The woman in your life loves cycling, and you love that she’s a cyclist too. Choosing her Christmas gift should be easy. Select a bike-related item, find someone capable of wrapping it perfectly, and it’s a fait accompli.
This is a cautionary tale, my male cycling friends. The road to successful gift buying for a female cyclist is littered with relationship-ravaging potholes, rabbit holes, and pitfalls.
Think about the hundreds of rules dictating what not to buy a non-cycling wife for Christmas. Those ill-conceived choices that are certain to elicit an eye-roll, or worse, that pathetically disappointed look of a child whose popsicle falls off the stick after one bite. A kitchen appliance or utensil, cotton pyjamas, a diet book or gym membership, clothes (trust me— it’s inevitable you’ll get both the style and size wrong); you know the list.
It’s the same with bike stuff. Don’t even think about gifting her spare inner tubes, a new tire pump, or chain lube. I’m no psychologist, and don’t understand exactly why utilitarian items are a bad choice, which further proves the point, but experience and a strong sense of self-preservation shouts, “Don’t do it.”
Instead, when you’re on your next ride together, follow her eyes as her friend Sally wheels up on a new bike, or with her usual bike freshly outfitted in the latest gear. Where is she looking, what does she comment on? That’s what to buy her for Christmas. Just ensure the thing you buy is a newer version or more […]
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