Ritchey Swiss Cross - the 'Do Most Things' build

That feeling when you get a redelivery notice, get redelivery thinking it's your frame set, but then find out it's your Thomson seat post (sent the same day, but separately).

Bollocks.

Fingers crossed the frame set is in Japan for me...somewhere.

Love the swiss cross. Got a road breakaway and it rides beautifully, really want one of these to complete the set...

I'll have a full steel stable once this and the Field arrived (Eimei NJS - fixed, Swiss Cross - CX/light touring, Field - disc road) and I really can't wait.

I hope the Ritchey is amazing but not so amazing I want to buy more bikes!

Arrived (finally). Sat waiting to be sent with Wiggle for a long time then nominal wait for customs here (minor charge).

Thing of beauty.

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@amey bokeh approval awaited...

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Damn, thats mighty perty!

Is that an older or newer version?

It's the newer version.

I would've probably preferred the older paint job but both are beautiful so I'm easy!

Build day in rural Japan at Rapha Japan HQ was a pleasure. Yano San is an incredible guy and I am very much happy with the final build.

Bigger cassette, black bar tape, cross tires all got stuck in customs so these things will change on arrival.

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Strong .. ride report pls

Only finished in time for the last train but I'll return relatively soon I hope.

And the other parts arrived from Germany...

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Good call on the baby limus, nice tyres. Stay out of deep mud though.

very nice build. love these bikes.

Shakedown ride...

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That is delightful. Well done

So right. I do hope the disk upgrade to the the black one comes more like this rather than the rather boring first release they did.

Fit

That sir, is a thing of beauty... although I think blackwalls looked better ;)

Cheers all! In road mode below (before my Field arrives), on some spare Zipp 60s.

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I realised that, since sorting this build, I hadn't really provided any kind of 'ride report'.

Despite riding this loads (mostly on the road whilst waiting for the Field to be finished), I hadn't been able to ride off-road too much due to the tendons in my wrist rubbing against the 3 plates in there when braking too much (I'm told by my doctor that the risk of rupturing/tearing the tendons is now quite high).

Having felt marginally less pain of late, I got out in Chiba prefecture, a sparsely populated trail/CX/MTB wonderland around an hour drive from Tokyo, with two mates (Strava link HERE but, in summary, 60.6km with 1,105m of elevation gain across lots of gravel, wet rocks, mud from a heavy downpour the day before...you get the idea).

Very painful wrist afterwards, mildly eased by a dip in an onsen (hot spring) after the ride, but so much fun.

I have found the Swiss Cross on the CX1 drivetrain to be fun as a road bike, city bike, CX bike, and a 'go-anywhere' off-road bike. Basically, it feels like being a kid again when I ride it.

Some shots from the ride follow (the worst of the terrain wasn't caught on camera as we were too busy trying not to come off).

Some photos from Sunday's ride

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Nice photos. I miss being in Japan.

Doing it right.

When were you here?