KELLY MCCAUGHEY’S PURSUIT FOR WOMEN’S RIDING

Words by Kirsten Midura | Photography by Jenny Linquist

Kelly finishes her safety talk, and we each grab a trail map from a nearby table. We have been asked not to show these to anyone outside of the event. The routes were created for us alone, and they will change with the next event to avoid being overriden. I look down and see sinuous lines of green, yellow, and red twisting across the laminated page, indicating easy, medium, and difficult trails. A woman leans over to me, eyes on her map. “Sadie’s Big Adventure,” she says with a smile. “She named that route after my dog.” 

The women disperse. Some venture out in groups of two or three, ready to take to the trails. Some ready themselves for a day-long guided dual sport ride. Others stay where they are and wait patiently for classes to start: beginners at 10, intermediate at 12, advanced class later in the day.

I join a small group that has been assembled by my friend from Brooklyn. We are taking part in the “Trail Boss Challenge,” a competition reminiscent of The Great Adventure, with ruts to be ridden and riddles to be solved. Until today, I have known my teammates only by their Instagram handles. We follow each other’s lives from afar, and it is good to finally put names to faces. To suddenly have riding friends across the country. We gear up and follow a muddy trail deep into the Pennsylvania woods.

THE MISSING LINK

In the last four years, Over and Out (OAO) has become one of the premiere women’s off-road riding events in the United States. Run by founder Kelly McCaughey, the annual, weekend-long campout invites women of all levels to come together to revel in their shared love of moto. There are marked trail rides of varying difficulties, trainings and guided tours, challenges, a raffle, and a nightly bonfire where women can share their proverbial war stories. This year, OAO even incorporated a mountain biking clinic. Some select men are invited to work the event as “trail dads,” including the crews from WLF Enduro and the Delaware Valley Trail Riders (DVTR). Otherwise, this event is run entirely by women, for women.

To an outsider, Over and Out seems effortlessly executed. But Kelly has spent years meticulously curating this event. She pays close attention to every detail, from the classes offered throughout the weekend, to the routes and staff, to merchandise and raffle prizes. “I think about everything and everyone’s experience,” Kelly says. “Everyone who comes to my events should feel like they’re equally included and here to have fun.”

Kelly herself did not find her way into dirt biking until she was well into adulthood. In the farmlands of rural New Jersey, she grew up in a family who rode everything except motorcycles. Her father used to train and break horses, her uncles and cousins raced dirt-modified stock cars. For Kelly, motorcycles were always just out of reach. As a child, she lusted after the bikes that she saw in ’80s movies: Karate Kid and Footloose taunted her with their casual cameos of Honda XL 600Rs and Yamaha DT 125 enduros. But as a rule-abiding youth, she heeded her parents’ warnings of the dangers of riding. It was not until she was 30 that she first threw her leg over a bike.

It was a warm summer morning when Kelly’s now-husband, Dan, lent her an XR100 and gave her her first lesson. Dan had been racing motocross for 30 years, and Kelly had only recently signed up to take her first basic rider’s course. They started in a grassy field, and Kelly took to it with ease. “On the way out there, I remember saying ‘I feel like I already know how to ride,’” she recalls. Her childhood years spent on mountain bikes and horseback had given her a natural feel for the movement, and shifting and braking came effortlessly. It was a smooth, if not uneventful, beginning. That is, until they hit the trails.

“I didn’t expect it, but my brain lit up,” Kelly said. “All these connections sparked; it felt familiar. I kept thinking, where was this all these years? Why hasn’t this been in my life all along?” She hurled herself through her first-ever singletrack, and a joie de vivre awakened in her that had all but faded in her life. She had finished high school with straight As; had played on her high school field hockey team; had gone on to study primate biology, film, and evolutionary anthropology at Rutgers; had taught herself jewelry design and small business management through her work; and ultimately had landed a corporate job at Macy’s. But despite her eclectic repertoire, Kelly admits, “By that point I’d spent a good five years feeling like I didn’t have a passion I was living for. With dirt bikes, it happened organically.”

