Iresha Picot wasn’t sure how many women would show up. It was the fifth day in a brutal stretch of summer heat, with Fourth of July fireworks having wrapped up just hours earlier. But by 10 a.m., 26 women had gathered at the Indego station at 33rd and Diamond streets for what has become their regular dose of joy: a group bike ride through Fairmount Park.
Picot, founder of Black Girl Joy Bike Ride, says it was one of the group’s largest turnouts. The rides, which began in 2023, bring Black women together every other week for relaxed, noncompetitive bike rides designed to foster connection, with exercise as a welcome byproduct.
“I really just wanted to bring Black women together, because I do think a lot of us are super isolated,” Picot says. “We carry so many things and so much responsibility, and we do it by ourselves, because a lot of us was taught not to ask for help.”
Picot grew up riding bikes in rural Virginia and continued cycling after moving to Philadelphia 19 years ago, until her bike was stolen and she stopped riding for years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she started riding Indego bikes, going for rides along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Before long, she began to wonder whether other Black women might want to join her.
Using the city’s bikeshare program was central to the idea. Picot wanted women to be able to participate without worrying about the cost of owning a bike. An early Penn Medicine grant covered Indego ride costs during the program’s first year, during which Picot was joined by an average of 10 to 15 women for weekly rides.
I really just wanted to bring Black women together.”
— Iresha Picot, founder, Black Girl Joy Bike Ride
As more women found the group, support from Philadelphia’s cycling and outdoor community grew alongside it. A fundraising partnership with Philly Bike Action! helped Black Girl Joy Bike Ride provide bicycles for seven of the group’s most consistent riders in 2025. Picot has since expanded that effort through a three-year Circuit Trails grant, which has allowed her to purchase more bikes, along with helmets and locks, and host maintenance workshops for participants. Over the past year, Picot has purchased 23 bikes for riders who didn’t have one.
“One woman told me she had never been given something that expensive,” Picot says. “She was like, ‘I’ve never been gifted anything.’ So it’s been very touching.”
The additional bikes have made it possible to explore parts of the city beyond those close to neighborhood Indego stations. Alongside the regular community rides, Picot now also hosts “adventure rides” that begin at trailheads. She intentionally plans routes through parks and trails to help newer riders feel safe and also to introduce participants to green spaces they may never have visited before.
“One thing I realized, being a transplant, and so many Philly natives do show up to the bike ride: A lot of them had never been on some of these trails,” Picot says. “It was me who took them to Bartram’s, to John Heinz, to Delaware River Trail — but this is stuff in their backyards.”
For Picot, increasing Black women’s visibility in those spaces is important, but cycling itself isn’t the point.
“The bike is the tool,” she says.
Before anyone starts pedaling, the women greet each other with hugs, laughter and offers to help adjust a seat or pump up a tire. Picot, who has worked in mental and behavioral health for 17 years, says that’s exactly what she hoped the rides would become: a place where women can show up for themselves and each other, combat loneliness and find joy. Sometimes, she says, it feels a little like group therapy.
“I don’t think we ever have to do anything by ourselves — and that’s including healing, growing, getting better in life. I don’t think you should ever have to do that by yourself.”
