Celebrated Ryan’s Promotion to Engineer at his Fire Protection and CalFire ceremony!

Cher, Matty, and Joey C drove out to Ione to be with Ry on the big day. Cher’s sister Pat, daughter Monica and her husband Craig, who also works at Cal Fire as a mechanic, surprised us at the massive Ione Training center.

Ry received a fitness award along with eight others out of 44. They called it the 400 club. In order to qualify, engineers had to run a mile and a half. He did it in just over 8 minutes. Engineers are awarded points for their time. The number of clap pushups in one minute. Again points are awarded. He did 45. Pull-ups in a minute. He did 11. Points…Hold left side plank for one minute. Then right side plank for one minute. And then regular plank for two. {ouch!} points are then totaled.

Cathedral

Walked Helsinki from 4:45 am until 8:41 am. I sit on the harbor, the picture is from my vantage point, enjoying a moose pie and coffee, watching Finlandians begin their day. Originally I walked to find my bike shop, but it doesn’t open until noon. Here are some of the sites from my walk:

Museum square.

Baptist church.

Looking across the water to the train station.

Many cranes with new construction and futuristic, modern architecture mixed with traditional Scandinavian big brick buildings.

Harbor sauna deck with 3 pools in the bay: fresh water pool, semi-salt watered pool, and finally a sea water(fullsalt) pool.

Open market area and docks for ferry service.

June 18th. HELSINKI Day 3. Second time at coffee kiosk at T he Market Square. A bit cooler today, a little breeze, but pleasant. I pick up my bike in a half hour. I hope I can fit everything in the two panniers I rented. From where I sit I view tourist boats and fishing boats and commuter vessels coming and going. There’s a cool little island in the middle of this bay. Very picturesque.

Al’s pointing out what we all knew…that i’m, in fact, number #1.

Thursday, June 19th. Day 4. 55 butt sore miles to Tampere

“I ain’t as good as I once was, BUT i’m as good once as I ever was!

One of the biggest lakes I have ever seen. Rode by it for hours.

Friday, June 20th, Day 5 Tampere to Parkano roughly 55 miles

This begins the summer solstice holiday and the bigger towns are ghost like. Everyone goes to “country cottages”. They all seem to have second homes in the wild. Yesterday we saw five or more signs to watch for charging Moose. And next beware of Bear signs. Finland appears quite affluent. You see only newer model cars. I have yet to see a homeless person or a street person begging. And the entire way streets are very good, drivers are totally respectful of cyclists, although people are extremely reserved and when Al or I wave at another cyclist or a walker or wave in thanks for someone who has stopped a vehicle to allow us to pass….they look at us as if we were aliens.

Next stop Seinajoki. 105 k or 65 miles….then the coast of Vaasa and from there north through Jakobstad,Kokkola,Ylivieska,Rahe,Liminka,Oulu and maybe even Rovaniemi and the northern lights.

Saturday, June 22nd Day 6 we rode 65 miles from Parkano to Seinajoki. We rode through beautiful country with lakes and wild flowers, but also a scary lighting, thunder storm that drenched both of us. Lighting bounced off the rode in front of us and we had a crazy animated conversation about what we should do: “We need to get in the trees”, Al said. I suggested low ground. “What…..we should dump our bikes and jump in a culvert?” Al snidely scoffed. “Yea, I said!” Well, the storm drenched us and lightning bounced around us for a while and we just kept riding.

Staying in Seinajoki, we had great conversations with two couples in a bar about our Commander in Tweets comments about meeting their Finnish leader and how he said they are a forest nation and we control the forest by raking it. It’s a national Finnish joke now!

They have trees everywhere…true, but they also have triple the yearly rain fall of all of North America….and they DON’T RAKE……ANYTHING!

The moose is loose. I had a moose burger last night….lean, tasty. The night before I tasted reindeer…ok, a bit gamey. We rode by countless Moose signs. Sometimes on both sides of the street. Unfortunately, in all the riding, 13 days with one off, we saw nary a loose moose.

