Paddling arrangements II and scouting

On last Friday, we had a meeting with the sponsor of our paddling expedition. We basicly just checked out the tandem kayak model and how we can fit all our stuff in those kayaks. It seems that there should be plenty more space than we supposed, although the kayaks are PE ones, which are about a meter shorter than the fiberclass ones.

Saturday and Sunday were spent at our scout hut by just hanging outdoors, sleeping in a big army tent and ripping our entry module off for some more renovation to come. The plan is to rebuild a corner, which is badly rotten. Underneath the surface boards of the entry, we found quite a few old bees' nests.

DIY ultralight pants

I've had this pant project going on for a while with some ups and downs. I started to figure out some good pattern for these ultra light windproof pants already during the first half of 2010. At first, I checked out a Shelby's freeware pattern for underwear/tights, but the pattern was far too weird for pants and my project stopped for a while.

During this spring, I found a freeware pattern designing program, which included some built-in patterns. There happened to be a pattern for pants, in which it was possible to choose a pocket-less version with a rubber band waist. This time, I also built a paper version of the pants to see whether they'll fit (well it's a bit different to build them out of the daily newspaper than ripstop nylon). For now, it seems that I might have those slightly transparent ultra light pants on me during some day in the near future...

the newspaper version

And of course, I had to add a few photos of some past projects...

Paddling arrangements

Super,

We've been planning this year's paddling expedition (see the story of 2010) with our scout group since last autumn. Finally, it starts to look like more and more sure that our 200 km paddling expedition is going to happen. In the beginning of this year, we sent some emails to a couple of paddling companies and outdoor magazines. Luckily, we got one answer from a company called Welhonpesä Ltd., which promised to support our paddling trip by letting us use their tandem kayaks and gear during our trip. It's just simply awesome...

The "thing" is that we are going to paddle with tandem kayaks from Tammela (South/Southwestern Finland) to Pori (Western Finland) through two rivers, starting from Loimijoki and then continuing Kokemäenjoki all the way to the coastal line of Baltic Sea in Pori. The length of the trip is approx. 210 kms and we are aiming to paddle it within five days, so the goal is to paddle about 40 kms a day.

A rough overview of the route

Some more telemark skiing

This time, I'm going to report a short story of our teleskiing day in southern Finland. Generally, today was just quite awesome what comes to the weather point of view. Sun was shining nicely in the beginning (around noon) and temperature staying bit above 0'C degrees, but the slopes were still in pretty good condition, cause there weren't that many skiers around.

During the first couple of runs, we spent on memorising "hmmm, how should those telemark turns go smoothly again..." Finally, we started to remember the basics after few runs, and then we spent time on rehearsing those. All in all, quite some development has happened, but there's still a lot to do (looking those "big boys", who can really rip it fast with smooth looking edge turns).

After our pizza break, we skied a couple of runs taking some pictures and few videos of our teleskiing. We still skied few runs after our multimedia sessions, but then it was time to call it a day.

Snowy Tuesday

After a few days of above zero degrees and wet snow, a snowfall hit during the early morning on Tuesday. I tried to figure out something to do, but it would have been shitty to cross-country ski, so I took my snowshoes out of their bag. Then, I went to nearby woods for a quick and fun session, which included some "climbing with snowshoes" and few "locked heels" drops into fresh and untouched snow. Well, for the "climbing" part I had to choose another route, cause the first one was too icy. Finally, the one I climbed had some old and well packed snow, which "bent" into nice juggy hand holds after a bit of fisting.

The first line, which was bit too icy...

And by the way, I just realized that my blog is going to have its first anniversary on 13th February. Quite a bunch of things has happened during the first year and luckily the statistics show that some people have found/read this blog (a few times in a day, on average)