Waco wild west

Ok so today was my first organized ride and only my second time on my road bike. The day started at 530 this morning with me waking up and remembering that I had some minor stuff to work on with the bike. After I got dressed and finished removing the foot cages and adding my back light, I loaded the bike up left for Jodi's house. I got to Jodi's and we loaded my bike on her rack and headed up to Waco for the ride. When we got there I started getting extremely nervous, one because I was wondering if I would complete the 25 mile course and two because of the large number of people around. Jodi introduced me to alot of her friends and they were all very nice (but please don't ask me thier names). When we got to the starting area Jodi realized she had not locked the car and we were in downtown Waco so she took off to lock it...my anxiety started to kick up a bit. I dealt with the anxiety by checking out all of the different jerseys around me, and trying not to focus on the fact that these were all people surrounding me and there was no way for me to make a quick exit if I needed to. Jodi was back rather quick and the race started, were were "skateboarding" up to the front where we could actually start riding. "Skateboarding" is when you have one foot on your pedal and you are standing up and pushing along on the ground. Well, as we were skateboarding up I almost fell over on the guy next to me. I don't know if Jodi saw it or not, but I was thinking "great I have not even sat on the saddle and almost wrecked, this is gonna be a long day." We finally made it to where we could start actually riding, and I will tell you that riding across the bridge in waco to start was a great way to start. I felt very comfortable at the beginning, right up until Jodi said something about the cows over to my right and I made the mistake of looking that direction. Well, I took a slight detour off road but handled it well. I stayed up and didn't try to turn the bike back on the road, I just stopped. That was the only other mishap of the ride. We had our first rest stop at mile 8 and our second was around mile 18. The people running the stops were awesome, well all the people supporting this event were awesome. The route was beautiful and it was great weather to ride! I finished the ride in 2 hours and 9 min (counting the rest stops) it was actually under 2 hours of actually riding. My average speed was 13.5 mph and I have to say I am pretty dern proud of that for my second time ever on a road bike. I really do think I have found something that I can and want to do long term. Thank you Jodi so much for your support and encouragement throughout this ride. I can not wait for the next one!!!