Seinajoki to Vaasa Sunday, June 23rd. Day 7th. 86 k or 54 miles

Crisscrossed this beautiful little river all day.

I had my first mishap on my rented bicycle. Al found a rest stop near where our bikes are parked in the above photo. After some miles riding, dismounting can pose a problem for me because first I am not very limber in the groin area. Two, one has to swing their leg over two fully stuffed panniers and then a tent and sleeping bag.
Well, as it would happen, I failed to land “this dismount.”
I got my pant leg caught on one of the panniers as I cast my right leg over the back end of the bike and the it went down, throwing me over it towards this watery culvert/ditch, which I stumbled towards out of control until in the last second when I managed to cast myself over the little creek to face plant into the boggy flowers and grass on the other side.
Al laughed so hard he nearly wet himself. Luckily for me, it happened so quickly that he had no time to film it. Nothing hurt but my pride.

Rode side wildflowers
My legs are sore, but my derrière is so torn up. Our ride today was extremely flat and we thought that would make it relatively easy. Oh, to the contrary, 54 miles into a headwind between 12 and 20 miles an hour. There was no rolling because of the flatness, and mainly for the blustery windy conditions. A grind it out, never thought we would get here kind of day. We left at 7:45 and only arrived at 3:30. Roughly 8 hours of pressure peddling. We are now in Vaasa on the Baltic although I haven’t seen the sea yet. We may take a rest day tomorrow. The towns have been deserted and everything closed due to the national holiday of summer solstice. It’s like riding your bike through a zombie apocalypse movie set at times….just plain eerie.

Rest Day Monday, June 24th. No Riding(thank God!) A few pics from Vaasa or along the way to the coast.

Bay- many little islands near Vaasa, so bridges everywhere.

Al the ice cream man. They do have tasty ice cream.

They raised goats, grew their own produce, and made good beer.

I walked the town snapping a few pictures looking for a bike shop that carried bicycle derrière balm. Vaasa had three cycle shops and none had what I was looking for. The conversation with two shop owners, who spoke no English turned into a strange pantomime as I pointed and grimaced in order to be understood. The first two gentlemen tried to sell me new saddles, a third new and bigger riding shorts, but to no avail. I ended up at a pharmacy, which referred me to an earthy health food and spiritual renewal shop with all sorts of products. I bought a recommended balm the proprietor showed me(after once more moving through my strange charade). I settled on one that for “30 years has effectively treated everything from rashes to all sorts of other irritations.” It even displayed a babies bottom red with a rash. So, we’ll see…. riding in wind and rain tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 25th leaving Vaasa along the coast north. No stopping point thus far.

Arrived from Vaasa 80 k or 52 miles. Man oh man my butt is sore. Legs 10, ass o.

Al has been on the wild and weird pastry, ice cream diet. He can’t pass a trailer kiosk ice cream without stopping. He has lost 30+ pounds since he left Sacto 3 months ago, but I gotta tell you his sweet tooth is incredible: 3 donut-pastries, 2 ice creams and half a bar of Finnish chocolate. I think he would have lost 50lbs if he had a decent diet.

My 3 suggestions Finnish culture as an outside cyclist: 1. Their pizza parlors, which serve so-so pizza, should at least have beer. None do. 2. There are little to no places to stop between towns for cars, bikes or walkers. One can cycle 50 miles and not have a rest stop with amenities. A gas station, mini mart, cafe, anything that has beverages, snacks and a WC. 3. Each city or town as a “Keskusta”(city center) that has a square, which has food trucks of a wide variety and at the minimum 5 ice cream stands(all of which Al will hit). Down side of these Keskusta’s is that they have no beer stands or trucks. Ok, enough of this side bar. Pictures of the day. And a fourth complaint: one million and one Moose signs and no moose seen anywhere. False advertising. Lol

Kokkola Wednesday, June 26th. Day 8 riding, 9th sore ass day on the road!