For Kelly, transitioning into dirt bikes was relatively seamless. Relatively. Perhaps because she had started in her thirties, her shrewd emotional intelligence and innate attention to detail allowed her to manage the frustrations that most new riders face. Her control over her own mental state had been honed through practice, reinforced by countless hours listening to sports psychology podcasts. Her communication skills were refined from years of navigating relationships with friends, family, and coworkers. She knew that she worked best when focusing on hyperspecific areas of improvement. Move her hips back an inch. Push two strokes higher into the RPMs. And she had discovered a secret to maintaining a “PMA,” or Positive Mental Attitude. “It’s not easy sometimes,” she confesses, “but saying things out loud is a really powerful coping skill.”

Kelly found herself riding every weekend. She tested her limits on challenging terrain alongside her partner and group of male friends. “I came home every time and even after hard, exhausting days or bad falls, not once did I ever want  to quit,” she recounts. But even as she expanded her riding network, something was amiss. “I kept thinking, it’d be really cool if I had one other girlfriend who’d want to come do this with me.”

She looked for other women like her, but there were few. Were they there? Did they not have access to the bikes, the gear, the trails? Did they even know that trails were an option? Or had their views of motorcycles been shaped, as hers had, by the movies? Portraying only the open road. Limited only to asphalt. Ridden only by men. After all, she notes, “If no one’s taken you to a super-remote off-road trail, you don’t even know it exists.”

Kelly wanted to understand why women weren’t a central part of this sport. And she wanted to change it.

A SPARK IGNITES

Our team descends down a steep, rocky pass. Fist-sized stones span the width of our path, and they lurch and settle as our knobby tires press them into the ground. At the base, the road offers a brief respite of level grass before we dip back into the forested singletrack. The yellow sign ahead reads, “Vegan Loop.” Sunlight flickers through the trees, and my eyes light up when I see water shimmering across the trail ahead, inviting us into a long, flowing water crossing.

A humble, guided trail ride marked the beginning of what is now a staple in the women’s dirt bike circuit. It was 2016, and the first OAO hosted only 15 riders. Attendance was limited to women who had the appropriate bikes for the trails that Kelly had chosen. It was a success, but for Kelly it was not enough. A lifelong champion of inclusion, she had grown up in a household where she could only host sleepovers if she invited all the girls in the class. She needed to find a way to include everyone.

As Kelly ruminated on how to grow the women’s riding community, the space in which to do so was diminishing. “We have a shortage of public land for dirt bikes,” Kelly explains about the Northeastern United States. This is, in part, due to the widely held perception that dirt bike riders are environmental menaces. We tear up the forests’ delicate biocrust, and leave trash and exhaust in our wake. Whether unfounded or not, this limitation on land has necessitated riders’ protectiveness over our beloved trails. “When you find a new place to ride,” Kelly says, “you’re careful about who you tell. You don’t want it to be a secret, but it has to be.” 

Kelly compares the nuncupative nature of the dirt bike scene to that of the early days of skateboarding, or even the ’90s punk rock and hardcore factions. If kids heard about an abandoned pool, news of it would travel by word-of-mouth. If there were underground shows, you’d maybe find a flyer at a local record store. If there was a new trail, you learned about it from your riding friends. Once you’re in that world, you’re in the know. But if you drop out for a while, you lose that lifeline. “It’s totally community-driven.” Kelly says. “That’s why I use the tagline, ‘See you in the dirt,’” a play on the punk scene phrase, See you in the pit. “It means that sooner or later you’ll see them because you’re part of the same lifestyle.”

But to foster this lifestyle, Kelly needed a place to do so. A year after her inaugural trail ride, she had found just the spot: a large, privately owned plot of Pennsylvania land, rich with wide, grassy fields, remote singletrack, rocky hill climbs, river crossings, and a quarry-bound lake promising the most refreshing swim at the end of a long day’s ride. This property has become home to OAO for the last three years, and Kelly’s team has worked hard to keep it as such. “We’re not going to be part of overriding land,” she says, “That’s something we’re super aware of as an organization, and that’s what everyone should be doing – giving the land a chance to grow back. If you abuse something, you lose it.”

FROM RIDER TO LEADER

We arrive at a fork in the road. To the left, a dappled, sylvan trail stretches invitingly before us – the continuation of our yellow route. To the right, a menacing red sign stakes its claim, holding tight as water rushes around it. “Ralph’s Ramble,” it reads, pointing into the riverbed. The four of us stop and exchange an inquiring glance.

