Bike people are the worst. I mean that in the best possible way. Namely, bike people have such a personal physical and spiritual connection to their bikes that to give them a bike-related gift and expect them to use it traipses on blasphemy. If they’re serious about cycling, chances are they’ve educated themselves about every gadget on the market and tailored their ride just so, ne’er to be altered by a meddling if well-intentioned gift-giver. If they just dig cruising around town on a single-speed, chances are they’ll laugh in the face of anything remotely like clip-pedal shoes or spandex gear. What to do?
First things first: get them some new Knogs. No, they’re not some weird sex toy or drug accessory. They’re those stretch-rubber LED lights that started replacing bracket-mount lights a couple of years ago. Small, easily removable and with just enough brightness, they’re what every cyclist needs for safe nighttime rolling. The old Knogs broke easily, burned through batteries and only had one tiny LED. The new ones have a larger, brighter LED, thicker rubber and four flash cycles instead of just two. Go for the Frog Strobe; at $18 each, they’re a no-brainer gift.
Just about every cyclist needs a hand pump, and though newer pumps like the Blackburn AirStik SL offer compact, lightweight economy, they’re hell on the arms. This year’s must-have pumps are made by Lezyne, with stunning modern design and utilitarian features. A solid mid-priced option is the Pressure Drive ($40). Made of machined metal and capable of inflating to 120 psi, the 7-inch pump includes a detachable flexible tube that flips around for both Schrader and Presta valves—basically, no more hunching over a tire on the side of the road, and if your nephew gets a flat on his 1981 Raleigh, the pump can handle his valves, too. Not bad.
So what about the cyclists who have it all? Chances are they don’t have the Garmin Edge 800, which is setting the cycling-computer world on fire. If you’re a glutton for detail, you can find tons of bike blogs with complete rundowns of its features and photos of the component on a precision scale (3.45 oz., if you care), but the gist of it is that this is the iPhone of GPS bike computers. The sleek touchscreen interface is just the beginning—with a USB connection to a computer, the thing maps rides completely, with route, altitude, speed, calories burned, goals reached, heart rate, temperature and more. At $450, it’s not for the casual cyclist, but to anyone super-serious about all things bike, it’s a racer’s dream.
