youtube channel where he presents his gems as well as his welding and wrenching skills.