I’m a member of motorg ry and members have a chance to borrow a motorcycle for free!! It’s a Yamaha MT-07 and I took it for me yesterday. It felt very good to do some proper Street Riding after almost 2 years!!
#MotOrgBike
Then I attached my Insta360 camera to bikes handlebar and went to Hymyilevän Motoristin Kevätpäivä motorcycle meeting and parade. This was my fourth time in this meeting. The #HMKP places I’ve been were Lahti 2011, Jyväskylä 2013, Mäntsälä 2016 and now in Helsinki 2023. Here’s The video I made:
I’ve always been listening music. So Eurovision song contest makes no difference. Ok… It’s been quite many years when there wasn’t too many interesting songs but NOW there is! 2023 First Semifinal: Norway: Alessandra – Queen Of Kings (Goes to the final!) Malta: The Busker – Dance (No Go) Serbia: Luke Black – Samo Mi Se Spava (No Go!) Latvia: Sudden Lights – Aijā (Goes to the final!) Portugal: Mimicat – Ai Coração (Goes to the final!) Ireland: Wild Youth – We Are One (No Go!) Croatia: Let 3 – Mama ŠČ! (No Go!) Switzerland: Remo Forrer – Watergun (No Go!) Israel: Noa Kirel – Unicorn (Goes to the final!) Moldova: Pasha Parfeni – Soarele şi Luna (Goes to the final!) Sweden: Loreen – Tattoo (Goes to the final) Azerbaijan: TuralTuranX – Tell Me More (Goes to the final!) Czechia: Vesna – My Sister’s Crown (Goes to the final!) Netherlands: Mia Nicolai & Dion Cooper – Burning Daylight (Goes to the final!) Finland: Käärijä – Cha Cha Cha (Goes to the final)
These songs you can listen here! Sweden and Finland are the best from these.
To the Final goes: Croatia, Moldova, Switzerland, Finland, Czechia, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, Serbia and Norway 3 countries I guessed wrong!
2023 Second Semifinal: Denmark: Reiley – Breaking My Heart (Goes to the final!) Armenia: Brunette – Future Lover (Goes to the final!) Romania: Theodor Andrei – D.G.T. (Off And On) (No Go!) Estonia: Alika – Bridges (No Go!) Belgium: Gustaph – Because Of You (Goes to the final!) Cyprus: Andrew Lambrou – Break A Broken Heart (Goes to the final!) Island: Diljá – Power (No Go!) Greece: Victor Vernicos – What They Say (No Go!) Poland: Blanka – Solo (Goes to the final!) Slovenia: Joker Out – Carpe Diem (Goes to the final!) Georgia: Iru – Echo (Goes to the final!) San Marino: Piqued Jacks – Like An Animal (No Go!) Austria: Teya & Salena – Who The Hell Is Edgar? (Goes to the Final) Albania: Albina & Familja Kelmendi – Duje (Goes to the final!) Lithuania: Monika Linkytė – Stay (No Go!) Australia: Voyager – Promise (Goes to the Final!)
These songs you can listen here! Definitely not that many obvious finalists in this second Semifinal. Austria is the best from these.
To the Final goes: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Belgium, Austria, Lithuania, Poland, Australia, Armenia and Slovenia. 2 countries I guessed wrong!
On saturday I hade a meeting in Lahti so I started planning the route to ride there. The spring was already so far that there was no ice and snow anymore except in few places. But I could ride through from all the places and I didn’t turn back anywhere. Here was my route to Lahti:
It was all together almost 300 kilometers for saturday. And it was really nice route and very enjoyable ride! I visited one friend in Orimattila to sleep the night there. Here’s the video from Day 1:
From Karjaa to Lahti
On sunday I first did a ride to Mankala Power Plant and from there I turned “back home”. But the route was about checking the Section 6 of TransEuroTrail Finland that I will share later. That turned out to be very nice route also!! Even less ice and snow than on saturday. I’m sorry but I’m not sharing the picture of the route because it will be published later in TET. Here’s the video from Day 2:
From Orimattila to Mankala and from There back to Karjaa
The best picture of the weekend is from sunday. This really made me smile!
Alive Children
I hope I will have a chance to do more these kind of longer trips this year!! I really enjoyed this so much.
YES! Spring is NOT around the corner, it’s here finally! So many plans made and so many routes to check. TET Finland will be even better soon! But lets start with the local roads and tracks. First ride was on Good Friday (Pitkäperjantai):
Good Ride on Good Friday
Second ride was on saturday:
Saturday with some more OffRoad parts
And on that ride we had a good laugh (I fell with the bike)!
Notice: Insta360 selfie stick is not made for enduro riding! Ihave now had it 3 times in my bike and it’s now bended. I can hardly open it or close it. I wonder is there any better ones?
Finally got out with my bike and this interesting camera Insta360 was attached into it. First ride I made a week ago. The camera was in handle-bar and I wanted to check only how it will look? Editing a good video was quite easy (Ok, I dunno about good but it looks quite ok to me!)
Insta360 One X2 attached in handlebar
Second ride I made yesterday. Now I had 2 cameras and my microphone with the wire (I couldn’t find my Rode Wireless!!) My DJI Osmo Action was in the normal place (handlebar) and Insta360 was on the tip of the stick behind me. You can see it from this picture:
Editing with 2 different cameras is much more complicated than you first think! They have dirrent picture style and colors. And my microphone with the wire mostly doesn’t work! I need to find my wireless mic -it has much better sound quality. Here’s video from yesterday:
Riding with 2 different cameras!
3 times in this movie there’s a cut from Osmo Action to Insta 360 when you should “understand” that this is the same place, same time and same ride. But if you don’t get it… It doesn’t matter! You can still watch the video. Maybe I can adjust the cameras so that the picture will look more similar? And maybe I need to make more “sharp cut” to make it more obvious. And the battery of Insta360 lasts much longer than DJI Osmo Action!
I made myself an intro that I will start to use in all of my motorcycling videos! I’m not a graphic designer so I just put a search word to Google “Free animations” and downloaded the first one that looked good to me. Then I added music from my favorite band Tangerine Dream. It’s the first notes from the track called “Kiew Mission” from the album Exit. Here is my Intro that you will be seeing many times from now on:
I hope you like it!! Or at least don’t find it irritating!
This I’ve been dreaming quite long time. Now I have it!
If you compare the size of the camera to any other action camera it’s not big! And it shoots pictures or video all the time to every direction! Then when you’re editing the video you can choose which direction comes to the final video! Or you can make a 360° video where the person who’s watching the video can choose himself to what direction he’s watching -like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0t3UUaQci4 The editing is a little bit different because you have to think all the time which direction of the video is the best. For example when I’m going to make motorcycling videos with this there can be things happening in many directions! But luckily you can make many cuts where you’re using the different POV of the same file. Me and my friends were skiing!! For me it was the first time in more than 10 years! Ahh it was fun! So I was testing what kind of picture this camera takes and how it is to edit the video… I didn’t know the the lights in the hill can have that bothering effect to the video that everything is flickering!! Unfortunately in this video it bothers… Next time I will use some other fps (frames per second).
Helsinki Motorcycle Exhibition first time in 3 years!!
There was 3 bikes that were extremely interesting for me: Aprilia Tuareg 660, Honda XL 750 TransAlp and Ducati Desert X But lots of other nice bikes too!
Aprilia Tuareg is lighter than Yamaha Tenere 700 (187kg dry weight) but the engine delivers about same power than Yamaha. It seems to have more offroad capabilities and surprisingly low seat (86cm).
To the same “middle weight adventure bikes” comes Honda XL750 Transalp. It’s about same weight than Yamaha Tenere 700 but the engine delivers more power (90hp!) Seat is also quite low in this (86cm).
Ducati Desert X is bigger than those “middle weight” bikes. It has 900 cubic engine with 110hp! And it weights only little bit more than 200kg’s. This would be very very interesting bike to ride TET Finland all around!
It’s not very difficult to guess that New Honda Transalp will be on top of the list about sold new bikes. Let’s hope it is trustworthy bike for the new owners!
Every now and then there is a question which navigation system is the best for Adventure riding? I don’t have the correct answer but here are some features to check. Especially if you want to ride TransEuroTrail (Finland). I’ve been using Garmin GPSmap 62, Garmin Montana 600, Last summer Samsung Active Tab 2 & Osmand App and now I have Garmin Montana 700. I did a testride with both of these navigation systems attached to my motorcycle. I also had my camera (DJI Osmo Action) attached to my helmet -this I didn’t have in a very long time. And Rode Wireless Go II microphone was connected to my camera and the microphone itself was inside my helmet. Here is the video:
I’m not saying which one is better. They both have some cons and pros. Samsung Tab can be a little bit tricky to keep the batter fully loaded. It is very delicate part of the tablet this USB gate where you should connect the charging wire. I was using the magnetic type of wire where there is an extra connection just after the plug that you should push to the USB gate. The power that comes from my motorcycles alternator is not quite enough to keep the battery 100% loaded all day. But in novemeber when we were riding 9 hours it took only about 30% of battery power… So I could easily ride 2-3 days without recharging the tablet. It has also a small problem about the maps. You can get along with them but they are not as accurate than the maps in Garmin Montana. Every now and then I was little bit confused with Osmand maps. Why this track or that road is not on the map? Garmin Montana 700 biggest drawback (so far) is that you can’t change the thickness of the saved track’s line on the map! This makes it little bit tricky to see the line on the map that you should try to follow. The strangest thing is that it was possible in Garmin Montana 600!! (And also in Osmand App!) There are a lot of other devices and other apps to use. Especially this whole Apple -thing! I know nothing about them. But for android this Osmand is very good choice because it’s free or it’s not expensive to buy (full licence) where you can have unlimited amount of downloads (maps). I hope this helps you to choose a good system that serves you the best!
Go - Za 