I’ve been riding Adventure and Enduro about 10 years. TET Linesman of Finland I’ve been now 2,5 years.
The more I’ve been riding the more it is not clear to me where you can ride and where it is not OK?
Finland Roads and Traffic act says that it is OK ride to ride on the road -It is not OK to ride outside the road (OffRoad). But the problem is about the fact “What is the road?”
But I also have quite clear thoughts how it should be! What the road owners should do…
We have quite many possible traffic signs and they should use more of those!
Like I’m saying in the video: The amount of road users is getting bigger and bigger (OffRoad car drivers, ATV riders and adventure motorcycle riders) so it is obvious that the private forest roads cannot stay unused forever. If you don’t want other road users there you need to put the traffic sign to your road!
adventure bike
This summer was third time for this amazing AdventureBike event in Himos!
I’m lucky and very happy I can be one of the Team Leaders -This time for red – black routes (Team 13).
Here’s the video how I made it to the event:
Then after one day of resting and chilling out at Himos it was time for some action! Thursday was the first day for riding!
That first ride on thursday was very fun!! On the next day I did it with the group and it was much more difficult! We made 25 kilometers in 2 hours! That episode is here:
Episode 3 here:
“The rainy day”
The weather forecast promised that during the day it would come better, the rain would stop and there would be sunshine. But it didn’t!
So I didn’t stop too many times and I didn’t take too many pictures.
On the north side of Imatra TET Section 4 is following “Niska-Pietilä” museum road and not too far north from this road I turned away from TET.
I was now checking the new possible section 10. And it had right away very nice parts that you can see in the video starting from here. It was amazing roads and tracks all the way to Punkaharju.
And in Punkaharju the route goes of course from the old ridge road that was voted as the most beautiful road in Finland. It’s called now as “Vuosisadan tie” (The road of the century).
Before Savonlinna quite luckily just beside this “new TET-route” there was sport resort Tanhuvaara and I stopped to ask the price for the room. It was a big surprise when they said 55€! And the breakfast was included. I didn’t think too long to choose this! Later in the evening I was riding to Savonlinna to eat something and I found quite good Chinese restaurant.
The video of the day:
Day 2 was about continuing the section 41 to east and then turning to section 4 to noth.
The route for the day was like this:
After I started following the TET route I came almost right away to Strömfors.
And then quite soon the TET route was mostly about very nice forest roads! Just before the route goes to the south side of Highway 7 there is this:
Yes we have toilet for TET riders! Actually I don’t know why they are there in the middle of forest?? The video of the day is here:
Biketeam Finland was helping me in a difficult situation. I got a loaner bike for one week since I had some interesting things to do (with motorcycle)!
This was before I got my own bike back.
It’s 2009 model and it has 52000km’s in it. And there’s quite many additional parts (windshield, head lamp protectors, crash bars and skid plate and extra lights to mention a few).
On the first day I went riding with a friend who makes stories about cars and motorcycles to Finnish magazine Kauppalehti. This time he had new Suzuki V-Strom 800DE in the test. Here’s the story he wrote to the magazine: https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/suzukin-keskikokoinen-seikkailee-asfaltilla-ja-maastossa/19eb1bf4-94b3-4d12-8bbd-3aabf38d4fa5
It was an interesting ride! To realize that Suzuki is very capable of doing pretty much same things than BMW GS. The ground clearance is little bit shorter and factory tires wouldn’t be ok in muddy conditions but otherwise the difference to GS is almost zero. We did also some “OffRoad” riding! Here’s the video:
The next day I did already pretty much same kind of riding with this GS than I usually do! Checking TransEuroTrail Tracks. And also some offroad tracks. GS feels heavier than my own XChallenge especially in the tricky parts. But other than that the 800GS is very “Adventurous”! Here’s the video:
I would enjoy more riding with GS compare to my own bike if I would do many days long trip. In the paved road this bike feels pretty much like any other road bike and when you come to the gravel roads and smaller forest tracks it is still very capable doing all you want.
The big Touratech screen I would change to smaller right away -I didn’t like it!
This bike is for sale in Biketeam (Sold!)
Same week I had also presentation about TransEuroTrail Finland. Check the presentation video
(Finnish language) here.
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:
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:
The best picture of the weekend is from sunday. This really made me smile!
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):
Second ride was on saturday:
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!)
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:
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!
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Now the have promised that we will have 25 cm’s of snow! The legendary “Takatalvi!”
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!
GoZa Mite 