Mid-August, the time of year when long summer breaks come to an end and everyone (including myself) returns to another long year of school. Among school and the many other fall activities that start up again are the Beast’s girls only team rides! These Tuesday group rides, focused on learning and improving skills like bunny hops, manuals, wheelies, stoppies, and more are truly incredible and so unique to our team. It’s not often that you see female-focused rides like these, especially in a sport as male dominated as mountain biking, and because of that fact, we’ve formed a community like no other. 

Through these Tuesday rides I’ve found such an incredibly strong and skilled community of riders, something I feel very lucky to have. So, I’m sure you can imagine my joy when I saw the notification for the very first girl’s ride of this season pop up on my phone screen. Nothing brightens my day like these rides do, but there was something even more special about this very first ride. For the first time in a long time, we had a huge group! So many new girls and their mothers joined us for an unforgettable afternoon of meeting new people and riding bikes (even some Black Mountain composite coaches joined us). 

The weather was beautiful and with the sun shining, not a cloud was in the sky as we rode our bikes in the late afternoon heat. It was hot, but that was the last thing on my mind as I watched everyone on our ride send jumps in the Arastradero bowl, cheering as they flew into the air, landing ever so gracefully. Our camaraderie is just as unmatched as our jumping skills!

As more than just a team captain, as rider, a girl, someone who was once also scared to go riding with people who were better than me, faster than me and more experienced on a bike than I was, having these rides was the difference between me riding my bike or just looking at it, feeling lost. 

These girls’ rides got me passionate about mountain biking. They taught me how to do stoppies, wheelies, manuals, bunny hops and most importantly how to be confident on my bike. Even on just the very first girls ride of the season, I could see the very same things for all our newcomers. So many new faces lit up with the determination to learn a stoppie or hit a jump in the small bowl for the first time, unafraid to reach new heights (both literally and figuratively). 

The most important thing in all of this, was that everyone who came to our first ride, came to the second and third and fourth and every other ride till now! 

I love watching people enjoy doing something new, something hard, something foreign and become passionate about it. For the whole 2 hours that we rode our bikes around Arastradero, I got to watch every single person on our very first Tuesday ride of the 2025 through 2026 season do that, and that’s pretty phenomenal. So, in every way, I would say that the very first Tuesday ride of this season was an outstanding success. 

An added bonus, we also get some pretty special views on these Tuesday rides 😉