Rachel Olzer doesn’t mince words. “Arkansas is not friendly to a lot of LGBTQ folks,” she says plainly. “When I started out saying, ‘I’m gonna build an inclusive bike event, and I’m gonna do it in Arkansas’... I don’t know that people thought that was possible.” The event in question is the Grit MTB Festival, a three-day mountain bike camp in Fayetteville, Arkansas, tailored to trans men and women, cis women, and nonbinary riders of all abilities and backgrounds.
The bike camp is the brainchild of Beckie Irvin and Anna Claire Beasley, and it is also the keystone fundraiser for the nonprofit All Bikes Welcome—an organization with a mission to build more racial equity and gender diversity into cycling by providing free and low-cost outdoor programming in northwest Arkansas. In 2022, Irvin hired Olzer as executive director. Olzer’s main task that year was to bring Grit Fest back bigger and better, championing the values that have set the event apart since its beginnings in 2019. “We’re very particular about stating that we’re a festival for gender-expansive folks,” says Olzer, adding that education around gender inclusion is a significant part of the camp. “We send out information about how to address a crowd of people with gender-neutral language …how to handle accidentally misgendering somebody…and reminding people to have grace with each other as we learn through this.”
That year the camp included a legislative letter-writing workshop where attendees wrote postcards to Arkansas lawmakers. The state has become notorious in recent years for adopting extreme anti-LGBTQ+ policies and bills. “We’re not only trying to invite people and serve a specific demographic, we’re also fighting for them beyond just bikes,” says Olzer.
With 75 attendees and rave reviews, Grit Fest 2022 was a success. “People said things like, ‘This is not only the most inclusive cycling event I’ve ever been to, this might be the most inclusive event I’ve ever been to, period,’” says Olzer, who calls it “a crowning achievement” for her after nearly a decade of grassroots advocacy on behalf of marginalized riders. While Arkansas is trying to become a cycling mecca, lawmakers in the state have introduced restrictive legislation around LGBTQ+ issues. The two goals are often at odds, especially when cycling organizations and events pledge to be inclusive.
Olzer, 31, is a Black queer woman and a transracial adoptee (her adoptive family is white). She started mountain biking as a high schooler in Las Vegas and raced for Arizona State University as an undergrad. Then she spent seven years living in Minneapolis while earning a PhD in ecology at the University of Minnesota, studying the evolution of sexual traits of the Pacific field cricket. Along the way, she became increasingly vocal about what it’s like to be a Black woman in her field of study, but also in cycling, and tried to educate others about the structural inequities baked into the sport she loves so much.
“I wish that non-Black people understood what it’s like to never see people like you while out riding,” Olzer wrote for Bicycling in 2020. By then, she had laid the foundation of her advocacy work by starting an Instagram account called Pedal 2 the People (@pedal2thepeople), which aimed to connect cyclists of color. At the time, BIPOC cyclists who followed the account may have been the only people of color on their local group rides, but when they opened Instagram, Olzer’s posts showed them that they weren’t alone and gave them a space to validate each other’s experiences. Pedal 2 the People also became a platform for cyclists to virtually convene in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which Olzer supported on the ground in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd by a member of the city’s police force.
Looking ahead, Olzer is focused on the intersectionality of race, gender, and other aspects of peoples’ identities that affect how welcome they feel in the wider cycling community. “I want to work on reminding people that there’s more than just being a woman or just being Black,” she says.
She sums up All Bikes Welcome like this: “We work to provide spaces, education, and community event opportunities for marginalized folks. To experience the joy of just being outdoors and being on bikes, and being together while they do it.” Grit Fest, with its gender-expansive focus, is just one slice of that. Olzer is working on a larger festival tailored to all genders including cis men and nonbinary cyclists who identify as BIPOC, and All Bikes Welcome is set to launch a series of monthly community rides in Bentonville, Arkansas, throughout 2024.
Continue Reading About the Other Advocates and Trailblazers Making Bicycling Better
BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE
