‘The spirit of adventure’

When Betsy Ingram joined Women on Wheels about a year and a half ago, she wasn’t a beginner cyclist. She’d just moved to Chico from the Bay Area, where she was a ride leader in an Alameda-based cycling club. However, she still had a hard time keeping up on her first day: She fell behind during a ride on Cohasset Road.

“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m such a loser. I can’t keep up,” Ingram told the CN&R. She recalled ride leader Pam Plemmons riding up to her.

“Pam said, ‘Y’know what, how about you do this one hill, and then you can turn around and go home?’” Ingram continued. “We get to the top of the hill, and she said, ‘See, I knew you could do it. How about the next hill?’ I was like, ‘Are you serious?’”

Plemmons encouraged Ingram: “I’ll stay right here with you,” Ingram said.

Sure enough, Ingram kept climbing and finished the ride, with Plemmons by her side.

“I texted her that night and said, ‘Y’know what? Thank you. Because now I know I can do it,’” Ingram said. “That’s the kind of camaraderie you want in a team.”

That support is the foundation of Women on Wheels (WOW), a women-led cycling group. It’s part of the North Valley Ride Club, a newly launched collective of local biking groups that coordinates rides. WOW alone has about 60 active members.

Now, Ingram not only keeps up during weekly Wednesday outings, but also leads her own intermediate-level fitness ride on Saturdays. WOW hosts weekly rides of a variety of difficulty and speed levels (see infobox). Ride leaders create predetermined routes and regroups, and the rules are simple: Participants must wear a helmet and bikes must be in good working order.

Plemmons and fellow ride leader Becky Warren joined WOW when it was formed in 2016, by cyclist and bike safety advocate Karen Goodwin. She left the pair in charge when she moved to Eugene, Ore., a little over two years ago.

“I was trying to get more women on bikes,” Goodwin told the CN&R by phone, “to really just make women feel comfortable by having a women’s only [group] … and give them a nonintimidating place to ride.”

The goal is mostly the same today.

“We allow men to join us, but they just have to know we’re in charge!” Plemmons said with a laugh.

What the women have found is that WOW has not only been beneficial for their physical health, but also their social lives. The fun continues after rides: They often grab coffee and plan other group outings. Recently, some members attended the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour at Chico State. Others formed a bocce ball team.

Though the group’s leaders stay focused on having fun, they also emphasize safety and skill-building. “We’re all about empowering women to be self-sufficient on their bikes,” Plemmons said.

They teach new riders how to show intention, Warren added, “how to be courteous when you’re riding … how to be safe when you’re riding in groups, all those things pop up as we go.”

The Wednesday rides aren’t for beginners, but Plemmons and Warren love bringing new members into the fold. They will take new riders out one-on-one, Plemmons said, to coach them on how to participate in group rides and get a sense of which weekly ride they should join first.

Goodwin still keeps in touch with Warren and Plemmons, whom she described as a pair of “dynamite” women. Though WOW has attracted faster, more advanced riders than Goodwin first imagined, she’s proud of how the group has grown.

Last fall, she joined WOW on the Giro D’ Vino ride, a 48-mile stretch with winery visits in Lodi, and said it was comforting to see the group of about 18 women “all wearing their jerseys and excited to be together.”

“They’ve really created a women team spirit,” Goodwin said.

And that team spirit has fostered trust as well.

One year, about eight WOW members got lost while bicycling in Lake Almanor. They ended up taking a 40-minute detour—the women pedaled down a rocky dirt road and at one point had to carry their bikes through a creek.

Nobody got worked up. Everyone just rolled with it. Now, it’s a story that makes Plemmons laugh when she retells it.

“That’s the general attitude of the groups—the spirit of adventure,” Warren said.

“Being open to that adventure, and accepting that sometimes things don’t go the way you planned, but it can be fabulous,” Plemmons added. “We’re happy, fun people. No drama.”

For her, though WOW is a great way to stay fit, the most important part of the group is the supportive community it has created.

“We’re friends and we support each other, and not just with athletic stuff, [but also] heart stuff, health stuff, financial stuff,” Plemmons said.

That bond, for Warren, is unlike any others she’s experienced in other cycling groups.

“In general, the riders are welcoming, they want people out riding, they want to help each other,” she said. “That’s what I think is so awesome and what motivates us to keep going.”