At Good Time Ride Co., we’re all about helping people have a good time on bikes. We believe mountain biking should be welcoming, build confidence, and be accessible to anyone who wants to try it.
We're Emma Butler and Katie Schneider, PMBIA certified instructors based in Edmonton. We started Good Time Ride Co. in 2026 to create the kind of supportive, practical, and truly fun riding experience we wish more people had access to.
Whether we’re teaching skills as part of a 4-week clinic or leading a social group ride through Edmonton’s River Valley, our goal is simple: help riders feel more comfortable, more capable, and more excited to get out on the trails.
We’re firm believers that even a small amount of mountain bike instruction can have a huge impact on your confidence as a rider. And when you feel more confident on your bike, the trails open up in a whole new way—suddenly that rooty section, punchy climb, or winding singletrack doesn’t feel nearly as intimidating. (If any of those terms are new to you, we break down some common mountain bike lingo here!)
All of our coaches and ride leaders took mountain bike lessons early in their own riding journeys, and every one of them can talk your ear off about how learning the essential skills to ride confidently led to many exciting possibilities on the trails. Not surprisingly, many of them eventually became coaches and ride leaders themselves so they could share that experience and excitement with other riders.
We’re not about ego or pushing as hard as possible every time you ride. We’re about learning new skills, building community with other riders, stepping outside your comfort zone (safely!), and discovering just how much you can progress in this sport.
Progress > Perfection.
In short: we’re here to help more people have more confidence and more fun on bikes.
If that sounds like your kind of good time, we’d love to ride with you!
How Emma and Katie met (hint: it involves bikes)
Good Time Ride Co. started the way many great bike stories (and award-winning films) do: two riders met at a mountain bike skills program in Edmonton’s river valley.
Between practicing new skills, sessioning trail features, doing shuttle laps in Hinton, and cheering each other on, Emma and Katie quickly realized how much more fun mountain biking becomes when you’re learning and progressing alongside someone else. Plus… it was 2020, what the heck else did they have going on?!
By April 2022, they were on a plane to Peru together, heading on a mountain bike trip in The Sacred Valley with World Ride. It was the first time either of them had ever been on a plane with their bikes, and it was truly terrifying watching the utter disrespect baggage handlers had for their precious bikes, packed carefully in their rented bike bags with pool noodles wrapped around their frames.
They arrived safely and then instead of slowly adjusting to the altitude change, Emma incorrectly hiked them uphill to find a lunch spot. Such a fun time in their friendship!
But that trip wasn’t just about riding (and at one point crying on) incredible trails. World Ride is a nonprofit that creates opportunities for women around the world through mountain biking by teaching skills, bike mechanics, and leadership so riders can build confidence and independence.
Seeing that mission in action left a big impression on both Emma and Katie. It reinforced something they had already started to believe: learning to ride bikes confidently can be genuinely life-changing. The people you meet, the confidence you build, and the joy you find on the trails can ripple into the rest of your life.
Not long after returning home, they decided to take the next step in their own riding journeys and headed down to Canmore to complete their PMBIA Level 1 coaching certification.
Over the next couple years, Emma and Katie kept seeing the same thing happen again and again: riders would show up to their first bike school session feeling nervous and unsure of themselves, and walk away at the end of their program smiling, more confident, and excited to ride more and more. The transformation that comes from learning new skills, riding with supportive people, and spending more time on the trails is something they both experienced themselves, and something they wanted to help more riders experience too.
That’s where the idea for Good Time Ride Co. came from.
Whether you're brand new to mountain biking or looking to build confidence on the trails, Katie and Emma (and the rest of the team!) are here to help you progress at your own pace and enjoy your rides more.
Because at the end of the day, mountain biking should feel exactly the way it did for them when they first started: fun and funny, supportive and rewarding, and chock full of good times on bikes. We take bikes seriously, but not ourselves.
Meet your coaches and ride leaders
Katie Schneider
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Emma Butler
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Katie is a Level 1 PMBIA certified instructor and super obsessed trail dog mom. There is nothing that fires Katie up more than the opportunity to spread the love of biking to those around her by teaching them essential mountain biking skills or leading them on fun social rides around Edmonton’s vast River Valley trail network.
With over 10 years of snowboard instruction under her belt, Katie’s approachable personality and genuine love of progression makes her a true pro at coaching people to realize their full ability. There isn’t a challenge out there that she isn’t up for—whether it’s competing in enduro races such as Boobs on Tubes at Panorama or the Canmore Enduro, conquering the mountains of Peru, or going on multi-day alpine bike treks—Katie knows that if you have the essential skills dialed, there is nothing you can’t achieve, and she passes that belief onto anyone she coaches.
