The Anti-Social Randonneur

Well, that's what it seems anyway. I missed the Lone Star Randonneurs 400K this weekend because of business travel. Add that to missing last months night brevet, and it's starting to look like I don't want to ride with anyone. That's not the case, of course. I would prefer to have spent all of Saturday and part of Sunday morning riding from Cleburne to Mineral Wells and back - especially since we had a nice detour to avoid a closed bridge. But, duty called and I couldn't make it. So, here I am doing another solo permanent. It was a last minute thing so I had to do another of my routes. I don't have many left in the 200K range that I hadn't done this year, so I did the Marko Polo Permanent Populaire. Only 170K, but it was close to home. I really didn't expect to get any riding in this weekend, so these are all bonus miles so to speak.

The route is named for a fellow Randonneur who passed away earlier this year, named Mark Sachnik. Mark, who liked to go by Marko Polo was an enthusiastic cyclist and was a popular ride leader with the Plano Bicycle Association. The route is on bikely here.

I really wasn't too happy with my riding today. Felt like a slug, though I really didn't have a bad finish time. Just never felt like I had any power in my legs.

I did get a few pictures along the way. I've ridden this route three times now this year, but the first two were scheduled Populaires. I've also ridden these roads many times on other rides. But today was the first time I recall seeing the buffalo along FM-455, so I got a couple pictures of them. This guy was just standing around waiting to have his picture taken.






This group was part of the main herd.













Here's Yet Another run down old shack/barn.