This video producer should have hired George Costanza.

OK, now I understand. I thought there was an incompatibility between the levers and the rest of the groupset. Last 10-speed Red shifter internals are indeed incompatible with all other 10-speed shifters.

2010 Force
Strava says I have 53k miles on it. Who knows how many hours but I've never had a problem with it

I've not read this entire thread, but wanted to chime in. I ride Force 22. I'm no engineer, but it seems to me that having one lever for brakes and one lever for shifting is fundamentally less complex and therefore more reliable than the way Shimano does it with the dual function brake lever. Just my two cents.

Also, there is a youtube video reviewing Ultegra vs. Force. The reviewer is a bike mechanic and he says the shifting on the Force was less "finicky" than on the Ultegra. That swayed me quite a bit.

I rode my Ultegra bike for the first time in a long while today. I went to shift up from the smallest rear cog and nothing happened. I thought, "oh great!", stopped, checked the cable and it was fine then a big doh, use the brake lever stupid!

Double tap seems more natural to me too. But I like my Ultegra too.

changing between systems is always a little funky. I have a 30 speed Record touring bike, a 22 speed Red/XO mountain bike, and a 22spd Dura-Ace road bike.

There's always a little uncomfortable period of adjustment, but a physically coordinated person can get past that. I usually have a couple of "Doh!" moments early in rides.

SRAM always feels a little strange, but that's probably because it's the newest technique.

I have eTap and Rival 1x... takes 2 seconds to readjust.

Wait a minute. You have Red, like SRAM? Say it isn't so, Joe. Unpossible.

when you get loaned a bike to train for the Divide, you have to accept it with the components given to you.

I'm using ~12 year old Ultegra 6600 as the componentry on my primary road bike. It's absolutely bulletproof and hardly "finicky". I have 6800 on my gravel bike. It's similarly bulletproof. The majority of people I ride with are on 6700 or 6800 and I've never heard of a problem. Granted, I've never heard of a commonly-occurring problem with any SRAM or Campy either. Components are very reliable in general.

To the OP: I know you say you flushed the levers. Did you fill the entire lever body at least twice until dripping with degreaser? That's the right way to do it: heavy, heavy application. Flushing levers is a messy outside job or you're not doing it right. Sticky levers is a fairly common problem for any brand. Luckily, it's generally easy to fix. Also, the levers should not need heavy grease at all, that's just going to gum them up. I use light lubes like ProLink in the levers.

My bike shop recommended that I flush them with WD-40 heavily. So that's what I did over a drain pan. When I first took the hoods off originally the grease that was in there was black and oxide looking like it had metal grit in mixed with the grease. It just looked like a black paste and there wasn't much grease in there just a thin film and it was clumped in a couple places. After flushing it out with WD-40 really good I dried it out as best I could and I used a red moly waterproof wheel bearing Grease. It's the same stuff I use in My Cup and Cone wheel hubs from Lucas. It's not overly thick but man it's good stuff.