Most people who forget a Christmas gift for their spouse might offer an embarrassed apology and a promise to hit the stores on December 26th. Elon Musk, who was simultaneously trying to keep SpaceX from bankruptcy and scale Tesla into a real car company, decided instead to conduct a two-hour barefoot expedition through a Boulder blizzard.
Talulah Riley, his wife at the time, shared the story during the 2022 BBC series "The Elon Musk Show." It was Christmas Eve in Boulder, Colorado, buried under what Riley described as "loads and loads of snow." Musk, stretched impossibly thin across his growing empire, suddenly realized his mistake. His explanation was quintessentially Musk: "It's not that I don't love you—I do really, really love you. It's just that my brain is exploding."
Riley took it in stride. "I was like, 'I know, it's fine,'" she recalled. But Musk couldn't let it go. In the middle of the night, wearing only a T-shirt and shorts, he slipped out of bed and disappeared into the storm without shoes.
"He got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. I was like, where has he gone?" Riley said. Two hours later, he returned with a small bouquet of flowers he'd picked after digging through snow all over Boulder. His message was simple: "I just wanted to show you how much I loved you."
The Perfect Storm of Stress
The gesture wasn't just romantic—it was a glimpse into what Musk was dealing with that year. SpaceX was barely hanging on after multiple launch failures, its survival dependent on a crucial $1.6 billion NASA contract for the Dragon capsule.
Tesla was in the middle of a massive transition, moving from the niche Roadster to the broader-market Model S. Armed with a $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, the company was racing to scale production before the Model S debut planned for June 2012.
SolarCity, the solar company Musk chaired and helped finance, was still struggling to find its footing in the unstable post-recession economy.
Riley later described the toll: "He was under incredible stress. I was worried he was going to have a heart attack. I just kept thinking, God, I've got to keep this guy alive." Between constant travel, 100-hour workweeks, and three high-stakes companies at various stages of crisis, the Christmas gift simply fell through the cracks.
Engineering a Solution to Forgetting
When the pressure short-circuited the basics, Musk attacked the problem like one of his engineering challenges: head-on, regardless of the cost. The flowers, wilted and somewhat absurd given the circumstances, became his solution—a zero-dollar proof of devotion when everything else in his life was combusting.
Riley has consistently pushed back against the "cold and emotionless" stereotype that follows Musk. "He is the most emotional person I know," she said. "He has a kind of innocence to him. He feels with incredible purity the emotions that he is feeling at the time, whatever that emotion is. He feels very, very deeply."
Today, with Tesla and SpaceX valuations reaching astronomical heights, that barefoot Christmas trek through Boulder might seem like a minor footnote. But it remains a compelling reminder that even the person planning Mars colonies has his breaking points—and when he hits them, he'll apparently freeze his feet off before letting love slip away unacknowledged.