Vigu Botany Course

A part of the Wilderness and Nature Guide education I'm currently taking consists of learning more about the nature itself. It is not only about being in the nature, but also actually knowing something about plants, animals, birds, fishes etc. This weekend it was time for the botany course. The requirements were not overwhelmingly difficult with 141 species of plants. Regarding lichens and mosses we only had the main groups to learn, since an exact species determination can be very difficult and sometimes even necessitate the use of indicatory chemicals. The vascular plants are easier to identify and the list was not overly long. I probably could identify over 100 species before the course, since I took some interest in that 15 or so years ago. About half of the plant species on the list was thus to some extent familiar for me, but there was also a lot to learn, especially the (at least previously) less interesting grasses and sedges. And I also needed to refresh things I had learnt earlier, though it is much easier to relearn something than to learn it from the start.

A Kid-Sized Mukluk

The kids are getting big enough for real mountain bikes. The 9-year-old boy is somewhere between 145-150 cm long and at 44 kg should be strong enough to ride a fatbike.

Vigu Climbing Course

It was time for the climbing course of the Wilderness and Nature Guide education* I'm currently doing alongside my ordinary full-time work. Since I hadn't done any climbing at all, this was to be a very interesting course and four full days should enable a fairly thorough treatment of the basic skills.

Turku All Night Long

Sometime earlier this year we decided to finally do a May through-the-night ride that we had occasionally talked about for few years. May is a good time for this, since the night is short, the trails generally quite dry and there are still only very few mosquitoes out. Turku All Night Long was thus born. The idea was to ride for around twelve hours, starting in the evening, on the trails in and around Turku. Our group of five shrank to three when the date came closer. Coincidentally, the remaining three riders also intend to ride 240 km at TahkoMTB this summer, which should prove a quite demanding challenge for us. The only athete among us is Toni.

The Krampluk

What do you get when you cross a Salsa Mukluk with a Surly Krampus? You could get a Mukpus, but the established name seems to be Krampluk. I ordered a 29+ wheelset from my LBS and got it last week. The 50 mm wide Surly Rabbit Hole 29" rims combined with the 29x3" Surly Knard tires sounded very promising for summer use, when you don't need the floatation of fat tires.

Levaneva overnighter

Labour Day was on a Thursday this time and the kids had the Friday off from school. It was thus easy to lengthen the weekend and I went with my family to Ostrobothnia to visit the kids' grandfather. The area around Närpes does not offer that much for a mountain bike rider compared to my ordinary surroundings, but I still wanted to go on a spring overnighter. It turned out that a suitable destination, Levaneva, was found not too far away. There are a few routes around a large mire and also several shelters in the area. I took the car for the 60 km ride there and was joined by Simo at Rajavuoren erä- ja retkeilykeskus.

A new camera and video

I made a radical gear move a few weeks ago. The m43 gear, which I had been very satisfied with for two and a half years, was switched to a Sony NEX-7 camera and a few lenses. The reason for this was that I wanted to simplify the gear, but above all get a single main camera for both still photography and videos. I had the excellent still photography camera Olympus EM-5 and the excellent Panasonic GH-2 for videos, but to do both still and video photography during an outing I would have needed both, which isn't really compatible with my gear philosophy or even the space and weight constraints when doing bikepacking in demanding terrain.