TL/DR - Finally grew some balls to approach a girl at the gym. Eventually got her number and took her out for dinner and drinks. K-Closed, but won't be seeing her again for a while because of her schedule.

Hi Seddit - long time lurker here excited to provide my first field report. I'll try to make it as straightforward as possible - I want this to be of value to others, and I'd like to hear some feedback since my head has been spinning a bit since Saturday night.

Backstory

I had seen this girl around for some time now at the gym, but noticed that her schedule was quite inconsistent. I'd been interested since day 1 and noticed her looking my way more than once, but kept making excuses until (i.e. - I'll talk to her later/I'll wait until the moment is right). One day I noticed she hadn't been around in maybe a month or 2 and thought to myself "if only I got one more chance to talk to that one girl, I'll pull the trigger." Sure enough, I saw her that night, so I couldn't back out now.

The Approach

It worked out to perfection that she was doing squats on the rack next to where I was doing push presses. She was doing barbell front squats with the bar only. I tried to be playful and said it looked too easy. She ended up taking it as a challenge, which she later said she appreciated. I introduced myself and we had about a 5-minute convo in which I found that she traveled a lot for work, and that as kids, we used to live in the same town, though at different times (she ironically moved there months after I moved away).

Getting the Date

I made it a point to talk to her every time I saw her - 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. We did have a couple conversations that went long because we have a lot in common, so we hit it off really well. Eventually I asked for her number, but due to our schedules it took us 3 weeks to set up a date, though during that time, we saw each other fairly regularly at the gym. The week of the date we actually ended up meeting up to work out one day as well.

The Date Itself

As the title states, I hadn't been on a first date in over 6 years. I had been in a relationship and eventually married, (now divorced) so I had no idea as far as what to expect. I went into the evening with zero expectations, just looking forward to having fun and getting to know this girl even better. We went to dinner and drinks at a popular restaurant in the city that we live in. Conversation always flowed, and it got pretty deep at some points - we talked about our previous relationships and why they failed, talked about our goals, our interests...too many things to list here. I found out so much about her and in all honesty, she surprised me in a very good way. I found out that my challenge at the gym made quite the impression, as she told her friends about it. Apparently she's been talking about me to them and she did not hide it. In looking back, I was pretty nervous most of the night for some reason, but still had fun. However, some of my nervous quirks definitely came out at a few different points in the evening. Overall, this is the only part in the entire process that has me even a bit concerned about where the situation is headed. Though this could also be a matter of me over analyzing the issue.

Closing

After everything I drove her home and didn't really pull any stops - I went for the kiss as soon as we got to her place. We proceeded to make out in my car for about an hour, until I suggested that we go to her place for a bit. She made it clear that she wasn't DTF that night so I didn't force the issue, but the night continued for a while and we definitely had some more fun.

Aftermath

We had agreed to work out together the next day, but she had other things to do, so that didn't happen. And we happened to go out on her last weekend before her travel schedule got really crazy, so I haven't seen her since. We texted a of days ago - I wanted to at least get up a second date set up in principle before she left, which we agreed to when her schedule slows down (in a couple of weeks). I also made sure to thank her for a fun night and she reciprocated it. We haven't talked since, through - I'm making it a point not to bother her while she's away and busy. I will likely run into her next week, so I'm looking to employ the patience that got me there in the first place. I'm getting a bit nervous, though - I think I have an idea where things are headed, but I just want to know for sure.

Feedback is welcome - this is my first post, so sorry if I left out important details or made things too wordy in certain places.