There were about 30 riders total for this morning's LSR 100K Populaire ride, of which about 9 were 'bents (Steve, Peggy, Ray, Angie, Terry, KenW, Greg, Bud, and me -- did I forget anyone?)
[On an early side note: Before the ride departed, Pam had a small ceremony to present Dan Driscoll with the "American Randonneur" award from RUSA -- pretty doggoned cool... ]
It was a chilly start, but the sun was out, with minimal wind. As expected, the ride broke up into several groups, with a bunch of regular riders speeding off, including Greg, Steve, and Bud. I hung back with the rest of the 'bent group, at a more casual (~15) pace, which actually included Dan D and a couple others riding semi-sweep. Got some fun photos as we wound our way through Richardson into Garland and beyond, out to and up Dump Hill (Ray gave the group about 200 extra "bonus yards", missing an admittedly unmarked turn to Dump Hill) , around to 66 and across the bridge to Rockwall to the first stop. Terry P was struggling a bit, but pedaling gamely on his Rocket, keeping those 20" wheels moving.
During this stretch, I had good conversations with Ray and Angie about their XStream and V3, which they both are REALLY enjoying...
We then headed out northeast of Rockwall, into somewhat hillier territory, and the group started to break up. Also, my camera batteries died, so no pics from that point on...
Peggy and I went off the front, and a few miles before the 2nd control / turnaround, encountered Steve and Greg coming back the other direction -- talked briefly, and continued on, expecting to see Bud soon... but we got to the turnaround control 4 miles later, and... NO BUD...
We checked the cue sheet and maps, and determined that Steve and Greg had missed an important turn, and were OFF THE COURSE when we had seen them, and Bud had made the correct turn, which is why we didn't see him...!!! So Peggy called Steve's phone... he answered, and she simply said, "
BONUS MILES!!!!" I believe Steve replied with an epithet or two...
The control store was CLOSED and out of business... So Peggy and I headed out with Dan and his pal Mike, making our way back through Lavon, Wylie, etc... A 2 mile stretch of Hwy 78 was WAY too busy for comfort, and there were a couple of mismarked cue sheet roads (no name on sign) to interpret, along the way. Fortunately, I pretty much knew where I was and where we needed to go, so I was Official Navigator for our foursome, correcting Dan D when he made a couple wrong turns.
We four made it back to RBM at about 2PM, and there we found Bud, who got in about 15 minutes ahead of us. Steve and Greg were still behind somewhere, working off their probable 15 bonus miles... We went over to Q'doba to eat while we waited for various people to get back.
Personally, I enjoyed the ride, partially because I was already familiar with 80% of the route just through other rides in that area. It was a BEAUTIFUL day.... And Peggy's always fun to ride with!!! We had a couple "mock" city limit sign sprints along the way....
By the time I left Q'doba, everybody was in except for Terry P -- Greg called him, and he was still a few miles off, and apparently OFF THE COURSE, despite having a GPS... or maybe he just told Greg the wrong street name...
Additonal note: IMHO, this route is not well designed for newbie distance riders, with a severe lack of open controls for food and water... granted, you can stop in wherever you WANT, but a new person isn't necessarily going to realize that.... and the cue sheet had some identification issues. Plus, there was no "official" control all the way back to RBM, a distance of over 30 miles, AFTER a closed control point. Dan and Mike both ran out of water with about 5 miles to go. There was also fairly heavy traffic to deal with, both on 78 in Wylie, and in Garland after that. However, overall road quality was decent, with a minimum of bad chipseal.
Good to see everybody!!! I'll put some photos up later.