enduro

August rides

Posted by gozamite on 13.8.2022
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, BMW motorrad, dirt bike, enduro, Finnish Nature, gravel road, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycling, Off-Road, TransEuroTrail, Video. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Surprisingly june and july were moths (in the middle of the summer) and there was almost no riding at all. But when august came… It was on again!
August started with “Tour de Karis” -kind of ride around this village where I live.

28 minutes video of riding in Karjaa – Snappertuna area

And quite soon again I was riding. This time to the north side of Raseborg city. I was especially interested about this road: Malmitie – Malmvägen. It looked interesting on the map and it turned out to be even better!! (in the video it’s from 4:45 to 09:15)

Malmvägen and some offroad

Then on 7th of august I did a ride with friend. That turned out to be excellent tour from Veikkola all the way to Kisko. Best parts were in Fiskars forest and then on the north side of Kärkelä Ironworks area.
First Järventaustantie then Ruonankorventie and then Ahvenlammintie. Great Roads!
And I made my longest riding video so far (38 minutes!).

Long ridingvideo!

Next week we’ll have MAD (Moto Adventure Days). It’s now second time this event is happening in Finland and I’m one of the guys riding in front of some group, doing so called “punainen tekninen” routes. These are mainly big and small gravel roads added with some challenging tracks and trails. Here is the description in Finnish:
Harvaan liikennöityjä metsäautoteitä, polkuja ja kapeita yksityisteitä, joille ei välttämättä kannattaisi lähteä henkilöautolla yrittämään. Vastaan voi tulla pehmeetä hiekkaa, sepeliä, helppoja vesistöylityksiä ja muuta hauskaa. Toki välillä ajetaan nopeampia sorateitä.
Sopii jo kokemusta omaaville kuskeille. Kuivalla kelillä pärjää hienosti karkeakuvioisilla kumeilla, mutta kostealla suosituksena nappulat.
See you there!

Updating TET Finland (Section 5)

Posted by gozamite on 18.7.2022
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, BMW motorrad, enduro, gravel road, TransEuroTrail. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I’ve been the Linesman of TET Finland now 1 year. Been making quite many updates and I thought it would be a good idea to show people how it is made? (The update)
I don’t remember who made the original Section 5 (From Turku to Räyskälä) to connect Turku harbour with the main route -Sections 1 & 3 (From Helsinki to North)? But even as it was very good addition to the TET that time it didn’t serve as a “real adventure route” because too many parts with paved road.
I really wanted to make the update! I didn’t know the gravelroads in that are too well so I knew I had to go and make a ride there also. But I made the “raw version” first and I tried to make as good as possible so that there wouldn’t be too much searching for better alternative when riding!

Ylijoentie, Salo

This was the first place to check! It turned out to be very good “short cut” in the area where there was a little bit paved road. Now there isn’t.

Wiurila Manor, Salo

This was second place I wanted to add to the route. TET was already going very close to this manor but since there was quite long part with only paved road I could add just a little bit gravel road and this amazing house/ area. Wiurilan Kartano

Meyer Yard, Turku

This place I knew. I just needed to check it one more time that it was easy to reach from the route. It’s the Meyer shipyard in Turku but the viewing place is in “Playa del Raiso” -on the other side of the bay. Very easy to make quick visit!
After this I was finally on the part of the TET that I wanted to update. Route between Naantali and Räyskälä. First there are may villages with medieval (or very old) stone church. This is one of them:

Askainen Church, not actually a medieval church

After Askainen and Mynämäki you are finally entering the area with mostly gravel road. First the route goes towards Kurjenrahka National park and from there it goes to Somero direction. The whole Section 5 looks like this:

Section 5 (with the main route on the right)

I found 1 more interesting place on this route! There is outside swimming pool in Kyrö Village, entrance fee is 6€.

Kyrö swimming pool

The whole Section 5 is 450 kilometers. It starts from Siuntio, goes through Raasepori to Salo, then to Paimio and Turku, Then to Naantali. Then it turs back to east and goes to Somero and Räyskälä (In Loppi).
I didn’t need to change the route almost at all -there was only 1 place where the route went straight through the yard and another place where was “Private road” sign.
And ofcourse I made the video about this crazy day. Enjoy!

TET Finland Section 5

Visit Café Lättis

Posted by gozamite on 23.6.2022
Posted in: adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, dirt bike, enduro, gravel road, motorcycling, Off-Road, Video. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

New cafeteria/ motorcycle meeting place Cafe Lättis was opened few years ago. It has become very popular and if the weather is nice there can easily be 100 or even 200 bikes on sunday afternoon.

Last august we had the first ever XR-meeting there and we had even 12 or 13 BMW S1000XR bikes in the same time!

8th of August 2021

This cafeteria has homepage in facebook. They are quite active there and sharing new pictures and updates very often!
This summer when I’m riding with my enduro the distance to to visit Lättis is quite long. But if you just make the route it can be made easily. This time the route was excellent!

Best ride so far this summer

The route from Veikkola Neste to Cafe Lättis was like 150 kilometers. I found trails that I did’nt ride before and especially the trail that starts from Suopellontie (Karkkila) was excellent!

In the map the route looked like this!

On the west side of Cafe Lättis there is one landowner who doesn’t want bikes or cars to ride through!

