Thinking About the Bike to Match the Road

Analyze what kind of roads stretch out in the places you ride to most often.
Imagine the roads in places you'd like to go next, and reflect that in your bike.

Not dressing it up, but tuning it up.

For a hobby rider like me, there's no moment more luxurious or satisfying than when the bike and the road come together.

Why I Change Bikes

Almost every time I want to build a new bike or change the parts spec, the motivation is a change in where I live.

Looking back, that's how I first came across Circles, too.
Back when I worked at a select shop, I moved from Osaka to Nagoya, and it all started when I got a KONA Rove ST, both for everyday transport and to widen the range of my photography hobby.

The World of Unpaved Roads That Opened Up in Nagoya

After that, I fell so deeply for bikes that I left my old camera hobby behind, and once I started tearing around the unpaved roads deep in the mountains of Ena and Toyota, I wanted a bike with fat tires that could take me into rougher, more untamed terrain.

So I got a SKLAR Super Something, with drop bars and running gear close to a mountain bike's.

Moving to Kanagawa, and a Change in How I Ride

Then, with the launch of Circles Tokyo, I moved to Kanagawa Prefecture, and my environment changed once again.
As I started heading out along the Tama River toward Okutama and Miyagase, the share of on-road riding naturally went up.

To match, I rebuilt the SKLAR substantially.

A New Playground: Higashi-Katsushika

Last year, I moved my base to the area called Higashi-Katsushika in northwestern Chiba Prefecture, home to the cities of Kashiwa and Matsudo.
Sandwiched between the Tone and Edo Rivers, the area is made up of the widest plateau in Japan and lowlands formed by sediment from the two rivers, giving it a very flat landscape with little change in elevation.

Residential areas up on the plateau.
Gravel that seems to go on forever along the Edo River.
And in the lowlands, gravel runs every which way among vast rice paddies laid out in the Edo period and marshes like Lake Teganuma.

It's the closest place to enjoy gravel from the east side of Tokyo, and a gravel spot where plenty of people come to train for Unbound Gravel, the world's biggest gravel race.

Riding Higashi-Katsushika the Way It Feels Best

What kind of tuning would it take to ride well here?

If only I could carry more speed, to better enjoy the thrill of smoothing out the jolts of the gravel.
If only the force I put into the pedals were converted instantly and completely into drive at the rear wheel, so I could charge straight up the short, steep climbs onto the plateau.
And even better if it had the capacity to handle the singletrack that pops up now and then.

Not speed to win races, but speed so that I can enjoy the ride.

Before I knew it, I'd stretched my budget well past its limits and gotten myself a custom-order titanium bike.

Seven Cycles

So which bike could fulfill the wishes I just described?
Of course, I considered all kinds of gravel bikes.

But since I planned to move over the parts I already had, the ROCKSHOX suspension fork became a sticking point.
This fork has a longer axle-to-crown length than a gravel fork, so fitting it as-is into a typical gravel frame throws the geometry off completely.

And down the line, I also wanted to use a rigid carbon fork.

To satisfy this selfish wish for "a design with geometry built around the suspension fork's travel that still doesn't fall apart when you swap in a rigid fork," making a fully custom frame was the surest approach.

A Brand That Lets You Choose Even the Design Philosophy

Next, I started researching various custom-order brands. Along the way, I looked at the Seven Cycles website and was blown away.

That's because every element that makes up a frame, right down to the seatstays, chainstays and derailleur hanger, came with multiple options, and it explained in fine detail what physical effect each one has.

Take the seatstays alone: they combine six shapes with four titanium tubes of different wall thicknesses and outer diameters to precisely build the ride quality the customer has in mind.

An Ordering Process That Starts With the Rider

The amount of information on the order sheet is overwhelming, too.
Beyond detailed body measurements, the components you plan to use and the dimensions of each part, they ask for every kind of information, including how you feel about the geometry of the bike you currently ride and exactly how you want to ride your next one.

I'll unpack the details of this ordering process in a separate blog post, so stay tuned.

Then they machine titanium tubes for that one customer and begin building the frame starting from the custom butting process.

I don't know of any other brand that addresses a rider's needs so logically and so sincerely.

I decided to entrust my next bike to Seven Cycles.

Evergreen SL

And here's the finished build: the Evergreen SL.

The groupset is SHIMANO GRX820.
With GRX moving to 12-speed, it can now run a super-wide-range 10-51t cassette. True to its UNSTOPPABLE concept, it puts no limits on where you go, from fast, flat riverbank dirt to the trails of Mt. Tsukuba.

The wheels are CHRIS KING ARD44s, sadly now discontinued.
The mismatched tread combination, a SCHWALBE G-One RX Pro up front and a G-One R Pro at the rear, gives a front that really bites on muddy roads, while the low-rolling-resistance rear tire allows fast cruising whatever the surface.

What I Noticed as Soon as I Started Riding

Riding the finished Evergreen on the Higashi-Katsushika gravel, I immediately realized it was even more of a bike than I'd imagined.

The smoothness on gravel in particular is beyond words.
The front suspension does its part, of course, but the seatstays unique to Seven Cycles, three-dimensionally curved and called "Moto Seat Stays," track the surface beautifully while softening the jolts from the road.

A Frame That's More Than Just Soft

So is it just a soft frame with a comfortable ride? Not at all.

At Seven Cycles, "drivetrain stiffness" and "ride quality" are managed as completely separate measures.

This time, I ordered "drivetrain stiffness on par with an aluminum road bike."
The force you put into the pedals goes to the rear wheel as it tracks the ground, and the bike accelerates instantly whatever the surface.

It delivered what I was looking for on a level beyond anything I'd imagined.

The Derailleur Hanger Behind the Shift Feel

And there's a sensation you can only experience on a SEVEN, one the spec sheets rarely mention.
That's the stiffness of the derailleur hanger.

The integrated hanger for thru-axles is 4.3 times stronger than a typical replaceable hanger.
It's so robust that the manufacturer officially states "there has never been a single case of one breaking."

A hanger that won't break in a crash is a big advantage for a tool you'll ride for years, but what surprised me even more was how direct the shifting feels.

When you shift, the thick solid titanium takes the torque of the derailleur trying to move without budging in the slightest.
Especially when pushing the chain up toward the low gears, where pedaling force tends to load things up, the derailleur responds instantly to the STI lever stroke with zero lag. That crisp shift feel is something I've never experienced on any bike I've ridden before.

Like the sound of a Chris King hub, the pleasure of feeling a function come through your senses is a huge part of riding bikes as a hobby, isn't it?

A Tool That Keeps Answering a Changing Life

A bike is a tool that changes shape to match changes in the rider's living environment and the way they play.

With not only its overall dimensions but the wall thickness of every single tube tuned, this titanium frame becomes a bike personalized to a degree that swapping parts could never achieve.

If you're looking for a reliable tool that fits your environment and body perfectly and that you can keep using for years, please come talk to us.

This bike shows one form that answer can take.