What Is It About Santa Cruz Bikes?

Every time my old mountain bike is nearing at the end of its life, I try my darnedest to constantly borrow bikes instead of further beating my dead horse.

Last year I bought a house instead of a new bike, and as a result this summer my Bronson has seen the inside of the shop more than it has seen singletrack. I want a new pony. I borrowed a top-of-the-line Trek Fuel EX and found it was a great bike but not the right steed for me. It didn’t fit right and rode too much like a 29er…whatever that means these days. I borrowed a Trek Remedy, which was an absolute delight. It required a little bit of adjustment in my riding style but was thrilling downhill and even uphill. Then I rode both a Santa Cruz Nomad and a Juliana Strega, which are the same bike, so I’ll just refer to the lady version. Zero adjustment, to bike or style, immediate heart-pounding adoration.

Why do Santa Cruz bikes always feel like home? It might require some serious digging into geometry charts or a better understanding of pivot points than I have, but every Santa Cruz I’ve tried through the years felt intuitive and so, so fun.

Jumping!

The Strega is a big bike. I’ve never considered getting one because at almost seven inches of squish, it’s overkill for everything I ride. It’s a downhill sled dressed up as a trail bike. Or so I thought. I took it on obligatory lift rides at two different bike parks and it was joyous. It’s so muscular but manageable, so playful, so jumpable!

But then I took it on an aggressive thirty-mile all-singletrack trail ride. I climbed for hours and hours on it, motoring over chunky rocks and up steep loose switchbacks. The Strega doesn’t even have a shock lock-out, but hot damn can it climb. The pedaling platform is much more efficient than on my current Santa Cruz.

My only hang-ups were literal pedal hang-ups. I guess everyone else in the world is skilled enough to cope with modern, low bottom brackets but that is going to take some figuring out on my part. Also it’s a heavy bike. When I stopped racing, that stopped mattering to me, but the Strega is not begging to time trial up dirt roads or anything.

Cornering!

While I was riding a beautiful ridgeline through a burn zone in Montana on a perfect bike, I remembered that I have had a very torrid and abiding love affair with Santa Cruz. Long long ago, Sycamore Cycles was in downtown Brevard and Wes carried Santa Cruz for a while. When I was eleven I saw the first iteration of a Juliana and was convinced that I needed to own one someday, because it’s basically my name, duh.

One time, when I was in middle school, a family friend let me take her Superlight out for a ride and I remember so distinctly that amazing feeling of clearing, for the first time ever, the steep root-baskety left-hander on the Middle (Upper Lower?) Black Mountain climb.

When I first threw a leg over what is now my Bronson, it was Tim Koerber’s bike. We were riding Teton Pass laps and I was on a different borrowed bike, because I wanted to be done with my Specialized Era. I had done a lot of research and narrowed my next purchase down to a couple different XC’esque bikes, but then I got on the Bronson and didn’t make a single adjustment and found myself boosting root gaps on Jimmy’s Mom. By the bottom of one short DH run I made Tim an offer.

All of which is just a long way of saying, I’m going to buy a new Bronson ASAP because version 3.0 just got released and it has the same suspension design as the Strega. Yes please.

Climbing!