Lost Posts: TdS day 6 & 7

Kirkkovene / Church boat at Sulkava - photo by konna.

Something I forgot to mention earlier (and as she hasn't even read, let alone posted to, the blog recently she didn't notice until now) all the photos during our 'Tour de Saimaa' (TdS) cycling trip were taken by Konna and not by me as I didn't take my 'big' camera - and even though they are on my Picasa album rather than hers (well if I had waited for her to do it... said the pot of the kettle). Anyway, moving on...
 

Lost Posts: TdS day 5

If you use enough sauce you can't see the fishes looking at you

Viides päivä: perjantai 5. heinäkuu, Savonlinnasta Sulkavaan (noin 44+ kilsa)

Day 5 of our summer Tour de Saimaa, in which we...

• Get immediately lost on leaving the campsite by trying to find a postbox
• Have novelty of clouds and showers (but still 27°!)
• Encounter the odd mosquito as we enter the forest... and some trickier gravel roads
• Roads and amount of bugs get worse; Konna is struggling on the short but sharp hills - I am unsure if she is flapping her arms to get up them or get rid of the insects that seem to prefer her to me

Lost Posts: TdS day 4

The view of Olavinlinna being spoilt by some cyclist: Kesä10 - Lost Postcards

  

Neljas Päivää: Savonlinnassa (vielä 16km pyöräily)

Day 4 (a so-called 'rest day') in which we:

Saimaa steamboat

• Washed some clothes and left them to dry in the blazing sun
• Freewheeled down the hill into town
• Had an icecream
• Took a tour of Olavinlinna (Olaf's Castle) where the opera festival is held (and heard singers practicing as we go)
• Almost broke my neck trying to walk up/down uneven stone spiral staircases in cycling shoes
• Had a fancy lunch on a shady terrace and another icecream
• Sat in the park while eating an icecream
• Took a steamboat cruise

Lost Posts: TdS Day 3

What is that stupid piece of plastic for anyway?

I'm guessing that reading all these overlong Lost Posts of summer / cycling tour blogs is almost as hard work as writing them, so in the interests of speeding things up (so there is a chance they are done with before next summer) I'm changing to a more abridged and less windy style. You hope...
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Kolmas päivä: keskiviiko 7. heinä: Kerimaan Camping:sta Savonlinnaan (noin 35km pyöräillä)

Lost post 6: Tour de saimaa day 2

Kerimäki kirkko - big in metric and imperial dimensions

Lusto (in a less sunny 2008)

So to continue from last time in our 'lost summer blogs' series...

Next morning was another scorcher, and as we had a short leg and a whole day we started off with a detour back to the Lusto suomen metsämuseo forestry museum which has a loop of the cycle route around it's arboretum.  As we had visited before (well worthwhile by the way considering the importance of forestry to Finland and to understand the hardships people went through in the past working the forests) we only stopped for postikortit, kahvia ja pullaa. 

lost post 5: tour de saimaa (day 1)

Postcard from Punkaharju via 

  

As you may have gathered by now, we (by which I mean I) am doing a catch-up series of 'lost' posts about what we did last summer. A very late back to school essay if you like.  Anyway in the last episode our heroes were about to embark on an epic trip around Finland... well, a bit of cycling and camping around the north-west corner of Saimaa anyway...

1. päivä: maanantai 5. heinä: Helsingista Parikkalaan (junalla) / Parikkalasta Punkaharjuun (pyöräillä)

Lost Post 4: What not to take on a bike ride

Hazards for cyclists... From Kesä10 - lost postcards

Imagine it is the middle of summer again - heinäkuu 2010 to be exact - remember the blue skies, 20 hours of light, 30+°C heat? You are going with your partner on a ten day cycling/camping holiday around Saimaa, starting in Parikala and ending with a few days at a friend's mökki near Haukivouri (see map) - about 350km in all. You can't be sure if the weather will hold, and for every cyclists's instinct shouting 'travel light' there is the camper's instinct whispering 'be prepared'. It may be warm and dry today, but it could be 10° colder, wet and windy in a weeks time. What do you take? 

Lost Post 3: Pesis

Pesäpallo: From Kesä10 - lost postcards

What is the national sport of Finland?

First thoughts go to ice hockey, followed shortly by jääpallo (ice hockey with a ball), mäkihyppy (ski jumping), and rally driving (although maybe that's just a mode of transport to the match).

But apparently some claim it is pesäpallo or pesis. Well maybe in the summer. If you live in what Konna disparagingly refers to as 'middle-finland' - Helsinki doesn't even have a pesäpallo stadium these days...

Lost Post 2: veden varaan

Veden Varaan was the no.1 platinum album by PMMP (2009)

Still waiting for a review from Breaking More Waves though...

 
It seems to me that the Finns have the same wary relationship to water (vesi, vetä, veden) and damp in the home as the Brits do to electricity (sähkö) - treat as a potential hazard (varaa).

In Britain we have fuses on everything, ring mains, plugs the size of a brick, and are (apparently) terrified of the thought of light switches without pull cords in our bathrooms, let alone power sockets or appliances - or at least the people who wrote our regulations were. Meanwhile we Brits seem to accept a bit of damp in our walls and when was the last time anyone in UK switched the water off to their washing machine or dishwasher between uses? And do we put our washing machine in our bathroom (with a power socket next to the shower) with a fully 'wet' i.e. tiled and drained floor just in case there is an overflow? Or on a special plastic tray for the same purpose? Back Suomessa while you can't wire a switch to a two pin plug and know which pole will be live or neutral, every kitchen sink in Finland has an extra tap or two for the washing appliances.

Lost Post 1: Rock on

Uudessa eteisessa: From Kesä10 - lost postcards

To make the point that I really could maybe have, probably, at a stretch, if I really wanted to, have found a thing or two to scrape together, to fabricate (in the very best way) the merest hint of a few lines of a post, over the last, oh let's say, six months, I'm going to have to own up to the fact that we bought, decorated and moved home back in kesäkuu (that's June for anyone who hasn't changed their date and time settings to Suomi on their computer).

Of course one advantage loss you do have of course is missing out on the excruciating exciting ... kävin K-Rautassa taas ostamaan valkoista maalata ... type blog posts.

Tyhjä arkki tympäännyttää

headspace: from Biennale 2010

Prevaricate. Procrastinate. Vacillate. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow? Hedge. Dodge. Delay. Beat around the bush. Sidestep. Equivocate. Temporize. Stall. Evade. Hem and haw.

English is full of synonyms for viivytellä - the art of not doing something quite yet. And unfortunately (as you may have got an inkling from this blog... or rather it's recent lack thereof) I am somewhat prone to this condition myself. I have also been developing Prevaricate 2.0 - not doing something because I should be doing something else and because although I am not doing that either not allowing myself to do the other thing as that would be an excuse for not doing what I should be doing, thus removing any excuse (but still failing to do what was meant to be done in the first place - in case you were wondering).

So, to cut a long story into small pieces, stick it back together badly, and end up with something even longer and more confusing that the original, my unbelievably lame excuse for not posting here is that I should have been too busy doing other things... like trying to learn finnish, run my business efficiently, get more work, exercise, ja niin edelleen...

And without further ado, ladeez an' genelmen, may I introduce "the lost posts" ...