Dan Casey

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CATAWBA -- The cupcakes were one clue that this was no ordinary bike ride.

Amy McGinnis held a plateful close to her chest as she tried to protect the flickering candles from Sunday morning gusts. A brief chorus of "Happy Birthday" was followed by a shower of autumn leaves. Gretchen Merry Weinnig leaned over the plate, made a wish, sucked in a breath, and the tiny flames were history.

The mini-party took place in the Catawba Community Center's parking lot. It marked the end of a sunny, 17-mile November jaunt along gently rolling roads. After the Star City GRITS (aka Girls Riding in the Streets) celebrated No. 27 for one of their own, they would pack their bikes in their cars for the drive back to Roanoke.

"Yea, Gretchen!" said McGinnis, a GRITS co-founder. Barbara Robertson, Darci Munson and Sherry Burton joined in the cheer.

That the women were riding together is the other thing that stands out about this event. Although women make up at least half the Roanoke Valley, their sex is vastly underrepresented among self-propelled, two-wheel fanatics. If the GRITS have their way, women cyclists will be a more common sight along Western Virginia's gorgeous but challenging roads.

The GRITS are so new they don't yet have an official membership. For now, membership is free, and there's no exclusivity except for gender. They think of themselves as an empowerment group. Beyond getting together for rides, their aim is to help other female cyclists, particularly novices, gain bicycling skills and savvy while conquering fears that prevent many new riders from taking to the streets. They sponsored beginner and novice rides last summer, and plan to have them regularly again beginning in the spring.

Amy McGinnis of Roanoke got the idea for a women's cycling empowerment group when a male cyclist lamented that he'd bought his wife a bike but she told him she was too intimidated to ride with him.

McGinnis, 37, a court reporter, says the organization took shape one night in August over dinner at Old Southwest's Wildflour Cafe. Oddly enough, the idea had been sparked by an earlier conversation with a man.

During a weeknight ride in the summer, McGinnis found herself chatting with a male cyclist who was frustrated. He'd bought his wife a bike, but she'd told him she was too intimidated to ride with him.

"That's a comment I'd heard dozens of variations on since I started riding in Roanoke in '95," the Ohio-born McGinnis recalled.

It wasn't much later that she found herself on a ride with friend Erin Garvin, 29, a fitness instructor. McGinnis repeated the male bicyclist's lament and brought up the idea of a women's cycling group.

Garvin "had already taken some women out earlier in the year on a beginner mountain bike ride and was 110 percent behind the idea," McGinnis recalled.

McGinnis floated the concept on BigLickTri, an Internet newsgroup for local triathletes, and soon she and a handful of women were meeting in the restaurant to hatch plans.

Garvin didn't make it to the dinner, but Barbara Robertson, 44, a Franklin County High School teacher, did.

Also there were Darci Munson, 27, a physical therapist at Carilion Health System; Gretchen Merry Weinnig, 27, a CPA at Roanoke College; and Lisa Teagarden, 35, a child psychologist at Lewis Gale Clinic. Others who joined shortly afterward include Missy Warp, 25, a graphic designer; Sherry Burton, 37, a Carilion nurse; Lori Stone, 38, a respiratory therapist at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital; and Betsy Henderson, 48, a teacher at Hidden Valley Junior High in Roanoke County.

Their mission: "To get more women out there riding in the streets," McGinnis says.

Long, storied history

The GRITS may not realize it, but bicycles and the women's movement were intricately intertwined as far back as the late 19th century. The relationship started with the invention of the Victor "safety bicycle" the chain-driven, same-sized-wheels style of bike that's popular today.

In many places, it was considered a radical act for a woman to ride one of the iron contraptions. The safety bicycle allowed women a measure of inexpensive personal freedom and mobility they had previously lacked; as an added bonus, it increased their strength and self confidence.

The popularity of bikes also drove far-reaching changes in women's fashion. The Victorian era's floor-length skirts, cumbersome bustles and tight corsets were hugely impractical for bicycles. Cycling fostered the development of sensible bloomers, pantaloons and shorter skirts.

Not surprisingly, society's more conservative elements considered this evolution scandalous. There was great controversy over how, when and where women should ride bikes, if at all. Some ministers declared bicycling sinful and lewd for women, and doctors naively opined that women cyclists were sure to damage their reproductive organs.

Dan Casey | The Roanoke Times

The GRITS (Girls Riding In The Streets) are Sherry Burton, Amy McGinnis, Barbara Robertson, Gretchen Merry Weinnig and Darci Munson.

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Reasons women give why they don't ride more often

"I won't be able to keep up."

"I don't want to make a fool of myself."

"I don't know anywhere to ride."

"I'm not stable enough to ride in traffic."

"I don't know when to change gears."

"Heck, I don't even know HOW to change gears."

"I only have an ancient bike that I rode to class in college."

"I can't make it up that hill."

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling," women's suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony said in 1896. "I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world ... It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance."

'It can be scary'

The GRITS have many things in common. Most of them are married to men who ride bikes or have bike-riding boyfriends. Some are mothers and at least one is expecting.

To varying degrees, they are experienced riders. "We have not been riding all our lives," says Garvin, who's ridden across the U.S. twice -- a trail ride from Canada to Mexico and via road from Virginia to California. "Most of us had a bike handed down from a sibling, or a bike that barely had two tires."

Yet almost to a woman, they have felt the horror of riding with a group of guys and being dropped from the pack when they couldn't keep up. For a male cyclist, that's ego-deflating. But for a woman stranded on a lonely road, it can be dangerous.

"There's a lot to know about bikes and biking, and it can be scary," McGinnis says. As she's listened to the reasons why women who own bikes seldom ride, McGinnis says, she's heard "recurrent themes."

Nobody gets dropped

Number one is, "I won't be able to keep up," McGinnis says. "So they aren't comfortable participating in the group rides out there but then they have no support at all, and the bike collects dust."

For that reason, the GRITS have adopted a credo: Nobody, nowhere, no way gets dropped on a GRITS ride. On novice and intermediate rides, the group always stays together. On advanced rides, if a rider or two fall behind, the rest wait at the next intersection so nobody misses a turn.

There are plenty of other reasons women shy away from bikes. Not knowing good routes is one. A lack of understanding of basic bicycle mechanics is another.

"The first time I rode with Amy, I couldn't get the front wheel on my bike," says Burton, a divorced mother of two. "My boyfriend always did it." Now, not only can she mount her front wheel in her forks, she can fix her tire if it goes flat.

Weinnig, who hails from Louisiana's lowlands, found Western Virginia's steep hills the most discouraging factor when she moved to Roanoke in 1998.

"This region is very intimidating for people like me who come from flat places," she says. "There was lots of crying as I tried to make it up Mill Mountain."

Coaching novices

The GRITS get together for regular weekend rides of varying length and difficulty, but it's in the beginner and novice rides they started this past summer that they see the greatest potential to draw more women into their fold.

They had four of these rides before it got too cold or too dark too early. They drew a total of 12 women, who followed a leader or two on a relatively flat loop through Roanoke beginning in Wasena Park. McGinnis promises more beginner rides in the spring, perhaps along with a personal mentoring program.

"Our more advanced rides are open to men our stance is, they're welcome to ride but not to set the pace [but] our novice and beginner rides are for women only," McGinnis says.

"We see that women are intimidated and otherwise uncomfortable by having Y-chromosome types around in the early stages of their skill-building. That's what we're working to overcome."

To learn about GRITS or to contact them, check out their Web page at www.starcitygrits.com.