The year 2021 is the first that OAO’s attendance has broken 200 registered riders. Both the event and Kelly have come a long way in the last four years. “One of my biggest challenges was allowing myself to be the ultimate voice in charge,” Kelly admits. A team player at her core, Kelly learned through trial and error to put her foot down in times when decisions must be made. “I had to get used to the idea that if something is yours,” she says, “it comes down to you and your gut.”

Part of being a good leader, Kelly found, was finding a team that supports your vision and trusts your choices. And the cohesion of her team is evidenced by how smoothly the weekend is run. “We often talk about being a good leader,” Kelly says with respect, “but it’s just as important to learn how to follow. 

The people I have close to me know how to lead, too, but they definitely know how to follow.” Naturally, Kelly’s guiding principle is none other than inclusivity. “I’ll never do something that leaves people excluded,” she explains. “I get that from my mom.” Indeed, every facet of her events is a means of leveling the playing field for women, and sharing technical knowledge that used to seem all but off-limits. “That information is the stuff that people get from riding coaches,” she says, “but the average rider doesn’t get that. I think women in general need more information. Then they’re that much more ready, prepared, and psychologically at ease.”

But even with an open invitation, some women are reluctant to take the plunge. Decades of imagery reinforcing riding as a “man’s sport” have conditioned us toward skepticism. “There’s a mental boundary that some women have,” Kelly explains, “How we’re approached by someone else can completely change whether we take advantage of an opportunity.” When Kelly encounters hesitation from women, she approaches it in a way that is groundbreakingly simple: “I love when I get emails from girls who say, ‘I’m new to riding,’ or ‘I’m coming by myself, and I don’t know if this is for me,’” she says, “My favorite thing to do is to respond with so much positivity that it changes the whole energy with which they are approaching it.” 

THE REASON WHY WE RIDE

I leave my experienced team members to their own devices and gladly take the road more traveled. Enjoying the casual dips and turns of the yellow route, I practice my form and revel in the tackiness of the rain-soaked soil. Eventually, the curtain of foliage lifts, revealing my destination. I dismount and shake off my gear, and take a deep, relaxed breath.

In the field before me are thirty women on thirty bikes. Under the guidance of professionals, the women ride in turn toward a massive log. With newly acquired ease, each woman pops her front wheel over it, followed by the back. No one falls. No one yells. There is a pointed lack of bravado amongst the group. These women are relaxed, focused, confident. Concerned only with themselves and their own improvement. Each one is beaming with pride. I can’t help but think, “This is what it’s about.”

“I associate every win or loss with my own self-worth,” Kelly says frankly, speaking literally of each and every OAO. “I’m very Type A. My car ride home is thinking about the thing that went wrong, thinking about how to fix it for next year.” With everything running so smoothly, it’s difficult to imagine what she could be referring to. 

True to form, Kelly is thinking not of the big picture – she has that dialed in by now – but rather of the experience of the individual. She recounts an example from the year before: A woman had traveled out from Michigan on her own, and she did not know who to ride with. Kelly’s husband, Dan, ended up riding sweep for her throughout the weekend. “Had I known, I would have gone out and ridden with her,” Kelly says with genuine remorse. “That was my biggest regret after the last event. I need to get out and ride with people more.”

Most organizers would not reflect on their work with such granularity. But then, Kelly is no typical organizer. While OAO is her seminal event, she has begun to flesh out a program series dedicated to women, adding to the lineup a dual sport retreat, an MX event, and specialized clinics. With all these annual events to juggle, Kelly emphasizes the importance of savoring the small wins. While her capable team is off carrying out her events to perfection, Kelly has finally begun to schedule time to simply observe people enjoying themselves. She even makes time to go out and ride.

These moments allow Kelly to remember why she started all this in the first place. Why she stands her ground in the face of adversity, and why she thinks through every scenario and every person’s experience before making a decision. “It’s so similar to riding,” she reflects. “Everything you go through, that you feel – the challenge and the relief at the end, the excitement, the negatives – it’s all part of it, and without the lows you don’t have highs.” 

She pauses to reflect. “It’s like that quote,” she says, paraphrasing the adage from mountaineer Greg Child: “Somewhere between the beginning and the end of a trail is the reason why we ride.”