i just picked up the summer '06 copy of the rivendell reader at a local bike shop. the more i read about grant's little enterprise, the more i become convinced no one should deal with the guy, ever.

Rivendell 'membership', 'prebooking' for things not in the country yet, bad advice (example, his flawed and misleading, i might say ignorant, assertion loaded basket bikes handle just as good as a bike packed for touring with the weight down low) and perienally 'out of stock' items aside,

his quickbeams are made by panasonic. his bleriots and some other frames are produced in tawian.I suspect some of his rambouilets are gruppo'd overseas to ship direct to his dealers. not that theres anything wrong with that, it just isn't what a 'custom' bike builder does. those are factory produced framesets. Grant's a marketing machine with some good specs.

a company like soma sells non custom frames for 400 bucks or so, surlys even less. and soma's got lugged framesets this year as well, probably produced at the same factory grant gets his bleriots brazed at.

Sour icing on the cake - in this summer '06 reader, he berated a dissatisfied customer (anonymously) that was unhappy with their Quickbeam purchase using 3 pages of the reader, including a picture of the 'offending' frame.

he found it necessary to print his 900 word defense he was going to send the purchaser about the flaws in the frameset, but deferred to send it privately. instead, he printed it so all his members could see how highbrow, lowlife, P.O.S. or what ever Grant thinks of himself. He went on and on about the 'dust mites' in the purchasers' eyebrows!

he feared being slammed on the internet, and i am happy to oblige him.

what a piece of work that grant peterson is. My dislike for such pretence borders on odious. the guy is pathetic.

The OP probably couldn't get an Atlantis in time anyway.
Maybe he can design a great bike, but i wouldn't deal with his company if i were you.