First off, last year’s guide (cause I’m too lazy to type up the same material again): https://gearheadgrrrl.com/2013/11/22/the-gearheads-gift-guide/
Now if you gifted your gear heads all of the stuff in last year’s guide, thanks to the march of technology and my ‘fessin’ up that I’m getting’ older and slower has made a few new gift ideas apparent… So let’s get the plastic out and power shop!
Let there be (LED) light…
Couple months back I was (again) aimlessly wandering the aisles of Costco, when I came across a whole skid of “LED shop lights”. I couldn’t resist despite the $40 or so price… And when I got home and plugged it in, I vowed to get more. Looks like those lights were pretty popular because on my next Costco run a mere week later they were gone! Well, on my black (and blue) friday Costco run they were back in stock, and I grabbed another. The smaller portable light came from Costco too, about half the price and output of the big one. So yes, you can be green and save energy, save bucks too, and have better light at the same time!
Read the manual… And check the web too!
Last year I featured those eternal fonts of gear head knowledge, repair manuals. Hopefully you’ve got at least one manual for everything you own that has moving parts, and even if you’ve met that quota, you can always use more. But nowadays we’ve got even more accumulated gear head wisdom to draw on, on the “interwebs”, and dirt cheap memory to store it on too! One of the better examples is “Snowbum”‘s BMW airhead tech pages, as thick as the thickest manual and frequently updated with the latest tech wisdom, There’s countless other examples just a download away… Just put all this gear head wisdom on your hard drive, thumb drive, burn it to a CD, can even put it on one of them not even fingernail sized memory cards and have service info ready to go on your cell phone or bigger device.
Quit fighting gravity…
For the past couple years I’ve been repeatedly tearin’ up the same groups of lower back and abdominal muscles… It was time for a change. Sure, a couple decades ago I would have just put that pickup bed on my back and moved it around… But nowadays I let hydraulics and the wheels do the work. On black friday I picked up a trailer tongue jack for $20, it’s a lot easier to roll something around when you don’t have to lift and steady it to. Which neatly sagways us into…
You need to get hack’d!
Getting’ old trying to keep the bike upright when you have to wiggle it from side to side to get it into the house for winter? No center stand and/or a GS airhead side stand? Jonesin’ to ride, but it’s snowin’/muddln’/or worse out? Or you gotta watch the kids, and no sitters available?
Get hack’d! All of a sudden everybody (‘cept the real grouches) is your friend, Costco runs no longer require an SUV, you can bring that thick air mattress and big tent to the rally, and every trip is potentially a shopping trip. The cost? Usually less than half the price of the bike it’s hooked to, and double the capacity. What’s not to like? At this point the self appointed experts will chime in warning of instantly worn out tires, busted frames, horrendous accidents, ad nauseum… Ignore them, get hack’d properly, and learn how to ride your ‘hack… And you’ll always ride with a smile!
GearheadGrrrl 