Yesterday I went to Jitensha Studio and put down a deposit for an Ebisu All Purpose frameset. Hiroshi was there, so were many people; it was Hiroshi's first day back from Japan after a month and everyone was there buying something or asking questions. We chatted a bit. He had a frame diagram where he put in numbers for the dimension of the frame. I mounted a 58cm All Purpose (in fact the one he submitted to Bicycle Quarterly for review) and it was a little too big. I decided to go with a custom geometry of 57cm seat tube and 56cm top tube. I will also pick a custom color. Essentially I am getting a custom bike since the All Purpose, well, fits my purpose pretty well. Since there were so many folks there, Hiroshi said he will fax the order to the builder to reserve a spot, but I can go back in within a month to nail down more details. I still have to decide if I want to go with 650b wheels. But I am excited to get a bike frame that is essentially built for me. I have began to collect parts for the build and selling off parts I don't need to help fund the purchase. I even created a spreadsheet on Google Docs to track the progress of my collection and cost.
For an essentially custom bike the price is really very reasonable. Heck, I could pay more for a prdouction that has not even 1/10 of the attention put into this Ebisu. I will keep a log of progress and parts list to let folks know where I am in the project. More to come!
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