Everywhere water, bridge to bridge, island to island

Took a little cabin in the rain. This was in fact the go to place with mosquitos all over the woods.

The blood letting from skeeters incredible.

Over the 8th bridge to Kokkola.

Kokkola to kalaijoki Thursday, June 27th. Day 9. 75 k. Or 47 miles

“It’s never too early, and seldom too late.” A local told regarding drinking.

A familiar greeting in Finland is “Hey hey”, which means hello, goodbye, Ciao like. Al says “Hey,Hey,Hey” which means “Not a thing!” According to a bar maid, as she shook her head in dismay. Lol

Passed a whole host of wind turbines today. All along the coast and we took them for a bad omen to cycling because wind, wind, wicked wind. In our face all day long.

I managed a quick dip in the

Golf of Bothnia Sea. We camped near it in a huge campsite with a cafe, zip lining, an ice cream shop(Al’s fav) and grassy sand dunes protecting us from the brisk sea Breeze. I had to walk out 100 yards or so to reach a depth of 4’. Refreshing.

Older buildings on Finnish coast row type wood, very uniform and usually single story.

Read a sign on the wall of this cafe, pub: “Life is basically all the stuff you have to get through from coffee to wine/beer time!”

I just cannot manage a normal smile.

In the far distance modern wind turbines. There were many of them, which is a foreboding sign for a cyclist.

A map of the north western coast of Finland.

Sunday, June 30th….Oulu

These last shots are near the water front in Oulu. There was some type of music festival going on.

Monday, July 1st training from Oulu to Helsinki. I managed to mail my camping stuff home from a post office in Oulu. Sitting, sitting, sitting….I thought immediately of my 8 1/2 hour bus ride following Camino del Norte. From Santiago de Compostela to Madrid for my flight to Sri Lanka. Happily I sat on the Spanish bus, attempting to metaphorically change psychic gears to memoir hop back to 1982.

This wasn’t nearly as emotional, or big a deal as a six hour train ride in clean comfort. It was a bit strange back tracking cities and towns i’d ridden through with Al. Oulu, Vivieska, Kokkola, Seinajoki, Tampere, Tikkurila, and finally Helsinki. Of course we missed a few of the mosquitoe campsites along the coast that we stayed at.

Revisiting Sri Lanka was a crazy mind altering blast from past with an alternative reality with all the technology and buildings and vast changes. This erased many old worn torn bygone times there.

Traveling on the train a mother with her two boys, say 4 & 2, both blonde haired, blue eyes reminded me of long ago traveling with Andrew and Ryan and how time has flown. Mom took the older one to the WC and the little guy noshing on the remnants of a piece of pizza began to cry. I tried to comfort him by smiling and telling him everything was alright, they would be right back, but the foreign language of English gave this little cherub blue eyed boy more reason for concern. Mom soon returned and he returned to his happy self.

The last ride of Hale Allen Yarber and his immortals was wrought with funny moments. First, as I had done a thousand times on The Camino del Norte, Al, the map maker and quintessential guide got us lost. Not for long, 10 or so K, but on this escapade we came upon 30+ senior citizens riding of all things, little bitty orange scooters. A veritable gaggle of elderly white Finnish men in some club or other going nowhere in particular slowly with their annoyingly grindingly zing of two stroke motors. The buzzing reminded me of a louder mosquito buzz.

Shoot me without warning if I’m ever in such a club! ( pics from Helsinki below)

From the doorway of Skone, a pub on the harbor.

My rental bike unweighted with panniers empty in the foreground.

View Cafe Engels …best breakfast I ever had…all organic, fresh.

A host of little islands dot the Baltic.

The large ships are used as ferries to Sweden but they also serve to break up the ice in the winter. The Baltic is relatively shallow.

The scandalous statute of Helsinki. Feminists were outraged when it first appeared in the early 19 century.

Pools and sauna near Eurohostel, where i’m Staying.

The next are a Finn…Kallela

Looking out the window from the fourth floor of the gallery to the Keskusta below.

