Most of you probably think: “What the hell… or Who the hell is Ulla Kulju?” Well here’s the whole story told by herself:
I was paralyzed in 2002 in the age of 15 in a snowboarding accident in Ylläs, Finland. I went through surgery and the doctors fixed my broken back with titanium. I decided at a very early stage that my accident won´t stop me for chasing my dreams. 6 months after my accident I went back to the slopes with monoski. On the same year I won gold medal in Finnish Championships in Slalom. Next year I raced against able bodied females in giant slalom and slalom, I came third in Finnish Championships. During my four years of alpine skiing in the Finnish Alpine Ski Team my highest achievement was European Cup silver in Giant Slalom and European Cup Bronze in Slalom.
At 2003 and 2005 I was nominated as an athlete of the year in Finland. I was also awarded as the most positive person in Northern Finland on the year 2005.
2006 I built few showcars and was awarded with 2nd place in young builder of the year and 2nd place in Hot Wheels 2006 show with most beautiful non-american car.
2007 I started sailing with multihulls. I had a Hobie Cat 21 Formula Catamaran and with it I raced around Finland. My greatest achievements in sailing were 4th place in British Championships with Challenger trimaran, 1st place in Ruotsinsalmi race with Hobie Cat 21F and 2nd place in Throne of Gulf of Botnia with Inferno 28 boat.
2008 I started Paragliding. I was the first paralyzed female in Finland to paraglide and get the licenses for it.
2010 I graduated as an Boat Manufacturing Engineer and as a Boat Designer from the Kymenlaakso university of Applied Sciences. After graduation I worked as a Mechanical Designer for Weldmec in Porvoo, where I designed aluminium work boats and oil recovery machinery for the oil catastrophy of Gulf of Mexico. 2011 I worked as a Project Manager and Mechanical Designer for Telemerkki, in Jokela. There I designed command bridges for warships and controlpanels for hospitals, my last project in Telemerkki was the command bridge for Viking Line Grace ocean liner. 2012 to 2014 I was an entrepeneur in the tattoo industry. I had my own tattoo parlor in centrum of Helsinki. 2014 I got a Design Engineer job from Etteplan Design Center where I design elevators and elevator machinery for Kone Oy.
I have two kids, Miko (8years) and Helka (2yrs).
After my accident in 2002 my only concern was that I will never get the change of riding a motorcycle. Or that´s what I thought. on May 2014 I desided to design and build my own adapted Honda CBR-F 600 1993 for me to use even though I am in a wheelchair. I designed and fabricated stabilizers for my Honda and switched the transmission to work with buttons on the handlebar. A year later in June 2015 I got the Honda fully road legal and approved for my use in the traffic. But that wasn´t enough for me.. I wanted and desired more. I desided to chase my dream of racing with motorcycles. I rode few track days with my CBR and fell in love with the feeling of riding fast. After that racing has been my passion, it´s something I want and need to do. It´s just amazing! I got invited to UK to meet Talan Skeels-Piggings who races with motorcycles and is paralyzed from the waist down. I got an amazing opportunity to have a track day in Silverstone. It was beoynd my dreams! It was something so great and fantastic! I also got advices from Andy Ibbot and I was more sure than ever that this is something that I want to do with all my heart. With the help of Andy´s training I got my speed up and my technique right. When I got back from UK, I began to find sponsors and companies to support me financially. Hard work paid off in october 2015 when I got my Yamaha YZF-R6 racebike with the help of my main sponsor 3M Finland (for the season 2016).
This text is borrowed from her facebook.
(Photo also from her facebook-page!)
And now the latest news is that she’s been invited to participate in the handicap RR World Championchips 2017 which are held in Le Mans 19-21 of May. Good Luck Ulla!
motorcycling
I could do some demonstration of the bikes (and I probably will do later) but here are all the new interesting bikes for season 2017, shown to us by 44teeth.com (with BaronVonGrumble and his face! -You don’t see that too often!)
Hallitus ajaa uutta veroa. Tulevan veron lopullinen kertymä voi hyvinkin olla jopa negatiivinen ja laskelmia tästä on useita. Hondaa maahantuovan yrityksen Stefanie Brandt-Tallqvist sanoo sen blogissaan niin paljon paremmin kuin minä niin lukekaa sieltä! Ranttilaiset -blogi
Aiheesta on nyt myös aloitettu nimien kerääminen adressiin. Alle vuorokaudessa nimiä on kerätty jo 10000! Laita sinäkin nimesi täällä: http://www.adressit.com/moottoripyorat_pidettava_verottomina
Nyt myös MP69 on ottanut kantaa mahdolliseen veroon, lue lisää täältä.
(Sorry to you all international readers, this is about possible new tax in Finland which is about to come… so writing is only in Finnish!)
It was just after the october ended and november started… Suddenly there was snow everywhere! At the moment it seems that this snow is here to stay but if I had to bet I would say that it’s gonna melt away before december starts (I hope I’m wrong!)
Today I took a ride with some best paths I know nearby. Temperature was +3 c but I had enough clothes and didn’t feel cold at all.
Here’s some videos from todays rides:
This path is only 7km’s away from my home!
In this path I meet some moosehunters but they say that they’re on the break so it’s no problem that I’m riding here…
Here I take a detour to the forest.
These paths goes very near to Turku higway and under it.
The longest video I took today. With some quite hard part in 17:00.
This is from the sand-pit in Ojakkala.
Here in 03:10 I try to make a jump from the small sand-pit but I fail. Then I’ll try to do it again, still too slow speed but I made it all the way up.
