The Quiet Picture

Umm… this wasn’t how it was supposed to go… WE WON! And when I say “WE”, I mean Finland of course. Lordi were so far ahead the rest of the field that the voting wasn’t even exciting!So Finland lost the semi-final in ice-hockey, and Sweden won their’s. Let’s be honest – I couldn’t care less!

This will take a while to sink in. It is like living in a parallel universe. Finland just simply doesn’t win in this reality. Except that we did.

You may have noticed that I’m often rather negative about snowmobiles. Partly because I don’t like the snowmobile tracks criss-crossing the scenery everywhere but most of all, I resent the idiots who ride their machines in places where it is specifically forbidden, like national parks and nature reserves. Living in Sweden, and in Los in particular, it’s impossible to avoid snowmobiles though so I have become increasingly curious to find out for myself what the fuss is all about. So I was all the more happy to be offered a chance to go for a snowmobile ride in my favourite mountains!The first day of the summer time dawned bright and sunny. I headed to my snowmobile date after breakfast and got strapped into appropiate gear, including a helmet of course. And then we were off, with me squeezing the passenger handles with all my might. Our target was one of the peaks, naturally with marked trails all the way. It was quite a difference to see the trails now as compared to what they had been in February… back then they were quite narrow, just a couple of snowmobiles wide for the most part. But now, it was like a snowy highway, 10-20 metres across! I also noticed that there were a lot more ski tracks around, so following any of the prepared tracks was no longer a necessity. But I digress. When we got to the top of the mountain, the wind was considerably harder than on the plateau below. I would have like to tried to take one picture without the UV filter (in order to reduce flares when shooting into the sun), but the windchill was severe enough to make the metal contract to the point where I couldn’t pry the filter off before my fingers were frozen. The sceneries around me however, there was absolutely nothing to complain about! 360 degress of nothing but mountains, can you imagine it? I don’t have the skills to do justice to such views so I just took a few snapshots of the snowmobile with mountains in the background. Awesome.

That’s me, in borrowed helmet, borrowed gloves, borrowed jacket, borrowed boots, sitting on a borrowed snowmobile. The pants are mine, though.

The mountain in the background is Stor-Skarven. I don’t own that, either.

The sceneries on the way back were naturally just as fabulous as they had been on the way in. Whatever I may think about snowmobiles, I can’t deny the attraction – the sceneries are just as good regardless of the mode of transport, but you just get to see more when you can travel from point A to point B at faster speeds than the modest 5 kph I seem to average on skis. When I noticed that one of the “highways” opened up before us again, I asked my driver if we could go a bit faster (he had been very considerate to go slower than usual to spare me the embarrassment of falling off) and he was happy to comply. The fastest we did was 80 kph and I was laughing inside the helmet – it was that good! All things considered, I can now fully understand why snowmobiling is so popular. I just wish that someone could find those joyriding idiots in national parks and feed them their snowmobiles in big unsavoury chunks.

After the ride, I noticed that my biceps were aching. All that hanging on… Well, what better way to alleviate pending training aches than to train a bit more. So I slapped on the skis and headed for the same plateau I had swooshed across moments earlier on a snowmobile. I was right about the sceneries, they were just as fine on skis as well. The big difference was that now the sky were starting to cloud over and I spent the rest of the tour in overcast conditions. But that was fine as well. I can’t even begin to describe how wonderful it is to be out there, you have to try it yourself to understand!

When I skied back to the hotel, I took the prepared tracks for the last 4 km. Since I had by now learned a bit more about staying on the tracks in downhill, I was brave enough to let the skis run. Which would’ve been just fine, had the tracks not curved about 90 degrees after an unusually steep slope. And quite predictably, one of my skis followed the track left and the other one strayed straight ahead. I did my best to catch up with the straying ski, which meant that I skidded right across the tracks and into the forest and stopped some half a meter short from the nearest birch. Judging by the snow around me, I wasn’t the first one…! And as Murphy would have it, of the about 7 people I met on that 4 km stretch of tracks, 5 of them was right there. While I was busy wondering how an earth I had managed to stay on my feet, one of the people commented that it seemed to go pretty fast. Yeah, you noticed? I very nearly burst out laughing. It’s not amusing to stray in the forest at full speed when it’s happening, but afterwards when you have survived the experience, it’s hard to keep a straight face. Too funny!

Just when I had given up on winter after one more warm spell, it came back with a vengeance. A couple of days of snowfall and cold weather, and we have a contender for the best weekend of the winter!To get things rolling, we had the annual snowmobile event in Los today and I wanted to try my hand at action photography. I tried it last year as well, but the results were not up to much. This time I located myself on top of the race course at Furuberget, which I figured would provide the best action (I had stayed halfway last year and it wasn’t so good).

I also got to ride on a snowmobile myself. I’m sure it didn’t go quite as fast as it normally goes, but I hung on to my dear life anyway. Then these guys come racing up the hill and exactly how they don’t get thrown off their rides is beyond me… respect!

Photographing the action was something of a challenge. Because the movement was almost directly towards me, focusing was difficult – the camera can’t keep up. So I used the pre-focusing method instead, hoping that the rig would emerge where I had focused and then it was just a matter of keeping the finger on the shutter. I was half expecting all of the pictures to be soft, but I got a surprising amount of keepers so I’m pleased! I would have wanted to keep shooting, but there were no racers left and my fingers and toes were deep frozen anyway.

After a hot cup of tea to warm me up, I was ready to go skiing. This was the first time in three weeks that I’ve come near the gear and after a few kilometres, I felt the pain in my heels again. I was wearing two pairs of socks, and the bloody boots still chafed! What is the matter with them?! Well, blisters aside, it was a nice skiing trip. Since it was late afternoon, the light started to fade a little bit, helped by the snowfall. Not many pictures, but thoroughly enjoyable.

And tomorrow, I’m finally off to the zoo. In an ideal world I would also go skiing, but in my chafing-boots-world I will skip that.

The squirrels seem to be increasing, there were three of them at the same time at my feeder today. Two of them are males but I haven’t been able to sex the third one. Looks like only one of them has learned how to get at the bird food, the big male. The two other ones are a bit smaller and settle for the sunflower seeds scattered on the snow.

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The Compeed plasters finally came off today and I got my first look at the blisters that nearly ruined my mountain break. The biggest one of them is the size of a 1 crown coin… I’m so glad I got it after I had applied the plaster because it would probably have hurt twice as much if I had seen it then!

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We got a bit more snow today. Not enough to increase the shrinking snow cover, but at least it hid the wind-blown debris. I should probably have gone out while it still was snowing, but I didn’t so now it’s just one more winter event I can regret not making the most of. I did go out for the sunset though and this time there was some cloud with gaps, but as usual, both the clouds and the gaps were in all the wrong places so I waited in vain.

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Notice how I’m avoiding the subject of ice hockey? What a perfectly miserable end to perfectly miserable Olympics. If you’re a Finn, that is. The only thing the Finns excelled in was under-achieving when it mattered the most. Glad they’re over. Now I can get back to my life. Or looking for one anyway. Typically Finnish I guess… under-achieving when it matters the most.

Here’s a question: Is it possible to go through the whole tournament without losing a single match? Especially when Finland will be playing Sweden for the gold? It’s a dream final and it’s a nightmare final. But whatever happens, Finland will be the moral winners. Sweden has lost some matches (including 0-5 to Russia who we just beat 4-0 in the semi). Finland has played five (5!) matches without allowing a single goal against. All of that will be for nothing if Sweden scores a single goal more than we do on Sunday… It doesn’t get any more bitter than losing that match.Oh, and I just have to add, even if Sweden beats Finland 20-0 they will still not have deserved the gold. It was cowardly to lose the last preliminary on purpose in order to get an easy quarter-final. Real men are not afraid of any opposition.

Finland won over Canada 2-0. What a disappointment. Yes you read it right. For the first time in my life, I was wishing that Finland would lose. The reason is simple – the Finnish ice hockey team just simply isn’t good enough to keep the high standard up through the whole tournament. They are notorious for folding out unexpectedly – like losing a match they led 5-1 at one point. So it’s better to take that statistical loss in the preliminaries when it doesn’t matter, rather than be knocked out in the play-offs or finals. We have seen this happen too many times already!