Tour around Finland Day 13

Posted by gozamite on 6.9.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, gravel road, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, S1000XR, touringbike. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This was another very hot day. But I was thinking that the gravelroads here are not that bad so I took one in the beginning. This road was actually very nice ride because it was in very good condition.
The first stop we made at interesting cafeteria in Yli-Ii (Wife pronounced this as “ULI-LEE” and I was laughing about it!)
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This cafeteria was an old gas station but the gasbumps were already empty…
Then we checked two dams and powerplants. There was also a fireplace (laavu) near the Pahkakoski dam. But this fireplace was in very bad condition. At least there was quite nice place for swimming…
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Then finally after 12 days of riding around Finland I found a place to wash my bike! This was in Oulu! And now I had a clean and shiny bike again!
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Picture was taken somewhere southside of Oulu. I really don’t have any idea what is this “thing” behind my bike??
We found a place to stay the night from Pyhäjoki, but not from the “city”. It was a bed n breakfast place 7kms away from the village (Puttaan Kartano)
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Ok… Pyhäjoki village is not very big, we found only 1 pizzeria where we could have something to eat. And after eating we went to the beach to check how sea looks up here.
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Sea was quite ordinary but my wife is very special and beautiful!
And this is a video that she made of this day 13:

The route for the day 13 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 12

Posted by gozamite on 1.9.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, helmetcamera, Make life a ride!, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, S1000XR. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Weather was again very warm. This is not at all typical in Lapland that the temperature stays over +30 long time and even the nights are warmer than +20.
We started soon after 9am and it was already stifling hot. I had plans for some gravelroad in the beginning of the day but I choose the paved road because I could ride faster and get some refreshment from the wind.
I didn’t fill the tank in Kittilä which was a big mistake. I soon realized that there’s no big citys or even villages between Kittilä and Rovaniemi -it looked like there’s no places to add gasoline!! But finally there was one!
This place was 57km’s south from Kittilä and the gasoline pumps was still working! Many these kind of places don’t have gasoline anymore because the regulations are more tight about spoiling the enviroment.
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Quite soon after this we found a place for a break and swimming. There was this big river Ounasjoki and our route was following it until Rovaniemi but the rivers are not so obvious places for swimming…
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This was a place to put the boat to the river and it was ok for us to make a quick refreshment. About 1 hour later we were in Rovaniemi and there’s one place my wife wanted to see! The Arctic Circle and the Santa Claus village!
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Even in a very hot summer day you can hear at least Japanese, Russian, German, English and few other languages here. I hope these people didn’t come here to find the winter wonderland… We almost went to visit Santa Claus!
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But we chose the motorcycle ride to the city… and we didn’t want to ride there too long. It was simply too hot! Our final stop was at Ranua -about 110 kilometers south from Rovaniemi. Just behind our hotel there was a beach so we could relax for awhile and ofcourse go swimmig.
Later in the evening we had a dinner in our hotel but to stay the night here we had chosen the “economy room” which meant a room with very poor air ventilation upstairs of… police office!
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Luckily we could keep the window open all night so at least after midnight it was already almost ok to fall asleep.
Here’s video about the day (made by my wife):

The route for the day 12 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 11

Posted by gozamite on 30.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, gravel road, helmetcamera, Lapland, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, S1000XR, Video. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This was the day when we started our way “back home”. It was only “downhill” from here untile we will reach the Helsinki-area. But luckily there was still many nice places to see…
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This picture is from the beginning of this road (Road to Kalkkoaivi). I didn’t have the time to check the whole route and I also had the very unlucky experiences of having the flat tire few days ago… So I only checked how it looks from the beginning.
After quite many kilometers we finally made a stop to check Äkäsmylly. It’s still operational watermill in Lapland wilderness! We though it was very beautiful place.
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Pitty it was very HOT day (+32 celsius) and we didn’t want to sweat our clothes totally wet so we walked back to the bike quite soon and continued riding.
Next stop was after quite long gravelroad-ride!

