Black women take their place in D.C.’s bike lanes

He chooses his words carefully in trying to explain why women are slower to get onto bikes. “My wife outrides me,” he says up front. Then he continues: “It can be intimidating. . . . It takes a lot to want to put that helmet on and to put the spandex on. . . . But once you get them past that, in terms of ability and skills, they are just as excited about riding.”

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Late last month about a dozen members of Black Women Bike DC got together for a clinic and ride on the Metropolitan Branch Trail. Madeline Jackson Williams came and brought along her daughter, Madison. Williams, who works for the National Academy of Sciences, grew up in the District riding bikes that belonged to her brothers or other children in the neighborhood.

“I don’t remember ever owning my own bike until I was an adult,” Williams said. “My daughter has been riding for about five years now. She has had a bike all her life.”

Williams, who lives in Ward 7 and is training for a triathlon, connected with Black Women Bike through a Facebook page for Tri Unify, a group of triathletes of color. She said she’d passed other black women cyclists on the street and, like her, they were usually riding alone. “I was just excited to see all the other black women who bike in the area,” she said. “I thought it would be a good way to get some riding in without the pressure of it feeling like a workout and I could bring my 10-year-old daughter with me.”

Black Women Bike’s membership has grown primarily through word of mouth and Facebook. But perhaps the most inspired connection has to be with Marya McQuirter, a historian who lives in the Petworth section of the city. Years ago while working on her dissertation on the social history of blacks in D.C. during the first half of the 20th century, McQuirter came upon an article about five black women who biked from New York City to Washington in 1928. She is trying to gather as many details she can about their three-day, 250-mile trip. Her goal is to recruit four other women and re-create the ride next year.

“I’ve been riding on and off all of my life,” McQuirter, 45, said, recalling how when she was young, her family lived in a large apartment building just across the District line in Takoma Park. “There were loads and loads of children, and even if you didn’t have your own bike, somebody else had a bike and would let you ride.” Now, she doesn’t own a car and uses a bike as her main mode of transportation.

“You know they’re out there,” McQuirter said, referring to black women cyclists. “But if you have a group of women who ride regularly, there’s something powerful about that. It’s a mantra in your head — ‘Yeah, black women bike.’ ”