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!
Off-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:
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:
My own summer holiday started in the beginning of July. I had a plan to go and check TransEuroTrail section that was planned ready and route was made but it needed to be checked before it can be live.
This section is East-West Section Parikkala – Jyväskylä.
And I also wanted to do more TET-riding all together. -To finally see all that I’m responsible of!
So on the 3rd day of my holiday I started. Route for Day 1 looked like this:
From the west it was first Section 5 until it reaches section 1 in Siuntio. Then only the “beginning part” of Section 1 until I could continue Section 41 going around Helsinki and ride further east…
Then after Hopom Lake I turned away from TET to ride to Loviisa and meet a friend who lives there. I was also offered to sleep the night…
Here’s the video of the Day 1:
Day 2 will follow soon!
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.
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!
There’s alrady new routes (sections) made… but we need to check everything before anything will be published.
Here are the plans:
So there will be these new sections
– Tikkakoski to Juva and from Juva (via Savonlinna) to Parikkala
– Porvoo (via Juva) to Suonenjoki
– Section 2 will have new route going from the westside of Tampere
– From Siikainen to Kyröskoski (between sections 2 and 3)
– From Yli-Ii to Taivalkoski (Between 2 and 3)
– From Tornio to Muonio (Final part of section 3)
At the moment TET Finland looks like this.
It is impossible to say when these will be published but we will start checking them pretty soon after all the snow is gone! At the moment it looks like it’s going to be before march!?!
GoZa Mite 