you’re sitting.’ He was right, of course. Brian

had put me at my ease and found the perfect

arrangement of frame tube angles and lengths

for my build. The difference between the way

he had the ‘template’ bike set up to the way

I thought it ought to be when we started

had meant adding a few millimetres here

and a couple of centimetres there, and the

comparison was dramatic. The bike felt

fantastic, but this was just a template to

measure what I needed. The real bike build

was yet to come.

The frame measurements that Brian had

taken with the able assistance of Gareth, who’s

learned more about bikes while working with

Brian than I will ever know, were passed to

Brian’s son, Jason, who builds the famous

Rourke frames. Using a jig to hold everything

in place, Jason showed me how he puts one

of these masterpieces together. For Jason, the

most important thing was to make sure that

every angle was precise, every measurement

unfailingly accurate and every weld absolutely

straight. He was more worried than I was about

the record attempt. In fact, he said he would

rather be riding the bike than building it, so

concerned was he that the bike would perform

flawlessly. At those sorts of speeds, you see, if

the bike is not perfectly aligned the frame can

flex or wobble – and I would be left picking my

teeth out of my nose . . . again.

Top: I was proud to have
my name on such
a fantastic machine.

Bottom: From an arty
angle this chain could
almost be part of any
average bike . . .

BUILDING A rECOrD BrEAKEr    47