Kayaking in the Archipelago Sea

The continuing (too) hot weather still makes kayaking a lot more tempting than riding in the woods. Fellow Vigu students Benjamin and Dani decided to join me on a three-day trip in the eastern part of the Archipelago Sea. The Archipelago Sea is an archipelago with many thousand islands, most rather small. It is quite well suited for kayaking. In bad weather it is possible to avoid larger passages or stay in the inner archipelago, while good weather permits interesting trips in the outer archipelago.

Back in the kayak

Longtime readers might remember that I bought a kayak in 2012, in order to start kayaking again. For some reason, it didn't happen in 2013, but now, in 2014, I'm back on the sea. I started a little late, in June, but there is still a lot of kayaking season left.

Kimito Island

I thought an overnighter would be a good way to reset myself from the work life and start the summer vacation. A more traditional Finnish way to achieve this reset would be a bottle of vodka, but that's not really my style. Toni was also interested in an overnighter and he had scouted a good location on the Kimito Island earlier in the week. Everything was thus set and I took the car to Kimito to meet with Toni. Around 19:30 on Friday evening we started our ride.

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.