January 2026 What's up?

At Camp Far West Reservoir, April 2025.

It's been a while since I've posted here, so I thought I'd add a short recap of last year's riding and a few updates on my current bikes. 

I ended 2025 with a total 4105 miles, not too bad considering I missed most of June, July and August due to our road trip to Alaska! I did have to push myself a bit to get over the 4,000 mile mark at the end. I also managed to do my century, May 2025 century ride. 

2025's century ride, May.

Equipment-wise, my experiment with 10-speed cassette friction shifting continued with mixed results. On my Olympic, the shifting with Simplex retro-friction shifters and a Shimano 105 RD was very good. But shifting on my KOM, which used SunTour Barcons and a couple of different derailleurs had a problem in one particular gear, the third largest cog was difficult to find and tended to skip to the adjacent cog. Eventually. I got tired of the problem and switched back to 8 speeds. At the same time I added my Shimano indexed bar end shifters for fun. The result has been successful and I don't miss the trouble I had shifting, although I still don't know what caused the problem. Future experience has caused me to suspect the Bucklos cassette, more on that later.

Around the end of the year I got the urge to do some mods to my Ritchey. I decided to give the 1X transmission fad a try. I picked up a massive Bucklos 11-42 10 speed cassette, a 38T narrow/wide chainring, and a Microshift Sword RD. I made the mistake of ordering a Microshift 10 speed upgrade kit for my Microshift 8 speed bar end shifter.

It was a very interesting exercise getting the bar end converted and it gave me a lot on insight as to how they work, however, the barrel diameter of the 8 speed shifter is not compatible with the Sword RD, there's not enough cable pull. I finally had to order a Microshift bar end specifically designed for that type of RD. 

That wasn't quite all I needed to do, however. I could not get reliable indexed shifting. Eventually, I noticed that the derailleur was not bottoming out (in the highest gear, outermost position). I added a 1mm spacer to the drive side axle. This pushed the cassette away from the frame just enough to get everything aligned properly! 

At this point the shifting was more reliable but still a little noisy in a couple of gears. In frustration, I ordered a Shimano 11-42 cassette and installed it, just to see if the cheap Bucklos was the problem. The noise has abated and shifting is now pretty reliable! Could it be that the cheap cassette was the problem? Well, it's hard to say for sure, some time in the future I'll re-install it and see.

Here's the Ritchey with it's new 1X drivetrain.

A close up. The M/S Sword equipment seems pretty nice.

One thing I had to get used to with 1X is the position of the rear derailleur while in the largest cog; It's almost parallel to the chainstay! I had to double check online resources to ensure I had the proper chainlenght. This is the new normal I guess, but it looks alarming at first. 

This derailleur position is okay!

Another change to the Ritchey is the tires. I've given up on tubeless technology. It is just a pain to keep going, especially on a bike that isn't ridden all the time. So I pulled the 47mm Gavel Kings off and install the tubed 42mm's for now. I'll have to find some tubes for the 47's some day as they are still in fine shape.

And so, that's the recap of a less than remarkable year! I hope to get some more interesting rides in during 2026, so stay tuned!

On Rioso Road, May, 2025.