In the Pakasaivo -lake the water doesn’t change! There are no rivers or creeks that comes or goes from it! There’s also a special Lappish mythology that says it’s a place for the dead… So even it was very hot day we didn’t want to go down there and swim because we thought the place was little bit scary! (And because we were 50 meters higher than the lake surface!)
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After this it wasn’t too long to our hotel. This time we were lucky! It wasn’t the best possible season for skiing so we got the room from very nice hotel (with spa) and it was quite cheap! Just when we were arriving at the hotel when we saw this:
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This was kind of shocking… when you have this beautiful image on your mind about cute reindeers who are helping the santa claus and walking around lapland wilderness… And here she was peeing almost in the middle of the road making the pavement wet!! Yaiks!
We spent the night in Lapland hotel Saaga with this view:
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And my wife made a video about this day:

The route for this day was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 10

Posted by gozamite on 29.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Kävely, Matkustus, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, nature, S1000XR, Travel, Video, walking. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

We had an idea to do some hiking today. But first we needed to ride to the place where we wanted to hike… So we started quite early, we rode only about 190 kilometers to reach out destionation in Kilpisjärvi. On this ride we only made short stop at Enontekiö/ Hetta to fill the tank and in Muotkatakka which is the highest point of the road in Finland.
After midday we were already changing clothes and shoes and starting our Hike up to the Saana mountain. The motorcycle was parked behind Kilpisjärvi hotel, the elevation was about 500 meters there.
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And we had about 4 kilometers walk up to the mountain where the maximum elevation is 1029 meters. So at the same time when we were walking 4 kilometers to the top we also had to climb about 530 meters up!
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After first kilometer the trees are gone. This was the easiest part. The path was very rocky and we had to use also hands few times when the hill was very steep.
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The landscape was simply incredible! It was difficult to concentrate to climbing when you have these amazing views all around you!
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Can you see my bike?? It’s waiting there…
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After 2 hours and 10 minutes we were at the top! 1029 meters above sea level and 550 meters above the lake Kilpisjärvi!
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On our way down the weather was even better and more clear. We got some amazing pictures!
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We had a nice apartment with sauna to spend the night. This was maybe the most amazing day of our holiday trip!
My wife made a video about this day:

The route of the day was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 9

Posted by gozamite on 26.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, adventure bike, Lapland, Make life a ride!, motocaching, motorcycling, nature, S1000XR, summertime, touringbike, Video. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

This day was little bit cloudy and it wasn’t so hot. We started to ride the beautiful road to Karigasniemi. The route follows the Teno river and you can see to the other side of the river (Norway) almost all the time! From Karigasniemi we turned to Norway, this had to be done because it’s a really nice shortcut to Enontekiö (in western Lapland) -the road in Finnish side would be 340 kilometers:
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And if you take the road from Norway side, it will be more than 100km shorter!
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Almost right after we crossed the border it started raining! And we were riding in the heavy rain about 5 minutes and then the rain was light and it didn’t bother anymore -but the road was wet.
In Vuottašjávri we made a short sidetour to a small cape in the lake. There was quite nice sandbeach and I’m already regretting that I didn’t go to swim!
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I also fell with the bike here but it was so soft sand so no marks to the bike!
It took awhile before the road was dry again and we could actually see some sun peeking behind the clouds. It was very nice to stop beside the road and take a good look around you. This part of Norway is called Finnmark and the surraundings here are simply amazing!
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Maybe our visit to Norway was a bit short… We were back in FInland much too soon!
We chose the road to Näkkälä village (40 inhabitants) and this was again a very good choise! This kind of totally empty landscape (beside the road) is very rare in Finland!
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This picture is about from the end of the road. There’s a beautiful creek (or a river) and this small village with few houses. Ofcourse in the deepest winter it’s little bit different here! (The sun doesn’t come up in 2 months, it can be -30 celsius with more than 1m of snow…)
We had very nice cabin from Kelotin Rantamajat and we went to have a dinner in Galdotieva -this was unfortunately the worse meal in our trip. Wife had the reindeer kebab and I had the “local steak”. Both of the portions were mostly terrible! Meat was almost burned and you couldn’t tell if it was pork, reindeer or pieces of soil from the yard… We do not recommend this at all!!
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This cabin had the kitchen and toilet! It was very nice!
My wife made a video of this day:

The route for this day was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 8

Posted by gozamite on 18.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, DJI Mavic, Drone, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, S1000XR. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

The morning started with the visit up to the “mountain” Kaunispää. We took few pictures there and continued to the next mountain (Urupää) and there we chose the “old road” which is called “The magnetic hill”. Long time ago it was difficult for bigger cars to climb up to the hill (especially in the winter) and somebody made up the story that there was strong magnet keeping them down!

We checked The airport in Ivalo but we only met one reindeer:
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The road between Ivalo and Inari is very enjoyable ride but usually you will meet many rendeers here! We were lucky since we didn’t see any! We also stopped at “Karhunpesäkivi” which is a big boulder with kind of giant’s kettle inside the stone… And you can go there! There are few strange holes in the inside walls of the stone and this made it possible to make up many different stories about what happened and why…
But it is known that there was a bear in winter hibernation many times long long time ago…
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These stairs lead you to the stone and the stone looks like this (PicBy Puppe100 – Oma teos, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71268537) :
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Next time we stopped at the viewing tower of Toivoniemi. It is actually named as a bird watching tower but anyway there’s quite nice view from the tower to the Lapland nature around!
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The actual “Toivoniemi lintutorni” looks like this:
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This you can find near Kaamanen village and there’s also an old airport that was built by German soldiers… or actually their prisoners of war. So still after 70 years there’s nothing but “empty land” in the place where was supposed to be the speedlane:
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From Utsjoki we found our cabin to stay for the next night. We took the luggage away from the bike and continued “naked” to the north…
There is one museumroad between Utsjoki and Nuorgam. It’s a gravelroad that climbs quite high above the river of Teno and you will have very nice views from there!
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Only few kilometers more north and we were here:
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And because the idea of this tour was to stay in Finland we turned around!!
Very close there is the road called “Pulmankijärventie“. If you choose this road you will find amazing place without any trees and open landscape everywhere around you!
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This might be the only place in Finland where you can find this kind of view!
I also had to take a picture of my bike with this bridge (Sami Bridge between Finland and Norway):
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Plus some pictures with the Drone:
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And video:

Our Cabin at Camping Lapinkylä was like this:
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Once again my wife made a video about this day:

The route for the day 8 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 7

Posted by gozamite on 13.8.2018
Posted in: motorcycling. Leave a comment

After breakfast I was flying around the area with drone (as I told before). This resort was just behind the local shop and also beside the Kemijoki -river.
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After we started riding we met a pack of reindeers! They were standing in the middle of the bridge and it was almost impossible to pass them. I had to be very careful that I didn’t hit the white one! (This video I uploaded long time ago and it’s about the reindeers in our trip)

After reindeers there are few quite long straights…
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We stopped for awhile in Sodankylä -maybe to enjoy ice cream because it was very hot again!
On the northside of Sodankylä there is two big reservoirs (Porttipahta & Lokka) and there is a river (Kitinen) that has 7 hydroelectric Power Plants! We checked one dam and power plant.
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To ride a little bit side from the mainroad (Roadnumber 4 or E75) gives enough stimulation! Otherwise it would be very boring ride until you finally see the lakes (reservoirs). They are also connected to eachother with canal (Vuotson kanava) and there we stopped for a swim.
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We also took the ride in the “unofficial” bridge over the Vuotso Canal. This is actually built for snowmobiles but in the summertime it is (kind of) ok to ride over with motorcycle -maximum weight is 1500kg’s!

We made a short stop in Tankavaara. It’s a gold village where they still do gold panning and sometimes someone finds gold…
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Finally we arrived to our destination Saariselkä! Ofcourse we took a ride to the “mountaintop” of Kiilopää. From the top there is amazing views allaround Northern Lapland!
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And there is also a restaurant called “The Top” (Huippu).
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My wife made a video about this day, You can watch it here:

Route for the day 7 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 6

Posted by gozamite on 12.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, DJI Mavic, Drone, Make life a ride!, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, S1000XR, summertime, touringbike. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

We started the morning wit a short walk around the Ruka “city-area”. The streets were empty and weather was already very warm! There is a small pond just in the front of the hotels and skiing area.
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After breakfast we packed tha bike once again and started the ride from Ruka to Kiutaköngäs. Even this is not a long way there is still one very nice road (and rare in northern Finland) with low bending corners. This Juumantie is very nice ride in this area and I recommend to ride it even if you are not going to the rapids.
To see the rapids it is maybe wiser to change your riding gear to hiking gear. There is about 1km walk to the rapids… but after you find them you will probably walk quite a lot more to see everything and you might even climb or at least take the more difficult paths!
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It’s vey rare that the water level is so low here! Normally you wouldn’t see any rocks in the middle of the rapids.
It took maybe about 2 hours for us to check the Kiutaköngäs -rapids.
We continued riding north… and went over the Polar Circle! (In Hautajärvi) Here they don’t make so big number about the Polar Circle even it is quite remarkable “line in the map” when you think about the nights and the sun (summer or winter).
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In Salla -village we stopped for a little while to check the nice church (built in 1950).
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And from further north we found our place to stay… We chose the “lappish style” hut from Loma Joosula. We really enjoyed the place!
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We walked to a hotel nearby to enjoy the “real Lappish food” -The reindeer stew.
And in the evening when I was making a flight with my drone the host of this place recommended that he would like to have photos and video from this area and his place and if I would do it I could have my stay for free! And ofcourse I said “Yes!”
Here are few of the photos I took from this area: Google Album
My wife made a video about this day:

The route for the day 6 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 5

Posted by gozamite on 10.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Moottoripyöräily, Motorcycle Tour, motorcycling, S1000XR. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

We woke up in our small cabin 7 meters away from the lake (we measured the distance last evening!) and ate some breakfast that we bought from the grocery yesterday. The morning was very beautiful!
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I had at least 2 possible persons/ shops who might have motorcycle tires to sell. After 8am I started to make the phonecalls. The first one answered about 8.30 and they told that they have one 180/55 R17 tire and also they could install it to my bike in the morning! I knew right away that our tour will continue on the same day! But I wanted to check the other number too… Maybe I could have the tire with correct size?? (= 190/55 R17)
And about 1 hour later this other guy answered. First he said that they don’t have any tires… But then he asked “What size?” and after I told him the numbers he said that he has 190/50 (little bit lower than the correct size) because he owns Suzuki Hayabusa and he ordered new tires to his own bike earlier… but didn’t install them because Hayabusa was now little bit broken.
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He was also ready to install the tire to my bike about 1 hour later.
So I got new tire very fast and we were able to continue our trip!
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I made the reservation for the next night from a hotel not so far from Suomussalmi. We would stay the next night in Ruka (one of the biggest ski resorts in Finland).
On our way to Ruka we stopped only at Juntusranta birdtower…
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And at Hossa to enjoy some ice-cream…
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Then we were at Ruka! First we took a ride to the southside hilltop. From there you’ll have some very nice views almost all around!
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The view to the east is the most interesting because you know that Russia is there somewhere (not very far!)
Later in the evening we walked up to the northern hilltop, this would be 500 meters above sealevel! The views are very nice!
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There were few stairs to climb to the top (I think it was 338 steps…)
The room at the Hotel Arctic Zone was very Nice!
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And once again my wife made a nice video of this day:

The route for day 5 was like this:

Tour around Finland Day 4

Posted by gozamite on 7.8.2018
Posted in: adventure, BMW motorrad, Extreme ride, gravel road, helmetcamera, Moottoripyöräily, motocaching, motorcycling, S1000XR. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

After very nice breakfast we chose the road that goes over Kuurna dam.
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There’s not too many places in Finland where you can ride over the dam that’s why it’s quite nice to ride here. Then we continued to the north and we were riding on the westside of Lake Pielinen until we stopped at Pirunkirkko (Devils Church). These caves are 34 meters deep and even 7 meters high (but actually it’s not a cave -it’s just a crack in the rock).
23392_oVery close to this cave is one of the most famous views in Finland: Koli!
Koli is a hill just beside the lake and the elevation is more than 200 meters from the lake surface to the top of the hill. Luckily we had perfect clear weather to check these views!
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This is called “The National landscape” but I think it’s little bit misleading. I would understand that The National landscape means something very typical Finnish view… But this is quite special and NOT typical at all! But on the other hand I feel quite proud standing up there and I’m thinking “This is my home country!” So maybe it is a good thing that we call it “The National Landscape”!
Then there was quite a lot of riding to Nurmes and to the house of Bomba.
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Here we had a short break and we continued riding to Kuhmo and still to Iivantiira.
On the southside of Kuhmo there is many places in the forest (and beside the road) that are kind of museum about “Winter war” in Kuhmo. We stopped at one of them and walked around a little bit.
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About 10km’s north from Iivantiira I had a flat rear tire! It was a gravelroad but quite in good condition… It seems that I just had very bad luck that one sharp stone found its way to make hole in my tire!!! This happened about here!
I had the repair kit to fix the tire but I was suspicious -it will not hold! There was one local guy who stopped and said he has the kompressor at his home (with Pressure gauge) and he can pick it up. I had only 3 small bottles of pressure air in this repair kit so I was sure I will need more air to have the correct pressure! These 3 bottles make only about 0,5 bar so I was very lucky that I got this air kompressor and I could fill the tire! After maybe 45 minutes of fixing we were riding again…
But not for a long! Maybe after 20 km’s and the tire was flat again!
I fixed it again and I got “normal hand pump” from another local guy.
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This one didn’t have a pressure gauge… But I think I got the pressure quite ok just by checking it with my “sensitive hands”!
After 30 minutes we were riding again… But not for long!
I felt how the tire was getting empty all the time! The bike felt like it was “wobbling” all over the road and I had already made the decision that we will leave the bike there and we will take a taxi to the nearest camping area… So I stopped the bike, took the bags away from the bike and ordered the taxi. We were about 28 kilometers away from Suomussalmi.
While we were waiting for the taxi my wife started to listen to the tire… If there was this quiet sound of air coming out from the tire? But there wasn’t! And there was still some air in the tire! I checked how the bike felt without the bags… and it wasn’t so terrible!
So very fast decision: Cancel the taxi-order, put the bags back to the bike and try to ride as far as we can… And we did all this 28 kilometers!!! I step out from the bike, walked inside to the reception-house (in the camping area) and while I was there paying for the cabin the tire finally gave up! With a loud “farting-sound” all the air came out from the tire and ofcourse the bike fell to the right side…
Luckily I had my new bags (SW Motech Trax) and they are aluminium. So no holes to the bags and no marks of any kind in my bike!
I only needed to hit the small dents away with the hammer. This I did few days later…
I didn’t take any stress about finding a new tire, The camping area was so beautiful so We just enjoyed the sunset in The Campingarea of Kiantajärvi.
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And my bike was waiting for the next day:
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Wife made a video about this day. This time it was in 2 parts, part 1:

And part 2:

The route for the day 4 was like this: