M.A.R.

I was excited for this ride! I had never ridden with more than four people before. I had never paid to bike either. I had never supported anything while biking.
I asked my brother-in-law to join me and he was all for it.  The weather leading up to Saturday pretty much sucked!  Cold, colder and now rainy.  Not at all what I had in mind for a Saturday ride.
Saturday morning finally came, the first thing I did was check out the weather channel.  That was a bad idea, 34 degrees and 17-20mph wind, with winds gusting up to 30mph.  30mph ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  But I signed up, so i'm not backing out.  I was supper pumped to do this bike ride.  Jake called me at around 8:00am an basically said "dude have you been outside? It's freezing out."
Neither of us wanting to back out on each other, we met up at 9:00 loaded up the bikes and headed to city hall.  When we arrived people were everywhere, bikes were everywhere, but the sun was no where to be found!  I really enjoyed all the different bikes and different people, you name it, there was someone to fit that mold.  It was also neat to see all these people who loved biking to be out here in this weather for the ride.
After waiting 20 minutes we were off.  I would estimate around 500 others were pedaling with us.  It was nerve racking starting out in this pack of bikes and people.  After about a block I could finally clip in my pedals.  Then Jake and I were off to the front.
It was so fun riding through the people and a couple of miles in we could see the pace car.  We both knew we wanted to catch that pace car.  We would have caught it except Kristin (my wife) and Hannah (an awesome friend) were at Caribou Coffee, so as we were riding by past, we had to stop in and say Hi.
When we got back to riding we were back in a group of riders. Not for long! Once again Jake and I wanted to catch that pace car. We started hauling the mail, Jake was flat out flying up hills, it was a ton of fun.
Quick Detail- On this ride the Des Moines Police Department had EVERY intersection blocked off, we never had to stop, wait for a light or worry about traffic.  It was AMAZING that they did that for us.  Thank you so much.
This ride took us on trails, city streets you name it we rode on it.  During our ride it was cold and wind about blew us off the path a few times.  People riding next to us were awesome, everyone was up for talking and just wanting to have a good time.  After 20 miles we knew we only had 10 left.  Well those last 10 miles were brutal.  We were all the way south by Easter Lake and had to climb hill after hill after hill.  That was the first time I have ridden up hills like that. (Great practice though)  Once we conquered the hills it was 5 miles riding straight into the north wind, again brutal.  Once we finished it felt great.  To ride that hard for 30 miles in that weather was an awesome accomplishment!
I can't wait to do more rides like this (hopefully the weather will be better).
Oh yeah the mayor actually rode! He has ridden the last 8 years (Good work out of him).