Pinkbike Editors' Christmas 2022 Wish Lists: Workshops, XL MX Bikes... & Better Cheese?

The bells are jingling and the snow is snowing here at Pinkbike HQ, which means Christmas is probably tomorrow and that it's time for another list of wishes from the editors. Getting Santa to ban headset routing is about as likely as world peace, though, so don't expect any Christmas miracles below or on the 25th. Instead, we're asking for glasses, extra-large dirt bikes, a lift kit for a van, and more. What's on your mountain bike wishlist this Christmas?

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Mike Kazimer
Clear Sunglasses, Waterproof Boots, & Pie

I'm still not a huge fan of wishlists, or really the holiday season in general. Big groups of people, buying and receiving gifts that no one really needs, awkward family gatherings... it's not my thing. Bah humbug. I do like pie, though. And cookies.


That said, until my personal electric aerial vehicle arrives, there are a few things I wouldn't mind having magically appear at my doorstep. The first would be glasses and goggles with a stack of clear lenses for each. Here in the Pacific Northwest, tinted lenses are useful for about five days a year, that brief period in late July when the sun rises above the horizon. The rest of the time clear lenses are the way to go, especially in areas with thick tree cover. There are lots of nice sunglasses on the market that come with a spare clear lens, but they're typically very expensive due to that fancy tinted lens that's the primary focus. I wish someone would make a PNW / UK special, basically a well-made pair of safety glasses with replaceable, inexpensive lenses. And yes, I've tried to go the budget route with hardware store options - it felt like I was trying to see the trail through the bottom of a mason jar.


I have plenty of other design ideas for my ideal mountain bike shoes, but for the sake of brevity I'll end things here – I'm sure the others on this list have more interesting requests than goofy shoes and glasses.




Henry Quinney
A Selection of Reasonably Priced Cheeses

After a false start, I'm back for round two of BC life. The mountains are vast, the landscapes beautiful, and the people have fun catchphrases like "okie-ly ookie-ly" and "you betcha." From an outside view, and an uneducated one at that, Canada really can seem like the Flander's residence, quietly going about its business compared to its better-known neighbors. One thing however I can't abide is how expensive cheese is over here. Also, they name what I would guess to be a double Gloucester or a red Leicester "cheddar". The appropriation of British cheesemaking culture has gone unchecked for far too long. My culture is not a prom dress, nor is it a charcuterie board.

And, as with most imported cultures, it's ridiculously expensive. In England, I could get some stinking bishop actually made by an ordained clergyman for the cost of a slice of the plastic cheese here that has more properties in common with a melted yellow credit card than it does anything that's been within 50 yards of a cow.





Mike Levy
The Impossible Tire & Adventures

Aside from peace everywhere and all dogs finding good homes, I'm a simple man and my wishlist consists of nothing more than a garage full of overpriced hypercars, a giant catapult, a live-in pancake chef, a private go-kart track, a really hot hot tub, and definitely some sort of immunity against any and all speeding charges in every country. As I said, I don't pine for much in life. But when it comes to bikes, I can easily come up with a few things to wish for...

Number one on that list would be the impossible tire. The Sea to Sky corridor has endless trails and terrain where 1,300-gram downhill rubber deflated to about 17psi is exactly what you should be using. It's usually some combination of steep, wet, rooty, and rocky, and the kind of place where you're happy to pedal the stickiest and slowest rolling of tires to the top because that's what makes sense for the way back down. But I also spoil all that by knowing from experience that trail bike tires weighing 300 or 400 grams less mounted to a super light wheelset can feel just as amazing in a different way on a different sort of trail. There are way more important things than weight and rolling speed, of course, but I wish for a magical tire that somehow combines the traction and predictability of an Assegai with the best traits of a speedy trail bike tire. It also needs to come in at around 800 grams and have razor-proof sidewalls but not be too stiff and ride like wood. Good luck, Santa.

Back in reality, I'm hoping to gift myself some sort of two-wheeled adventure in 2023 that involves pedaling too long for too far, hopefully in the sunshine while wearing the same salt-caked shorts and t-shirt for all of it.





Matt Wragg
A Mid-Sized 4x4

Mechanics call it getting tired. It’s when a vehicle has run too hard for too many years and simply can’t take it anymore. First, the power steering sprung a leak, then the 4WD selector linkage snapped, the turbo failed, a cylinder head went and finally, the steering linkage cracked apart. None of these things on their own would have killed our faithful 2001 Jeep Cherokee, it was the accumulation. It was not just a car for us. It was the vehicle we used to collect firewood to keep us warm through the winter, it was the vehicle we relied on when the mountain roads were too heinous for anything else and, occasionally, it was even a rally car. But more than those things, it was my way to get back out into the world. I don’t travel so well these days. I find the complication of noisy hotels and busy streets too much. My last attempt at a hotel was back in 2020, and three nights of hearing the family overhead stamping around as I tried to sleep reduced me to a sobbing mess. The Jeep offered me another way to travel. With the tent on the roof, it allowed us to head up into the calm of the mountains where I could sleep in peace. That meant that my wife and I could spend weeks on the road, touring bike parks during the day and escaping to the forests each night.

So yeah, what I want more than anything this year is a mid-sized 4x4. I’d love a bigger vehicle, but diesel is nearly €2/litre here in France, and an F150-sized vehicle would need to be parked a 15-minute walk from our house as it couldn’t pass the access road. And while electric sounds nice, we simply don’t receive enough current to charge one, at least not without turning off every appliance in the house first.





Seb Stott
A New Bike Shed

I've been planning a bike shed/store/workshop for almost a year now, but getting hold of a builder or landscaper has been super hard these days and I haven't got the time or the skills to do it myself. The cool thing about building your own shed is you can make it how you want it. When we moved house, we started looking for places with a garage, but I soon realized that a windowless concrete cube with one giant door which allows the whole street to see inside whenever you pop in or out isn't the ideal bike workshop. I'm planning something wooden-clad, with big windows for plenty of light (complete with curtains for security), a bike store, a workbench, a mezzanine, and some insulation. Most importantly, metal reinforcement and an alarm for security. Maybe even a little wood burner in the corner to keep it cozy.



Ben Cathro
A Motocross Bike for Tall People

I'm not average, which is blatantly obvious for those that have met me and uttered a variation of the phrase, "You're taller than you look in the video." I love these interactions but being nearly two meters tall I am often outside the normal size charts for mountain bikes. Over the years I've learned to make extra-large sizes bigger through setup tweaks to get things comfy, and mountain bikes have grown substantially over the years which has helped a lot too. I didn't really realize how much more accommodating mountain bikes are for people of different heights until I bought a MX bike and started geeking out about all the tall guy tweaks.




Matt Beer
Another Bike Park in the PNW

Access to the mountains is all time thanks to elaborate infrastructure and high-tech gadgets, which leaves me wondering why it’s so difficult to ride downhill bikes in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t need a chairlift to ride my bike - I’m totally happy to pedal to the top or organize a shuttle day, but there’s no way to crush more meters of descending than at a bike park. You’d think that there would be more lift-access biking in this corner of the world, given the high density of mountain bike enthusiasts. Within a three-hour radius of Vancouver, B.C., there are only a couple of areas that offer uplifts, even though there are more than a dozen ski resorts. Heck, there are four lifts between Vancouver and Squamish (what happened to the MTB trails outlined in the Sea to Sky Gondola master plan?), yet none of them serve mountain bikers in the summer. Have they missed the plot?




Maybe land-use liability for mountain bikers is a concern or sightseeing brings in more revenue from a less complicated operation, but the bike park model has worked effectively for Whistler and Sun Peaks for over twenty years. A change could be on the horizon with the recently sanctioned trails near Cypress Mountain in West Vancouver or Mt. Prevost on Vancouver Island (hats off to the builders and trail advocacy groups heading those up). I won’t hold my breath to line up with my downhill bike at the bottom of a newly developed park, but I hope there are more options in the future.”





Tom Bradshaw
Toyota Sienna Lift Kit

A lift kit for a vehicle can either be subtly sensible for legitimate off-roading purposes or a dangerous overcompensation for something else - sorry if you’re reading this from your massive F-350. I’d like to think my motivations for a lift kit are neither. Instead, I want to raise my 1998 Toyota Sienna (which gets BC collectors plates next year) so that I don’t have to worry about speed bumps and clearance when fully loaded. We recently went to the Coast Gravity Park on BC’s Sunshine Coast, and it was a magic time seeing Matt Beer fly while I get comfortable with my straight-air Steve’s down Coastal Cruise, the recently revamped jump line.

However, my only complaint was that the six 80kg carcasses and six 20kg bikes resulted in a severe bottom-out every time we hit a pothole and every speed bump on and off the ferry. I think it’s fair to say with a lift of at least 2 inches that this could seriously be the best shuttle vehicle on the market. My old clapped-out $800 Nissan Versa is a close second. I'm the complete opposite of Henry Quinney; I dream of mates piled into the seven seats, matching with the aged (aka stinky) upholstery en route to a mountain bike town somewhere. It doesn’t matter if chips fall on the floor as they just add to the texture of the carpet, and bulk drive-thru orders of Macca D’s are made for my family of degenerates crammed in the back. The People’s People Mover anyone?