When she’s not riding her bike (or training for a half-marathon!) Katie loves hanging with her legendary trail-dog, Sam, fostering community creation in Edmonton via her “corporate job” (which she is incredibly good at), and spending as much time with her partner and friends as possible.
After her second (!) ACL surgery, Emma ditched her soccer cleats for some sturdy mountain bike shoes and never looked back. Originally from New Zealand, she grew up riding with her dad (who definitely pushed the boundaries of what is reasonable terrain for a seven-year-old) before eventually making her way to Edmonton, after a gap year working at a summer camp in the Rocky Mountains. She now holds a Level 1 PMBIA instructor certification and is stoked to teach skills so more people can feel confident and empowered in this exciting, challenging, and totally rewarding sport.
If you’re a bit nervous or not quite ready to point your bike downhill just yet, Emma provides a supportive and encouraging introduction. Having gone on many wild adventures, from riding the janky terrain of the Peruvian Andes to completing a coast-to-coast self-powered journey across Costa Rica, and even bumping down non-MTB-specific trails in Guatemala, she’s more than happy to chat about pushing your limits and working through the “fear barrier.”
As a board member of the Edmonton Mountain Bike Alliance (EMBA), Emma loves being part of the community that helps keep the river valley trails running safely and smoothly for everyone, not just riders. (Not an EMBA member? Join now!)
When she’s not fastidiously cleaning her bike(s), Emma is usually scouting new places to ride, from downhill and cross-country trails to gravel routes with her wife and friends across Alberta and British Columbia.
Genna Flinkman
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Nicole Auger
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Genna has been an athlete for as long as she can remember. From college basketball to skeleton racing to representing Canada in stand-up paddleboarding, she’s always been drawn to trying new things and figuring out how to get better at them. She’s a big believer in the idea that if you want to do something, you can, no matter your age or where you’re starting from.
These days, she’s still very much all in. As a mom of two, she spends her time “taking it easy” downhill mountain biking, travelling with her family, doing karate, and going on hilarious bike adventures with Emma and friends. She’s also the kind of person who will say yes to riding singletrack from one side of the city to the other on a very hot summer day, just because a friend thought it was a good idea (it was!).
Genna is a PMBIA Level 1 coach with over 15 years of coaching experience across a range of sports, including basketball, paddleboarding, hockey, gymnastics, and mountain biking. She brings that experience together with her background in kinesiology and psychology to make learning feel approachable and easier to understand, no matter your starting point.
A big part of Genna’s coaching focuses on the mental side of riding. She’s especially good at helping people work through fear, build confidence, and understand what’s going on in their heads when something feels challenging. Her goal is to help you not just improve your riding, but also feel more confident in how you learn and push yourself.
For Genna, mountain biking is about more than just riding trails. It’s about learning how to work through challenges, trying things you’re not sure you can do (yet), and building confidence and skills that carry over into other parts of your life, all while helping everyone she rides with have a lot of fun along the way.
Nicole got into mountain biking about five years ago after finding herself with some unexpected free time during the pandemic. What started as a hobby quickly turned into something she now genuinely loves, especially the community that comes along with it.
She’s been leading rides for the past couple of seasons and is all about creating a fun, welcoming space for people to get out on the trails. During the week, Nicole works a very corporate job, but she’s quick to trade that in for dirt trails, bikes, and good times whenever she can. She loves showing people that you don’t have to be “outdoorsy all the time” to get into mountain biking, and that it’s something you can grow into at your own pace.
A big part of what she brings to our ride club is helping people see that this doesn’t have to be your whole identity—you can work in an office, have a full schedule, and still create space for mountain biking in a way that feels very rewarding.
Nicole’s also taken her riding on the road. She once loaded up a van with GTRC’s very own Katie Schneider, three bikes, and two dogs for a trip to Moab (wait; which dog didn’t get a bike?!). The trails and views were out of this world, though she’s still undecided on whether climbing up and over boulders will ever feel like her thing. She’s also had incredible riding experiences in Valemount and Revelstoke, and is heading to Nepal this fall for her first “take a bike on a plane and see what happens” adventure.
When she’s not on her bike, Nicole is usually planning her next adventure, cross country skiing, training for the Folding Mountain Ultra (running on the road is the epitome of “boring” to her so she would prefer to run straight up a mountain), or watching the Oilers win (and… lose).