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Trousers repaired

March 8, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

Finally, I got the trousers repaired – both knees were cut open on first day at Zermatt. Another reminder why it is good to have knee pads always on; without those I would have had bleeding knees…

Thanks to the Gore-Tex Service Center of Närpiö again. That is the most under-marketed service company in Finland. They make excellent work in repairing all kind of Gore-Tex gear with really reasonable prices (ca. 50 eur to for stitching repair kits on both knees). Finding the contact information of the company is always a challenge for me, so here is reminder for myself:

Gore-Tex Service Center, Klockartåget 44, 64200 Närpiö, (06) 224 1801

(Thanks to “Trekking Links of Jukka Järvinen” where I found the info this time)

Rules I have always followed – well almost

March 7, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments


Rules I have always followed ?!?

Originally uploaded by suskela

At entry to Rote Nose at Zermatt they have this check list for off-piste skiing. Some of those who have skied with me on certain mountains may recall some instances when all the rules were not followed to the letter – and after that it has been sweaty trip back home ;-)

  • “Do not trust existing tracks” (how about really fresh tracks?)
  • “Only ride when visibility is good” (is seeing own hand in front of goggles good enough visibility?)

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Skiing and skating

January 25, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

Despite of the slight rain, there was still snow left in Helsinki, so we went for cross country skiing to Keskuspuisto. 9 km of skiing on slightly too soft track took sligtly over 1 hour (see sportstracker). It’s nice to get on the skiis on just 5 min walk from the home :) Hopefully, some snow is left also when we are back from Zermatt.

After the skiing we went to see the closing exhibition gala of European figure skating championchips at Hatwall Arena. I have never seen top class figure skating live and I have to admit that TV does not reveal the full speed and agility of the athletes performing on ice. All the performances were astounishing! My congratulations to Laura and Susanna for fantastic medals!

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Gliding down

January 24, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments


Pulkkamäessä

Originally uploaded by suskela

Today we were at Paloheinä riding with pulkka, which I have not done for maybe 5 years. Even our old pulkka had been slightly twisted on the attic the gliding was amazingly fun!

The pulkkamäki at Paloheinä was pretty crowded, but no lift queues :) However, I was slightly concerned that someone could get hurt while people were waking up and gliding down all over the place.

There was also really lot of (cross country) skiers on Paloheinä tracks, it looked like everyone and their friends wanted to go skiing.

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Skating on Hiidenvesi

January 19, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

Sunset Skater

Some delay on bloging, but anyway …

On Epiphany (6 Jan 09) we got another great opportunity for skating on top of natural ice. This time went to Lake Hiidenvesi for a good 14 km round (route details from Sports Tracker).

The ice was again perfect – I’ve never experienced such a smooth surface even in any indoor arenas. And the sunset offered some exceptional views at the end of the day.

Sauna, beer, and pea soup was really nice final touch for the day. Thanks Janne & Pia!

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Feed address changes

January 14, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

It seems that the recent hassle with the site hosting resulted into a change in blog’s RSS feed address. My apologies for the both (?) subscribers of the old feed… Please update your readers with the new address.

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Zermatt it is

January 6, 2009 in Uncategorized, Zermatt 2009 by Sami Uskela | 1 comment

This year’s skiing plan starts to get more and more concrete; the dates and target resort has been selected. We will be going to Zermatt on 1st week of February. Let the snow fall down there :)

Btw: does anyone know how the Swiss train cards, especially the Swiss Transfer Ticket, works in practice?

To boost the excitement, here is Zermatt weather forecast feed from snow-forecast:

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Skating on Baltic Sea

January 4, 2009 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments


Fishing holes
Originally uploaded by suskela

This time the timing was perfect for sea to get ice cover in front of Helsinki: I managed to get skates sharpened on Friday and – as I thought – the there was enough frost over the weekend so that Today there was solid smooth ice on the Helsinki sea bays.

We went for quick 1 hour (9 km) ice skating trip around Otaniemi (see SportsTracker log). The ice was just perfect for skating and the sunshine made the views also worth of seeing. Hopefully the weather stays cold so that the ice will not get ruined too soon…

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Season opened

December 30, 2008 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

The season was opened with 3 hours of good skiing @ sunny Tahko. The slopes were pretty hard, but otherwise the conditions were excellent; sun shine, -3 degrees, and no wind at all.

Rented Fischer RC4 SL’s were really nice to ride on hard slopes – I’m still thinking on what skis to buy next…

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Back online

December 30, 2008 in Uncategorized by Sami Uskela | No comments

Hello world – again :)

The blog was off-line for a quite a while due to some hassles during change of hosting provider. SH Networks sold the hosting services to Neobitti, but forgot to tell them that I had actually paid my bills :( This lead into deactivation of my account and expiration of the domain name, which is pretty bad if you want to keep your blog online.

Anyhow, thanks to kind and prompt help of Neobitti folks, I got my domain back. Unfortunately, there was no full backup on the site so I had to restore blog posts and comments from my own achieves. Now all the old posts and comments should be online and even the old permalinks should work…

I still have to update the templates and there seems to be some issues with fonts, etc. Maybe I fix those some day :) This hassle has now efficiently destroyed two days of time from other work, so maybe I have to give a go for other things for a while…

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