It sounded like a reunion of old friends, the joyful hooting, silly dancing and free-flowing compliments mashing with the whooshes of tire air pumps and back-spinning bike wheels.

But the group gathered by the Monon Trail at 86th Street on April's first sunny, 60-degree Sunday included new friends, too: a nurse who returned from pandemic travel duty after two years; a brand new cyclist who, looking for new interests ahead of her 30th birthday, bought her first bike at Walmart recently and was flagged down by an enthusiastic stranger who told her about this cycling group.

"I love them socks, girl!" Angela Ewell, the nurse, told Jackie Elliott, a longtime fitness instructor who was dressed head to toe in black and pink "Black Girls Do Bike" gear. Others nearby joined the enthusiasm with cheers, as Elliott modeled and laughed.

'We don't stop existing':Her novel was challenged as 'obscene.' Leah Johnson will keep telling Black, queer stories

"When you come with attitude and confidence, that’s swag!" Ewell said.

"Come on now, that’s what we got today," Elliott said.

Chyri McLain-Jackson corralled them for a photo behind a banner identifying the group: Black Girls Do Bike Indianapolis, a space for anyone, and particularly Black women, to cycle for function, fitness, freedom, and fun.

They are all ages, from nearly 30-year-old Lily Nelson to a triad of women in their 60s who announced themselves as the Riverside Riders — "just some golden girls riding bikes," laughed Pam Hardy.

After Elliott instructed the group about how to communicate about passing pedestrians, stopping or slowing, and explained that ride leaders would sweep the group to make sure no one was left behind, it was time to launch Black Girls Do Bike's first group ride of the season.

"We’re here, we are Black Girls Do Bike, we are Black girl magic," Elliott told the group.

"Wheels up!" shouted McLain-Jackson, the chapter's founder and "Shero."

McLain-Jackson found her love for cycling in the late aughts while training for her first triathlons, which were fundraisers for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Of the three sports involved, she loved cycling the most — an activity that's smoother on the joints and lets one get out in nature's scenery for hours.

"As I was biking, I realized that no one really looked like me in those groups I was going out biking with; there were not very many women, there were not many women of color," she said.

While looking for groups to join, she found the national Black Girls Do Bike organization, founded by Monica Garrison in Pittsburgh in 2013. McLain-Jackson reached out to Garrison with interest in starting an Indianapolis chapter, which she did in 2014.

The membership growth was a slow trickle at first. A core group of four or five riders would get together regularly. When the pandemic hit, those group rides suddenly attracted 20, 30, sometimes 40 riders across all skill levels, riding all kinds of bikes.

McLain-Jackson had to start designating ride leaders besides herself; last year, she got officially certified as a licensed cycling instructor with the League of American Bicyclists. 

The group is inclusive to all genders, races, ethnicities; but with a special focus on Black women and women of color. The outsized disparities Black women face in health outcomes, like high blood pressure and diabetes rates, influenced by longstanding societal inequities, are well-documented. Some of the women riding in the group over the years have lost weight or weened off their blood pressure medicine, McLain-Jackson said.

Racist beauty standards have also been a hindrance in the past for Black women getting out and exercising, Elliott said. Prior to a shift toward wider societal embrace of natural hair in the last decade or so, she said, many Black women got perms, costly chemical treatments that changed the texture of their hair and could be ruined with too much sweat or helmets.

In that and many other senses, biking is a form of freedom, several group members said. And the unabashed love for one another is rampant in the whoops and cheers and words of encouragement down the line of cyclists, along every hill and nearly every mile.

"The sisterhood is what is so amazing about it all," Elliott said.

For Hardy, biking is a time to be free from obligation and worry, free from cell phones, if just for a little while.

She started a small neighborhood riding group, Riverside Riders, in her longtime home of Riverside in 2017, after a group member's mother died. At the time, Hardy was her mother's caretaker. Then Hardy's mother died in November 2021.

"I call it a peace ride," she said. "Biking is more of a peace thing, for me, for my mind, get away from it all. I just feel better when I bike."

She keeps several bikes handy at home — bikes that someone else was getting rid of — so that no one has an excuse not to ride in a sport where cost can present a barrier.

Near the Carmel-Indianapolis border, the group having stopped for a break, Hardy reconnected with her cell phone to take a group selfie, moving the camera around at various angles because she couldn't see the screen well without her glasses.

"Just keep snapping, Pam," shouted Darrell Cline, husband of a longtime group member. "One of those 20 will be fantastic!"

The group rides are not about setting personal records; they're social and supportive, with members helping new riders adjust their seat heights and shift their gears.

Nelson learned almost all the basics of bike riding during those two hours, her first ever ride — and said she felt comfortable doing it.

Upon learning how long it was — 10 miles — she did a small dance and said, "Oooh, I did all that today!"

Everyone cheered and rang their bike bells with her.

Contact IndyStar transportation reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17.