Took a short testride today. Even I knew this is going to be great bike I was still surprised! What an amazing bike! The engine is marvellous! It gives smooth power already from 2000rpm and it sounds very nice too.
Already OffRoading…
The suspension is totally with manual adjustments but it seems it made me very happy with the factory defaults (I’m 120kg’s!) And that is rare. I was also very happy with the riding position even when I was standing. Maybe I would add 2cm’s to the height of the handlebar if I would be the owner of the bike.
The bike doesn’t look very special… Except the spoked wheels are very nice!
This bike would be big enough for me and for my wife. The power is ofcourse much smaller than in XR but I think I could manage with it. I did find ONE thing I didn’t like! When you’re filling the tank the lid of the tank doesn’t stay up! So when you take the gaspump you have to lift the lid up with your other hand to get the gas to the tank… Not very big thing but it made me think how easy it would be to change this! One interesting thing was the rpm meter in the TFT-screen! There was 2 of them!!! One on the left side and then another on the right side of the TFT… It seems they had (too much) space in the TFT screen to put it there twice 😉
We don’t have a lockdown in Finland. We are allowed to go out but meetings with more than 10 people is not ok. There was only 4 of us in a beautiful sunny weather and almost +10 degrees celsius. This time I didn’t choose any difficult tracks… and I finally made a video of this interesting route:
Old railroad track
This was a narrow railroad in Finland and it stopped working in 1967. But the track has stayed and it’s kind of in use as a road. But for example now in spring it can be tricky if there is still snow (and there was!!) Unluckily my riding ended with the flat front tyre in Karkkila (65 km’s from home).
I was lucky that there was one big bike (KTM 1090 Adventure) so I could take a ride with him back home and then I picked my bike with my big car…
This season I started later than in a long long time! But there’s quite obvious reason: Covid-19. Last week there was already quite nice days but finally when I made the decision to go out on sunday it was quite cold! +3 (celsius) was the highest and -1 was the lowest. But at least we had sunshine!
Somewhere in VantaaI had to fill the tank!With me was one KTM 1050 Adventure and yamaha XT660 TenereMy XChallenge is running nicely!
Triumph brought totally new models with 1200 twin engine. It has nice 90 hp -which doesn’t sound much but in this kind of bike it’s more than enough.
rrem
Even I didn’t have real knubble tires I felt the calling! “Go to the gravel! Go to the forest!” -It was shouting… And I did.
This is bike is definitely at home when riding in gravel!
It’s totally the best bike that I have ever been riding in the gravelroad! It is too heavy to take Off-Road but I don’t really miss that anymore. The seat should be softer and it should have better design. I could feel my ass wouldn’t like this after 200km’s!
This time it was very interesting! There was so many new models it felt like there’s no time enough to get to know all of them. Luckily I’m not a big fan of sportbikes… So few bikes wasn’t so interesting to me.
1. KTM 790 Adventure Maybe the biggest group of interested viewers was around this bike. It’s no wonder. The bike looks very good! It has hew parallel twin engine that KTM introduced last year. The engine has little bit less power than in 790 Duke but of course the torque is better is all rpm’s. Bike has almost all possible electronics: traction control, cornering abs, offroad abs, ridemodes and so on. It has 20 litres tank that gives the bike easily more than 400 km’s range on the road. Tank is placed around the engine so the center of gravity is very low. Price for this bike is 18500€ in Finland!
Tank around engineIt was difficult to take pictures of this bike! There was so much people all around it all the time.
2. Yamaha 700 Tenere Another adventurebike but totally different kind of idea! This is simple, not too much electronics and it looks more ready for an OffRoad ride! It’s almost 6000€ cheaper than KTM! The final price is still open but they said it will not be more than 12800€! 200mm travel is not much but they’ve tested this bike quite long time so I guess they think it’s enough. 16 liters tank gives this bike more than 300 km’s range.
It should’ve been white-red bike in the show!But this look very good! It calls me to make an offroad ride right now!
3. BMW R1250GS And here is another adventurebike but yet again totally different kind of thinking. This is legend of all touring/ adventurebikes but now it has bigger engine, more power and torque and it’s again more expensive. It has simply everything you can ever imagine the bike could have… -Ok, no reverse gear or automatic gearbox but anyway. The price for adventure version is more than 31000€ in Finland
Big bike to make long rides and tours
4. Suzuki Katana Suzuki makes a nice return to interesting and “modern” bikes. But the funny thing is that the design is very retro when it is based on 80’s Katana. The engine they take from GSX-S1000F so it delivers very nice power and easy riding. And the way it looks it will always give strong feelings to all pure motorcyclists!
Katana
5. Triumph 1200 SpeedTwin Triumph presents new line with 1200 Twin engine. The bike still looks totally retro but the engine is now more like modern and sporty. It delivers 96 hp with 112Nm torque in 4950rpm. Compare this with T100 engine: 64hp and 80Nm in 3800rpm -you can say that there is a big difference.
On august 17th I bought a new enduro bike! This time I chose BMW G650 XChallenge! It has the same 1-cylinder 650ccm Rotax-engine than in many many other bikes. It is known to be very trustful and you don’t have to make service all the time.
I rode the bike from Lappeenranta to home and I really was enjoying enduroriding again!
During this autumn I’ve been riding few times with friends also and I’ve had videocamera with me. Here are some nice videos:
This was 2nd of september. We were riding mostly quite big roads/ easy roads so everyone could join the ride!
The roads in Kiikala area are very nice!! You really can enjoy the speed and essence of Finnish nature and adventure motorcycling!
This one is from Vihti/ Karkkila/ Lohja area (Rausjärvi). It is also a part of Trans Euro Trail route that I planned last spring. In this video there is a scary moment in 06:45 when a car comes from the yard straight in front of me! Luckily I had enough time to ride aside!
In the end of september we had a little bit different ride. This time mostly OffRoad. This was already in the beginning of the day… The most difficult parts! I can say that I was sweating like a pig… or a horse!
This path is quite well known route in Vihti. Not too difficult, almost quite ok for ordinary roadbike too.
This is one sandpit near Lohja. There is also nice small pond and we are riding around it two times.
And the last route is an old railroad (without rails) in Pikkala. The railroad was built by Russians when the area was part of Russia after the WWII.
In this video there is short break to take pictures under the bridge and then riding over the log. This log is not that difficult anymore…
Trans Euro Trail is an epic motorcycle journey through some of Europe’s most remote, diverse and inspirational landscapes. I’m proud to tell that now the TET Finland is updated and I’m the one to blame about the most southern part (From Espoo to Hämeenlinna).
So all you enduro and adventure riders it’s ok to download the track from TET-site and go riding and having fun!
You can find the track here.
It looks like this:
Yes, after 9 weeks I finally thought I can try. Neck and back didn’t feel too bad and I had my KTM ready and fixed back home so lets go!
This is kind of my favorite place now! It’s very near and you can always take a good picture here (Just beside Espoonkartano).
I had the idea NOT to ride any offroad parts… but when I noticed a new trail in place I didn’t see before I just had to go there…
I can tell now it wasn’t a good idea!! Because next night I had much more pain almost everywhere and I suffered a lot while I was sleeping!
But it is autumn now. I fould a huge stack of pink hay bale and they looked weird.
It was a great day for a ride so it was nice to take pictires in beautiful places!
It is still easy to find place where you don’t see the autumn colours… But then again if you find some mapletrees you can really see the autumn is here!
But after this weekend I can say that maybe it’s not the right time yet. My back still hurts and becouse I can’t stay away from offroad parts it’s better to wait.
I was just returned from my Corsetour Europa trip. I was already working and it was the first weekend… I didn’t feel like riding with BMW, so I called few friends and we took a ride with Endurobikes. This time it was not about hard and wet parts -but mainly about nice and easy gravelroads.
The route was more than 200 km’s and we had some lunch in the Räyskälä airfield.
I had my helmetcamera with me and I did shoot all the “nice parts”:
And about 8km’s after the last video in the paved road it happened!
Green is me, red is the car.
(I don’t have any memory of the accident so I’m telling what my friends have told me!)
I was about to ride forward of the mainroad. I was riding below the speed limit (about 70-75km/h). There was old guy driving a mercedes and he was about to turn left to the small road. He told he didn’t see us coming so he just turned left…
I had about 1-2 seconds to break before I crashed to the right-front corner of the Mercedes. My bike was making fast rotation on the ground after the crash while I was flying over the frontend of the car. After the car there were some mailboxes standing beside the road -I hit those before I crashed to the ground (head first) and stayed there in the bottom of the dike.
Very soon there was people who actually could help! And the ambulance was there after 20 minutes. They took me to the hospital in Espoo and from the x-rays they could see that 2 of my cervical vertebrae (neckbone) was broken.
But very luckily 2 days after the accident I was talking with the doctor and he said that even the bones are fractured, they are all in perfect order and position!!! So nothing is changed in my nerves and I was very much able to walk and do everything else as I was doing before the accident…
Now it’s little bit over 1 month from the accident and my life is almost normal already. I’m very careful with my neck and I am using the headrest almost all the time! But besides the stiffness of the neck I feel pretty normal and I can only wonder that it has been a miracle how lucky I was!
Recovering has been very fast!
The temperature went down for easter! It was something like -5 during the night and didn’t go up more than close to zero in the daytime. But still we desided to take a ride!
This is my first time to the top of the sandpit wall! I’ve tried it maybe two times before in this place, but now finally I made it!
In this same video I almost fell in good speed because the ground is frozen and I loose control of the rear wheel! You can see this in 09:35.
The second video is from Rausjärvi:
This same road I rode a day before and it was much more soft. Now the cold weather and the frozen ground made it quite easy.
Third video is a fast gravelroad from Ahonpää (Nummi-Pusula) to Antiainen (Karkkila):
Next video is 4 bikes going over the stream in Lammassaari:
I also made a short video to IG just a few minutes before:
