Every once in a while at summertime I get the urge to go for a night ride. I don`t take the heat too well and last friday was I believe even officially the hottest day of this summer so far. That added to the fact that I`ve been pretty stressed out lately due to several reasons I decided it`s time for another nocturnal adventure, and this time I will be needing a considerably heftier dosage than before. So I opened the google maps, looked for somewhere I had not gone to before and asked for some tips on good roads on the way from here to there on a Finnish biker forum.
I set the vector to a place called Taalintehdas which is a small town between the cities of Hanko and Turku on the southwest corner of the country, right at the seashore. Well, the original destination actually was Kasnäs beside it but never got there for reasons stated later...
I made arrangements with the wife that she will put the boy to bed so I can get going a bit earlier since there was quite a distance to be traveled, I packed the bike and took off at 8pm.
The first hundred kilometers I mostly knew, apart from one detour that I was tipped about so I rode that part somewhat spiritedly to get into the zone so to speak, until I reached the city of Hyvinkää, or more precisely the ABC service station at the outskirts of the city where I had the first stop since I can ride the bike approximately 100km at a time before I have to stretch things out for a few minutes.
After takin off again I was quite happily surprised since I have been on the station a dozen times before but never left before to the direction I was about to head this time. I even killed the music so I can concentrate more on the new road and just enjoying the views and the curves.
The blessing and the curse of the Finnish summer nights is pretty much the same thing, apart from about one or two hours it never really gets dark here at all. It`s much cooler at night time naturally and specially on the smaller rural roads the traffic pretty much drops to zero so IMO it is prime time to go riding. Having the entire road to yourself, enjoying the warmth changes on the hilltops and the bottoms of the valleys, and smelling the grass and the crops on the fields as the dew slowly sets into a vale of thin mist at the low spots. You get nothing of that when you`re driving a car.
I had never before ridden the road that I was riding, and it proved to be quite a twisty lil bugger so I took my time and just cruised around enjoying the whole ambience. And what a road it proved to be, I actually shook my head a few times after riding through an awesome stretch of curves meandering amongst the fields through the countryside thinking ok this has to straighten after that, only to discover another set of even more awesome curves following the treeline at the edge of a forest going up and down these little hills. I chuckled to myself that I would not have been surprised if I would have seen some houses carved into the hillside with round doors and a sign saying SHIRE after the next bend. Just breathtakingly beautiful!
There`s time for movies and videogames but show me a game that can beat this. It doesn`t show in the picture but the road follows the treeline all the way and beyond the little village at the left side. Not a soul in sight anywhere, just me and the road. And bear in mind that this picture is taken somewhere around 11pm. If someone wants to look from the map I`m somewhere near Vihtijärvi @ 132 or 133.
Even though I very rarely put any waypoints into the navigator I like to have it with me on these longer trips just to be able to scout anything interesting, like I did a little before I arrived to karkkila. I noticed that the main road that I`m riding takes a long right turn, which can also be driven through a smaller road through the inside, so a quick glimpse to the mirrors, no one behind, slammed on the brakes and turned to a tiny gravel road I`m surprised that was on the map in the first place. At first I thought about turning back when I arrived at a logging area where the harvesters had mangled up the road to a point where a streetbike would have had no business there, but I figured dammit I`ve been through worse, stood up and let `er rev through the barely recognisable path that once was a road. When the path cleared up and I could sit back down I had to make an another abrupt stop.
I sat on that bench for a good ten-fifteen minutes just listening to the nothingness and not thinking about anything, until my meditation was abruptly stopped by a swarm of hungry mosquitoes that came at me like the state prosecutor so I had to pack up and get going again.
Here`s some summer night magic for you, click to get it bigger. It`s quite a feeling to stop at a roadside, have a look around and see that it`s night and day at the same time! And again, apart from the one teen merc that I had a few glimpses in my mirrors prior, not one living soul awake withing kilometers. Pic taken at 23:50
After Karkkila I more or less followed the old Turku road beside the motorway to get some distance and found several interesting places that once surely were worth stopping at, but now lay vacant at the side of the road because the motorway had killed the traffic. Several old dance places some built right at the side of beautiful little lakes now just rot to their places with no purpose.
These were a common sight as well, the gas station had been turned to automated but the station itself had long closed it`s doors. Kind of sad and yet an interesting insight to a time that once was. Tickles my ruinspotting nerve.
Tempted? I don`t blame you...
By the time I reached Perniö hunger was starting to raise it`s head and I had planned to go grab a bite at the ABC station there but it had already closed by the time I got there, so I had to ponder my next move a bit. Would I enter the Kemiönsaari island where my ultimate goal lies and risk I`ll not be getting eats for a good while yet or will I continue forward to the next city, but I had decided that I want to taste seawater on this trip so I headed left towards Kasnäs. I didn`t take pictures from the island cause it was getting somewhat dark and there wasn`t really anything interesting to photo anyway. I never actually reached Kasnäs cause my navigator, to what I had actually put a waypoint, claimed stubbornly that the only way to get there was to grab a ferry from Taalintehdas. I had looked from the maps that there is a road and was told it is quite beautiful to ride but I was starting to get a bit weary after riding for several hundred kilometers already, it was the only dark moment of the whole night and I was getting properly hungry so I decided to park at the marina, go grab a handful of seawater, take a sip, tasted salty and petroly by the way, put on my long sleeve shirt from the tank bag and took off. It was not until the city of Salo where I actually found a grill that was still open at 2:30 when I got there. I ate a burger and drank a can of energy drink while perusing the map for a while, decided since I`m about 300km away from home and it`s realy getting late I`ll be gunning through the motorways back home and took to the nearest onramp. After riding for several hours in a row at 150km/h through the slowly rising dawn on a bike with no front fairings my shoulders and back were killing me, still are as I write this actually, by the time I reached home at 4:38 after riding pretty much consistently for eight hours and 571 kilometers. I didn`t get to the 600 mark since I never got to Kasnäs but I still broke my record of riding within 24h. I gotta say a little shorter trip would have done the trick but it was well worth it. Not gonna do anything like that again in a short while though, took me almost a week to turn the rythm back to somewhat normal. Now to bed, G`night!
