Bicycle Valentines #4 – By Matthew Lee
{Photo Credits: Matthew Lee, unless noted.}
Andrew’s Intro:
Two-wheeled nostalgia is a beautiful thing, and Matthew’s done a lovely job of capturing his love affair with Santa Cruz Bicycles’ short-lived APP {Actual Pivot Point} half-Nomad-half-Bullit. Along with its short-travel sister, the Nickel, the Butcher is representative of a strange time in bike design for many brands, the early 2010s, and went extinct with SCB’s full model relaunch in 2013.
We’re talking about relatively super-short Reach numbers*, slack actual and effective seat tube angles, front derailleurs and triple cranks, 135x10mm QR rear ends, 26″ wheels, long stems, tiny brakes, 150mm travel bikes with inline shocks, yet a current-enough look {we are not talking about a ’90s Tazmon} that you really had to be there to understand the attraction.
*{The Clairebarian’s size small hardtail from 2019 has ~ the same Reach as an Xtra-Large 2012 Butcher.}
By Matthew Lee:
Like star-crossed lovers, the Santa Cruz Butcher and I were never meant to be together for long. Call it fate, call it a hot summer fling shot through with first times, call it what you will – this bike made an indelible mark on my heart and added a distinct curve to my nascent career path.
Let’s rewind the clock to June of 2012. I’m in the summer between my third and fourth years at Carleton University, where I’m doing my middling best to get through a degree in Journalism. Really, though, the degree is more of an elaborate scheme to try and get paid to ride a bike, as I knew I would never be talented (or brave) enough to get sponsored. I’d moved to Pemberton at the beginning of May, fulfilling a promise I’d made to myself three years earlier to spend as much time as I could being a bike bum. Parental concerns be damned.
Turning wrenches (badly) at the Bike Co for both their Whistler (RIP) and Pemberton locations, I wound up getting interviewed by none other than an Aircast-bound and Vespa-riding Seb Kemp for a bit part in an article he was putting together for Dirt Magazine about the riding scene in Pemby. Yes, I did buy a copy of the magazine once it went to print, and it’s the only time my name has appeared in any physical MTB media to date.
In any case, he and I got to talking, and after his cursory examination of my then-current rig (a Norco Bigfoot that I still have to this day), he proposed loaning me a spare frame he had, but with conditions. The conditions were thus: 1) I was to use the bike to help catapult me into the highly-paid and glamourous world of mountain bike journalism, and 2) that I give the frame back when he requested. Needless to say, I readily agreed to the stipulations and started planning my build.
Seb was kind enough to not only include the frame but also a fork, headset, and seatpost. That meant I was on the hook for pretty much everything else. Thankfully, Bike Co had a ‘little black book’ purchasing policy at the time – you could tack on nearly whatever you wanted to an order or grab it from stock at the shop and write it down in a Moleskine book tucked under the cash drawer. Like any good Faustian bargain, there was a catch: anything left unpaid in the book at the end of the pay period came directly off your cheque. After snagging new wheels, brakes, rotors, cranks, and other miscellaneous bits and bobs, I was left with the princely sum of $14 and something cents.
In retrospect, it was probably not the smartest financial decision for a fella trying to save money to pay for school, but then neither was moving to BC for a summer in the first place. Screw long-term sensibilities! Here I was, with my hot summer ride ready to take on the world.
The rest of the summer rolled by in a two-wheeled blur. I rode every single day, even if it was just to and from the shop, the back way, along the Lillooet River. The Butcher is what propelled me up, down, and across the massive trail network found in Pemberton, supported me through ego and lung-killing Bike Co staff rides, and took the chairlift all the way up to the then brand-new Top of the World trail in a late-summer snowstorm.
The Butcher even got me my first byline in mountain bike media: a story on NSMB.com that did indeed wedge the door open for an aspiring journalist.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. A message from Seb asking for the frame back. A plane ticket from YVR back to Toronto. The looming start of a final year of school in a frozen city with precious little in the way of mountain biking.
In the years since, I have scoured online marketplaces for another frame, but have come up frustratingly empty. A rare bird at the time, the Butcher has now become nigh on unobtanium. Perhaps there is one locked away in the vaults under the hills of Santa Cruz, CA. Or maybe Seb still has that frame tucked away somewhere, along with all the memories of rides that have happened since that time.
A lot has changed since those hot days in Pemby, but I’ll always have the memories of those precious few months of summer skies and a green bicycle by my side.
~~~
Byline: Matthew Lee is currently a Shop Teacher On Call and Bike Mechanic in Campbell River, BC, on the unceded traditional territory of the Liǧʷiłdax̌ʷ people. He was previously many things, including a more frequent contributor to NSMB.com, a steel fabricator, and an employee of MEC back when it was a co-op.
Do you have a bicycle you love? Yours, or, maybe, coveting thy neighbour’s? It’s easy to participate in Bicycle Valentines by dropping in an e-mail submission. A few photos and as many, or as few, words as you need to sum up your pedaling passion.