This is mainly gravel, with a shortcut path to another gravel…
This is a sandpit very near to Myllylampi (Vihti) and then a path just beside a railroad.
Again a sandpit (This one is in Lohja) and there’s a motocross track too. After that some forestroad with nice speed.
This is a nice path under the powerline.
And another path under the powerline.
Then finally some paths very close to my home.
I did one weekend tour with my BMW in the end of september and then I put it in the garage. Now I’m only searching for nice trails for my KTM Enduro. Luckily the autumn has been very dry and quite warm too!
Finnish magazine (Bomber Magazine) takes KTM 1290 SD GT for a test. The main things they wanted to test were wheelies, drifting and braking with rearwheel up! Like this:
Day 21
We rode from the northern parts of Poland through Lithuania to Latvia, like this. It was the longest ride in this trip but it didn’t feel like it at all. First of all it was a great weather!
We made a short visit to the hill of crosses and that made a nice break in the boring ride in those endless straights in Lithuania (and the road A12).
And in the beginning of the day we had some nice small roads of Poland and Lithuania!
We also stopped for awhile in the tripoint of Poland, Russia (Kaliningrad) and Lithuania. Here’s a short video:
And then about 150km’s later it was time for the “Hill of Crosses” (which I think is a junkyard!)
Here is the link to all the pictures I took in this strange place in the middle of Lithuanian countryside.
Here’s one excample:
In Latvia we stopped in Riga dam, it’s a huge reservoir & dam with powerplant and there’s a road going on the top of the dam. The views over the reservoir are quite nice!
We had a room from the nice Hotel Sigulda (my fourth time here!)
Day 22
This was 300km’s from Sigulda to Tallinn (and ofcourse the ferry Tallinn – Helsinki and the final ride from Helsinki harbour to home!)
First break was ofcourse in the border between Latvia-Estonia and the legendary Hesburger!
After this break it started raining! And we waited about 1 hour for it to stop (in Pärnu). Soon after Pärnu the road was dry again and we had time to visit the sandpit-lake near Saku. And I made some SocialMedia updates there (again!)
The final trouble we got in the harbour while waiting the ferry. We noticed that Ducati’s rear tyre is almost empty! But luckily there were many american cars trying to get to the ferry and some of them had the tyreweld-stuff. So Maria could ride her red Monster in to the ferry and then From Helsinki harbour to home!
Thank you for ALL the readers who have been following this trip!! There will be more!
After rainy Day 19 this was easy! And it was about this:
Polish countryside road is like this.
We had 520 km’s to ride and the route was like this. It was raining every now and then but it didn’t bother much because they were only short showers. This day we had mostly only the “bigger roads” and even some new highway (with roadtull).
It was abaout 1,7€ to ride 30km’s in that highway. Luckily we also had some quite nice road from Olsztynek to Szczytno. It’s road number 58 and it’s a very good choice after many boring roads in Poland!
Here’s a short clip from that road.
We arrived in our accommodation quite early so we had plenty of time to take a walk in a beautiful city of Mrągowo and we had a dinner in Mercure Mrągowo Resort&Spa.
Day 18 was a little bit different than other days. We actually had a place to visit and it was going to take at least 1,5 hours. Here’s the route for day 18.
This was a break in a small city of Großköllnbach.
I took only 5 photos before we arrived to Nationalpark Bayerischer Wald where we took a walk in a special path or a Sky-Walk in 8-25 meters above the ground among the treetops.
So we rode 300 km’s and we walked 1300 meters.
Here’s entering the Sky-Walk:
I have a fear of heights. In my case it means that I’m not afraid but my body reacts strongly when I’m high! My stomach goes upside down, I’ll start to feel dizzy, my legs feels weak and I might even fall down when loosing all the strength from the legs. I’ve also fainted 2 times when I was young.
So this Sky-Walk wasn’t easy for me (in the beginning!) I felt pretty unsure and unbalanced but slowly it became easier.
At the end of the Sky-Walk there is a wooden tower with a spiral-path to the top. It is 44m high and ofcourse the view from the top is simply amazing!! (Even we had quite cloudy weather)
I’m not sure if we spent 1,5 or 2 hours in the path but it was quite special experience! I really would recommend it to visit in some of quite many Sky-Walks in Europe (In Finland we have non!)
Couple hours later we arrived in our place to stay in Czech Republic and during the last hour it had started raining…
Day 19
In the night it didn’t stop raining and we had a hard day ahead of us! It was raining all day! The rain was hard and heavy! Maria’s new waterproof riding shoes gave up after 30 minutes (the water came inside the boots!) My boots were a little bit better (It took about 5 hours when the water started to get in).
(Here is some news about the rain in Poland that day!)
We had 475 kilometers route including riding through Prague (That was actually one of the very few “Not so bad part of the day!”) After Prague there was a bad traffic jam in the highway and Maria and I got lost from eachother!
I tried to wait for her in some gas station every now and then but i just didn’t wait long enough! When she took a break it took a really long time for her to find the mood to continue riding! When we finally found eachother she had to have at least 30 minutes break… or maybe even 1 hour! But she is a fighter! She knew we had to continue so she did… And somewhere after we crossed the border to Poland she said “Let’s ride all the way to the end!!!”
It was almost dark and about 8.30 PM when we arrived to our destination, the small city of Bojanovo and very nice Villa Aurora. She had a big portion of Polish duck as a dinner and in the bed the blanket was thick!
So in the morning everything was ok again (even the shoes were still wet!)
This was the worst day ever of riding for me too!
Here’s our house in Villa Aurora where we slept after this hard day… in the morning it was easy to load all the stuff in to the bike. They were right in front of the door!
GoZa Mite 