What a great start to the New Year! Mondays can be sometimes not so good, but this Monday was a real exception. I was already hopeful yesterday that I could do a shorter day at work today. The weather forecast was looking for snowfall, and I didn't have time to ride yesterday. My hopes turned real and I was able to escape to the awesomesauceness!
I didn't commute by bike today, to preserve more energy for afternoon. When I got home, something had arrived from UberSanta Hendrik Morkel:
Sweet Snow Peak Titanium 600 Mug that I won in Hiking In Finland's brilliant Advent Calendar. Until now I haven't had a real outdoor mug but now I have. I was thinking about some kuksa, like Kupilka, but this looks great. It's large and it's really good thing for me as I like to drink a big mug of coffee every morning. Next I headed to my bike room and installed the new Surly Big Fat Larry tyre:
And then to outdoors:
After fairly miserable weather in December, we are back to real winter!
I went to check out the trails of Alttarvaha and see how much damage the recent storms had done there.
As expected, there was damage:
Lots of damage:
But there happens to be a very nice little pond too:
And more damage:
The beauty of snow:
I really wanted to ride in the daylight, even a short ride. I like to ride in the dark, but at this time of the year it feels that I get oversaturated with the darkness. But it's damn nice feeling when the darkness starts to set in:
At the end of the ride the wind was pretty hard and the snow was hitting my face. Believe it or not, but I loved it! I have waited long for something like this.
It will take some time for the owners of the forests to pick up all the fallen trees, and it looks like it will be better to ride more the many nice forest roads instead of the trails this winter.
Even more photos of today's ride are here.
Photo taken yesterday evening on my commute to home.
Time flies, and 2011 is closing. It's time to look back and look ahead for 2012.
2011 was a brilliant year. We had second snowy and cold winter in a row, and the year started with a very nice overnighter with Peter:
January was actually the mildest month of the whole winter. The cold weather hit again in February and I and Peter did an overnighter to Marttila:
Our dream came true at the end of February. The Ice Journey, an adventure on ice from Åland to Turku:
I have still not written the full story of this amazing adventure, but I will.
On March 21st I did the Super Full Moon overnighter:
In the gear department the pinnacle was of course the new bike, the fatbike, the dreambike, 9:Zero:7:
In the spring and summer I did nice overnighters with the new bike:
I even did one 'race' with the bike:
And more short overnighters in the fall:
The end of 2011 will certainly be not forgetten because of the very strong storms of Dagmar/Tapani and Hannu. I had plans to start my next DIY project after the Christmas but they were thrown out of the window as my home was without electricity for 62 hours.
More photos of the damage that the storms caused are HERE.
I'm also very satisfied with my bike commuting and with the 9:Zero:7 with a frame bag and pannier I have taken commuting to another level. I have proved myself that I can handle all the weather conditions that the nature throws on me. In 2012 my goal is to take even more out of it, by riding more different routes and write more about it here in the blog.
My blogging is slowly improving and the move from Thingamablog to Google Blogger was excellent choice. With the better camera, Canon PowerShot SX130 IS, my photographing has improved too. But there is still a lot to improve. Blogging is also time consuming, and in 2012 I will try to write more my thoughts with the new smartphone, Samsung Google Nexus. I'm also the Finnish correspondent of Fat-bike.com, and I hope I'm able to write some quality articles there too.
In 2012 I hope there will be monthly overnighters and two bigger adventures, one in the winter and one in the summer.
So, it's time to say big thank you.
First of all, I want to thank my awesome family, my wife: you are always my inspiration, my best support. What you have went through with your health is overwhelming. You are a true survivor and many adventurers would pale in comparison! And my little daughter Isabell. You are an amazing girl!
Thanks to my parents, you are important part of the Team Lund.
Thanks to my wife's parents, for the ton of hard work.
Thanks to Peter Nylund. Your experience was instrumental during the Ice Journey adventure. And the overnighters together were great too.
Thanks to Jan of LBS Pyöristi, for all the help with bikes and stuff.
Thanks to Hendrik Morkel for WIR mentions, inspiration and sharing your knowledge.
And thank you all the blog readers and commenters, here and in social media! I hope you will follow my blog in 2012. Happy New Year!
