Ways to get your girlfriend riding a bike?

The title should actually be, ways to ensure that your girlfriend will never ever ever get on a bike ever again. The following is from personal first hand experience, both from what I've seen and what I've heard, what's been said to me and what's been said to others. It is not a criticism - think of it instead as a little bit of insight into the way the female mind works. Well, actually, it's the way my mind works, but I know from speaking to at least one other bike riding of the female shape that the below holds true for them too. And so, with an attempt at minimal ranting and irritation, here follows some bits of advice:

• I don't care about the details of what I am riding. Your girlfriend may be different and may be naturally mechanically minded. I am not. Lots of other women are not. LBS's are full, I suspect, of bikes belonging to similar people to me. I am aware of how to maintain my bike. I am smart enough to tell you what is wrong with my bike and the symptoms of the wrongness. I am not interested enough in cogs, cassettes and allan keys to ascertain the cause of the problem. I will nod nicely when you tell me said cause, but it will be more in the vein of 'thank god someone in this household knows what they're doing' rather than 'cool, next time I can fix it myself'. I will fight over constructing flat packed furniture, I assert my right to have my own screwdriver which you will never touch, but bikes are different and complicated and I just can't get my head around them. Mea culpa.
• My bike is my bike. Deriding my choice of decals, colour schemes or the hours agonising over which colour of bottle holder will irritate me. Riding a bike is by necessity a muddy/dusty and dirty uncolourful experience some days. Let me have some small joy in customising my bike so it's mine.
• If you actually get a girl to put her leg over a saddle, choose the bike attached to that saddle with care. Taking her to a trail centre and hiring an already ridden to death with no care at all mountain bike which is probably the wrong size and shape and which no amount of tweaking is going to fix is not going to help. She will come out of the experience with a bad back, cramping feet and excessive irritation at the fact that you seem to control your beautifully set up bike effortlessly, whilst she has been wrestling with a pig for the last 2 hours. If you can, borrow another girls bike. Some of us are nice like that. Failing that, ask a local bike shop if you can demo a nice bike - as a result of their care and attention in a few days time she might well be returning to buy that demo bike from them and you get a girlfriend/wife who's at least had a taste of what riding a properly set up bike is going to be like.
• Don't fuss. Stop it. She might be a little nervous (I actually think probably quite a lot nervous) as she is stepping into your territory. Your world. You are comfortable in it, with its politics,  community, terminology and etiquette. She is not. Don't overwhelm her with it all at once. Tell her the basics, practice standing up on the pedals in the car park, explain feathering brakes, get her to go around and around and around in circles switching up and down gears until she is comfy with what lever causes which effect. Take the time in the car park to familiarise and you wont be returning to that same car park with a limping swearing girlfriend vowing never to get on a stupid  bike ever again.
• Be patient. Endlessly. I really do mean this. This isn't a lifelong request, you're allowed to lose your rag at us 4 rides in when we accidentally switch up a gear before a steep incline and fall sideways. That's okay. It is absolutely not okay on our first ride when we are focusing on 17 different things and had a mild flap and got it wrong. Pick us up, dust us down, wrap any wounds gently, give hugs, don't make a fuss and walk us to the top of the incline and pack us off again. Oh, and when we do it right next time, mark it. Note it and celebrate it. It's small fry when you're used to ripping around berms at 15mph, it's not small fry to us.
• We didn't spend childhoods on Grifters, nine times out of ten. Nor are we familiar with bikes with pegs sticking out of the back wheel. It's not as natural as breathing to us and we don't have the background you do. Mention it more than 5 times on the first ride out and we're going to start muttering under our breathes about 'we all have to start somewhere'. We do. Have to start somewhere. This is the start, don't make it the end with careless chatter which might seem innocuous to you but will come across as a bit soul destroying for the person next to you trying their damned hardest to keep up with your perfectly tones calves.
• Don't leap in head first. Red routes, if you've only just got on a bike for the first time in 10-15 years are not the best introduction to bike handling in a safe and comfortable environment. Take the hit and ride a Green. Maybe even a Blue if fitness isn't an issue. Scotlands Blue routes are about the best in the country for introducing someone to the joys of mountain biking without terrifying them out of their tiny little minds. It's about the speed of incoming obstacles, it's about putting someone off with information overload, it's about putting someone off by sending them over the handlbars when they panic on their first berm. Your first ride stays with you for a long time if you fall in love with mountain biking, it needs to be memorable for all the right reasons and not the wrong ones.
• Leave your mates at home. No, seriously. You might not know you're doing that competitive thing, racing each other, firing off into the distance, chatting about places your girlfriend didn't go with you to or stag nights or whatever. But you are. Trust me, you are. Leave them at home, and turn your first ride out with your girlfriend into something special. Something memorable. Point out the smell of the pine needles baking in the sun. Point out the bird calls, and the sound as a powerful bird flaps its winds on takeoff. If it's the right thing to do, take a camera or binoculars. Keep an eye out for squirrels, take time out on a quiet bit of the trail and get her to close her eyes and tell you what she hears. Find the things which will bring her back, whether it's the lack of mobile phone signal, the camraderie, the friendliness, the views or the silence. Biking is not all about aggression, sometimes it's about the space inbetween.
• Treat the obstacles as problem solving. Ask her to solve it. Find a big berm, get her to watch you ride it. Do it again and ask her what she's noticed you're doing. Then explain the technique in detal, catching anything she's missed, and ride it again. Then ask her to ride it. Then again. And again. Repetition leads to familiarity and takes the sting out of the unknown. Don't be patronising about it, don't make her feel like you're doing her a favour, instead you're communicating the skill to do something you love doing that makes you buzz and fly, passing it on to someone else who will feel exactly the same way once they've conquered it too.
• Do not make her feel like she's the B team. She's not. She's hopefully the most important person in your life and you're sharing one of the most important things you do in yours, with her. That's not B team, that's A team. Don't suggest she rides the Blue on her own while you disapear onto the Red. This is not the time for that. If you want your girlfriend to come riding with you, it's going to take time, and a weekly commitment and some effort. Suggesting she rides on her own is going to turn the whole experience into one of isolation, not teamwork. She will feel demoralised because she will feel like teaching her is too much trouble and you'd rather be off having fun blatting down the trails with your mates and that she is in the way. She wont come again, I can guarantee that.
• Send her on a skills course if she comes back to the car park with a grin on her face. In the same way you would probably not teach her to drive from never driven before to taking her test, this is the same. There are things you cannot show her, things that will be easier understood from someone who does nothing but teach people to ride all day. A specific Womans course will.....help. I don't want to go into the arguments here, but see the point above about taking her out with your mates on her first ride. It wont end well. Give her a space to learn in where she can make mistakes comfortably, where she knows she is in safe hands, where the terrain will be explained and patience will be endless. Give her the experience of riding with people of exactly the same level as her. There is absolutely nothing like it for building confidence and giving you a feeling of belonging to a group of people who love mountain biking for all the same reasons you do.

There is no guarantee with all this. You might do all these things perfectly and she still might not like getting muddy/dusty. She might not like the flies and the midges. She might not like the feeling of being utterly crap at something to start with, or the feeling of people 40 years older than her whizzing past. Only you know what's important to your other half and the best way to sell it, whether it's the peace and quiet, the problem solving, the fitness increasing, the muscle definition, the views or the wildlife. If none of that is an incentive, if none of that makes her heart sing, then nothing will make her want to get on a bike and you're on a loser. But if it works, if she catches the freedom and the flying, then you will have a companion who, possibly, will be the one dragging you out in the mud and rain with a damn big grin on her face. She might even beat you to the bottom.