The Pride Ride during the Rasputitsa gravel bike race in Burke on Friday, April 28, 2023. Photo by Joshua Strong via Rasputitsa
It was a big year for biking in Barre. In 2017, the Vermont Bicycle Shop opened, and Barre resident and avid cyclist Kristopher Hunt hosted the state’s first Pride Ride.
Although the lifelong Vermonter grew up riding the state’s rural roads, it wasn’t until he was an adult that Hunt developed a passion for the sport. He then got involved in Vermont’s cycling community, working to make it a more inclusive space for LGBTQ+ people — later becoming the founder and director of Pride Rides, a nonprofit affinity group for queer cyclists.
“One thing that I found as I was getting into cycling was that there wasn’t a lot of representation,” said Hunt, who is transgender. “I knew, like, assorted other queer people in cycling. It was very spread out and didn’t seem to be a big group here in Vermont.”
After hosting some smaller group rides, Pride Rides took off, allowing Hunt to foster an ever-growing space for himself and others. The organization hosts monthly group bike rides, with a few additional rides during the summer months. Additionally, the organization hosts the occasional overnight “bikepacking” trip and has collaborated with restaurants, businesses and other biking organizations across the state to put on events.
Since Hunt founded the organization, it has grown in more ways than one: Hunt has a fleet of bikes to loan out to make participating more accessible; the organization officially became a nonprofit in 2020; and it began offering different types of bike rides.
The product of Hunt’s planning, organizing and grant-writing efforts — which he jokingly calls his “second full-time, totally volunteer job” — culminated in 2022 when a crowd of more than 100 gathered in the Northeast Kingdom for the biggest Pride Ride yet.
Hunt and the organizers of Rasputitsa, an annual gravel bike race in the Northeast Kingdom, teamed up to host a pre-race “shakeout ride,” a warm-up so racers could address any issues with their bikes. A car in front of the group and a car in back kept the riders safe for the entirety of the shakeout.
“In the lead car, we had a drag queen, like, cheering us on,” Hunt said. “That was just so cool. I tried to take selfies while doing it, and I just could not capture the incredible line of people behind us.”
The turnout was more than Hunt ever imagined.
“I was floored,” he said. “It was crazy.”
But a few years earlier, in 2017, Hunt was simply a customer, paying a visit to a new bike shop in his hometown of Barre, eager to learn more about his budding interest.
“I decided to stop in and be like, ‘Hey, I really like bikes. So you got this bike shop. I’d like to hang out and maybe learn a little bit about bicycle mechanics,’” Hunt said. “They invited me in to come and hang out with them.”
The Pride Ride during the Rasputitsa gravel bike race in Burke on Friday, April 28, 2023. Photo by Joshua Strong via Rasputitsa
While he was tinkering with bikes and “spinning wrenches,” his own wheels were turning. Hunt was thinking about how to make cycling more accessible for LGBTQ+ Vermonters and had the support of the owner of the Vermont Bicycle Shop, Darren Ohl.
“He really uplifted me and encouraged me to do the things that I cared about,” Hunt said. “He would give me the tools where he could, and one of the ideas that I had was to host a LGBTQ mountain bike clinic.”
Though he had a positive experience entering the Vermont cycling world, Hunt recognized “that wasn’t the experience across the board.” He wanted to create a positive environment for other queer cyclists and to help LGBTQ+ people access the world of cycling.
After the success of the clinic with the Vermont Bicycle Shop, Hunt was eager to create more opportunities for LGBTQ+ cyclists to gather, something that avid Pride Ride leader Roxy Bombardier, who is transgender, was also committed to. While Hunt’s focus in biking is mountain biking, Bombardier is most passionate about gravel biking and will host her own rides in addition to joining others.
Bombardier said she wanted to join Pride Rides for the same reasons that Hunt wanted to start it: building community.
“Often, people feel alone,” she said. “In the context of riding bicycles, health, fitness, out in the outdoors, it was a nice way to build community in a way that allows us to enjoy those things.”
Hunt said that building more queer representation is one avenue to making the sport more accessible. “One of the No. 1 things is having that, like, oh, I can see myself in that space,” he said.
Both agreed that there is still work to be done to make the sport more inclusive and accessible, particularly for transgender people.
“There’s a huge, obviously, backlash against trans people in sport,” Hunt said. “While Vermont fosters a pretty inclusive space for that, a lot of the cycling events and organizations are nationwide, and so you still see a lot of that exclusion. And that, that obviously affects people in a really, really big way.”
The Pride Ride during the Rasputitsa gravel bike race in Burke on Friday, April 28, 2023. Photo by Joshua Strong via Rasputitsa
Bombardier said the price of gear and safety concerns are other barriers to accessing the sport.
“So the queer community has to feel safe, right?” she said. “I mean, if you don’t feel safe where you live, it’s not as though you’re gonna grab your bicycle and go out to a remote mountain bike trail or start going down remote gravel roads.”
Regardless of identity, income or ability, Hunt and Bombardier are eager to get people out for a bike ride — allies included.
“Even if a person never comes to a Pride Ride, and never rides a bicycle, knowing we’re there and we exist, is a way of signaling to them that they’re in community,” she said. “We’re out here, and we’re out here in numbers, so they feel less alone.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Cycling nonprofit works to make the sport more accessible for LGBTQ+ Vermonters.