So you need to ride to the paved road of Rautakoskentie!
It seemed there was al lot interesting trails on the west side of Lättis so gotta go exploring there again!

Vanjärvi in VIhti

Adventures goes on

Posted by gozamite on 2.6.2022
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, BMW motorrad, dirt bike, enduro, gravel road, motorcycle. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Springtime was so short! It started in the end of April and soon in May you will start to feel like it’s summer already. And I had so many ideas about new possible routes for transeurotrail.
First idea was to make additional route Helsinki – Turku. There was already one but it was going from Turku to the TET route and to connect to it in Räyskälä (almost 100km away from Helsinki). So I started to check my plans in the beginning of May.

Here I’m riding the few possible selections Between Karjaa & Perniö and also all the way to Teijo ironworks area. I made second checking ride a week later and I was checking the possible routes between Salo and Lieto. I found only private yards and tracks that were impossible to ride.

The new update for the TET route was made on 13th of May!
On that same day I was riding again! For that ride I found interesting start From Karjalohja: A very small ridgeroad going between two lakes (Kannaksentie) -but there are quite many summercottages on the way, I’m not going there again.

The part in the end of this video comes to Ruonankorventie that I have recommended to quite many riders that they should check this. I was riding from Lohiojanie to Lemmulantie and then to Ruonankorventie.
On May 15th I was inviting riders to make a group-ride to Iso-valkee and 15 bikes came to make a very nice ride together!! You can see some pictures here! I made also a video:

Then in the end of May (Helatorstai/ Ascension Day) I made a ride to check some small roads and tracks on Hanko Peninsula. Found some very good ones! Here’s the video:

Waiting to ride again!!

Season 2022 Start

Posted by gozamite on 6.5.2022
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, BMW motorrad, dirt bike, enduro, Finnish Nature, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, Off-Road, Spring Is Coming. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Finally after a winter with HUGE amount of snow it was possible to start riding!
And I did it with 4 times riding in one week. The weather was already quite warm -not like I needed to put all possible clothes on me.
First day ride was less than 100km like this:

First ride of the season

Second day I was checking one place where was flooding.

Ride to Kärkelä Ironworks area

Here is the short video of the place where the river was flooding!
I made a riding video of this next days ride.

3rd day short ride
Riding to the border of Varsinais-Suomi
Snow was mostly gone but lakes had still ice!
The temperature was something like 10-13 degrees -so not too cold anymore!

And then on saturday I got three friends with me and we did already almost 200km!

Tour around Lake Lohja

And here is the video of the ride:

Spring ride 2022

And there is more to come!!

BMW G650 XChallenge rear shock change

Posted by gozamite on 5.1.2022
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, dirt bike, enduro, Off-Road, Video. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I did this already 2 months ago but finally I edited the video how I’m making the BIG impovement to my bike… Changing the rear shock from the original Continental Air Damper to Touratech “normal shock”.
I hope this can help you if you’re planning this change!

New bikes for 2022

Posted by gozamite on 1.1.2022
Posted in: adventure bike, dirt bike, enduro, Honda, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycle. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Eicma 2021 was in November but there was not too many interesting bikes.
Now when we are already in 2022 it is interesting anyway to look the newcomers for this year.

1. Aprilila Tuareg 660
This bike is coming straight to the same category than Yamaha T700 so it will not be easy to find buyers… Or is it? The adventure segment is growing fast, more and more new bikers starting their adventures every day/ week!

80hp – 70Nm – 187kg – Seat height 86cm – 18 L tank

2. MV Agusta Lucky Explorer 9.5
This one is not coming to the stores yet in 2022. But it proves that all manufactures really are interested about this adventure segment. Maybe even more interesting is the little brother Lucky Explorer 5.5

125hp – 85Nm – 220kg – 85cm seat height – 20 L tank

3. Honda NT1100
It’s quite long time since Honda had an affordable big touring bike. This new NT 1100 will be filling the missing gap. It has the same engine than 1100 Africa Twin but after that pretty much everything is different.

100hp – 104Nm – 238kg – 82cm Seat height – 20,4 L tank

5. Harley Davidson Pan America 1250
This bike is been in stores allready for awhile and there is a lot of test riding videos of this bike!
But it is so BIG newcomer and remarkable new model to the market. Everybody’s even saying that it is not bad at all! It is actually very good!! Harley Davidson has now an Adventure Bike!

150hp – 127Nm – 240kg – 79cm Seat height – 21,2 L tank

Tiger 900 Rally Pro testride

Posted by gozamite on 25.5.2020
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, enduro, gravel road, motorcycle, Off-Road, test-ride, Triumph. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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 😉

Keimola race track (or it was a race track)

Enduroride April 19th

Posted by gozamite on 20.4.2020
Posted in: actioncamera, adventure, adventure bike, BMW G650XChallenge, BMW motorrad, dirt bike, enduro, gravel road, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycle. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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…

2020 SeasonStart

Posted by gozamite on 30.3.2020
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, dirt bike, enduro, gravel road, KTM, Moottoripyöräily, motorcycling, yamaha. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

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 Vantaa
I had to fill the tank!
With me was one KTM 1050 Adventure and yamaha XT660 Tenere
My XChallenge is running nicely!

The route for this day was something like this: