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adventure
The winter motorcycling is quite challenging! First you’re collecting the best and warmest clothes to put on you. You get dressed up for 1 hour (or something) and then you go out without even knowing if the bike will start?
I was really waiting this kind of weather! The frozen ground makes the gravel roads little bit slippery (Or too slippery like you will see later in this post!) and the riding is more challenging! I took this kind of route yesterday:
I wanted to ride the forest roads near that Iso-Kisko lake and I wanted to see the swimming place and fire place of that lake. I only saw that place once and that was in the middle of the winter -at least now it would be little bit earlier!
Here was the first crossroads where I found the road that I didn’t ride before.
That road had some beautiful views right under the powerline that has no electric current! The line comes from Inkoo Powerplant that was demolished few years ago.
Then I was in another city (Salo) and district (Varsinais-Suomi). That road was just maintained and plowed so there was loose gravel and stones on the surface and right under this loose surface there was frozen layer… It was very slippery! And even I said to myself many times “Be careful, It’s very slippery!” This happened:
For a second I was little bit frightened that I was hurt! I was winded and it felt like there’s something wrong. But it lasted only few seconds and then I pulled myself up and started to my move my hands and shoulders. It felt like everything was ok! I had to ride to the gas station because I needed to fix the foot peg that was stuck on the “Up position”.
This picture I took little bit later when I was already riding back home.
The whole adventure video you can see here:
Last week in Milano was again the biggest motorcycle exhibition in the world: Eicma 2023
This time there were many new models that are interesting and I will introduce few of them here.
Honda NX500
CB500X will be NX500 from now on. The technical specs will be pretty much the same than in CB500X. But the look will be very close to it’s bigger brother 750 TransAlp.
Royal Enfield 450 Himalayan
New Himalayan will be much lighter and much more adventure ready! 40 hp, 195kg and 21 inch front wheel tells quite a lot about this bike. But if you really want to know more check ItchyBoots YouTube channel, she’s riding this bike already in India even it’s not in full production yet.
Kove 800X Super Adventure
Kove bikes are hardly sold in Finland yet! But they have a dealer here and it will be very interesing to see these!! It has almost 100hp and it weights 185kg! These specs are pretty much everything that all the adventure riders are expecting about the bike.
Triumph Tiger 900 Rally
This is still one of my favorite bikes! I did only a short test ride with it few years ago. Now they made it even better!
It has now 106hp and it weights 228kg. I would say it’s totally ready for long long adventures!
And then 2 bike models that were introduced but only as a street models. And everyone is waiting the adventure model to be revealed very soon or at least next year at EICMA.
Ducati Hypermotard 698 Mono
First time in 30 years Ducati presents one cylinder engine! But what a beast it is! It has 77hp and the bike weights 151kg! There has been already artist drawings about the Enduro model:
I can say I like it very much!!
KTM 990 Duke
KTM has mad adventure models from every street models so it’s pretty obvious that there will be 990 adventure! This has 123hp and the bike weights 180kg (dry weight).
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!
It’s been a long time since I called other riders to join my ride. But now I did it.
12 bikes started from Veikkola and interesting detail was that there was no more bike models than 1 of each! We had: 2 x BMW, 2 x Husqvarna, 3 x Honda, 2 x KTM and 3 x Yamaha.
The group of “Pohjolan Kurapyöräilijät” (Nordic Dirt Riders) had so much! Here’s the video:
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:
This info I got from Joost Bijl
When I was planning the routes and sections of TET Finland I definitely wasn’t thinking that we would end up being the second longest TET route in Europe!! But here we are:
1. France 13,300 km (29 sections)
2. Finland 9700 km (20 sections)
3. Poland 9600 km (14 sections)
4. Spain 8400 km (27 sections)
5. Turkey 6500 km (20 sections)
6. UK 6400 km (21 sections)
7. Georgia 4900 km (29 sections)
8. Greece 4600 km (15 sections)
9. Italy 3900 km (17 sections)
10. Estonia 3300 km (10 sections)
11. Sweden 3300 km (6 sections)
12. Hungary 3250 km (11 sections)
13. Bulgaria 3000 km (11 sections)
14. North Macedonia 2400 km (11 sections)
15. Norway 2250 km (4 sections)
Total length of all tracks is 100,039 km (September 2023)
Check more info from this photo:
I don’t have any plans at the moment to add new sections.
Last update was done this morning and the sections 10 and 17 were added:
You can read little bit more about the different sections from here.
This is how TET Finland 9700 kilometers of Adventure Riding looks like:
Day started with morning swim, breakfast and packing the bike. Before 9 AM I was ready to start riding!
Weather forecast looked quite bad fot the afternoon so I wanted to ride as far as possible before the rain.
After Savonlinna there was a long challenging part. In the video this starts at 06:00.
I took 1 picture in that part:
Luckily that wasn’t so hard because I was able to go around!
After Juva there was quite long and little bit boring part with ordinary Finnish countryside roads and I got my first raindrops… I decided to put on the rainsuit. But while I was putting the rain gear I noticed the front wheel! There was 2 new spokes broken and they were just beside the previous ones. So now I had 4 spokes missing from a very short part of the rim. I was thinking right away that I can’t continue riding with this bike! My holiday adventure ended there… About 150km’s before Jyväskylä.
Called a towing car and got a ride to Mikkeli and took the train back home…
This was the route for the day:
And the entire adventure looked like this on the map:
“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:
GoZa Mite 