An impressive museum and like many throughout Europe, free. Why don’t we celebrate art, encourage art, and make art accessible to all. Then again, Finland has the best educational system in the world according to international examinations, and literacy rates. They are the happiest culture in the world by recent polls two years in a row. Their trams are virtually free as are their buses, museums are free or little to enter. I have seen NO homeless. The city of Helsinki is clean with amenities such as drinking fountains and WC’s available(clean and free). Their food is exceptional and most importantly their beer quite good.

Ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. Thursday, July 4th

I’m glad I am away from the commander and tweet’s military celebration, demonstration of small penis complex.

Tallinn Old Walled City

The little side streets lead away from the Keskusta as in Sienna

American tourist

St. Michael’s …it had been SS headquarters in this region during the war.

St. Michael is the patron saint of Tallinn, but of course he is, and as the priest who invited me in to look at the church said; “He’s still fighting Putin to this day.”

Speaking to a couple of local guys over a beer, they asked where I was from, and I them, and they wondered why our commander in tweet was so beholden to Putin. “Why does he trust him(trumpeteer to Putin)? He does nothing but lie!” I couldn’t help myself. The tweeter does nothing but lie as well. And they have him, the Trumpeteer by the short hairs because he owes them money. And Putin helped get him elected. They simply nodded. They expressed an uneasy peace in fighting off Russia and made it clear, it will be this way until another conflict.

Last day and night in Helsinki… breakfasted at Cafe Engel. Best porridge ever, plus bread, cheese, salad and half a grapefruit and a perfect latte. The people there are extremely kind. The location is center, in fact right across from the giant white cathedral on the hill.

Spent the day at the Sauna, pools on the Baltic harbor. May have sauna and seal swam 5 times, a personal best. Met the two lifeguards I have seen before. Adam and Marco. Adam is a musician, studying for his PhD at the music academy in Helsinki, but he’s Australian. Marco is from Cuba.Both had interesting takes on politics in their home countries as well as things in Finland and Scandinavia.

Their take on The Trumpeteer was interesting as well. Marco said now “we”, Americans, know what truly bad oppressive politicians are. Adam said similar stuff that politics in Australia aren’t great right now and the world is in a crazy place. He’s lived in Helsinki for nearly ten years and is underwhelmed with current Finnish government. They both asked what it will take to defeat the commander of tweet? I didn’t really have a great response other than Democrats needed to get out and vote and hope the 23 current candidates don’t cannibalize each other and their chances to defeat him.

They both referred to Trump’s “Rake the forest” only as a testament to how weird he must be. I now sit, gazing out at the blue grey overcast Baltic Bay at Skone for happy hour. The Finnish file in as it is Friday. A glass of wine and an early night as I fly to Copenhagen in the am. I need to catch the #4 tram to the train station and catch the airport train.

Saturday, July 6th tram to train to airport in Helsinki for flight to Copenhagen. My hostel is a trip. Bohemian style meets Seattle Grunge. I’m one in a room of 10. Bathroom, showers down the hall. Stuff locked under my bed. Out of my element but cheap.

Copenhagen is in the midst of a Jazz festival weekend

The den of iniquity.

Copenhagen Downtown Hostel(crazy town) my residence for four days.

They, the Danes, are finishing a 3 billion Euro tram project.

Sunday, July 7th. Full day Copenhagen, which boasts the least unemployment and highest pay in all of Europe.

The iconic “Little Mermaid” – The symbol of Copenhagen

Called “ The Black Diamond “ the engineering center of Denmark.

Hans Christian Anderson lived in the red building.

Anderson was in his lifetime a social outcast for reasons I know not. It was only after his death that he was regarded as an important artist.

The Norse Goddess, whose legend reads that the King of Denmark granted her as much land as she could plow in a day, so she turned her four sons into oxen and plowed away. The legend continues that her sons were so intense that she kicked up a large bit of land that became the island of Copenhagen.

Boats, docks, and harbors everywhere.

King Christian, became King at 11, inherited one of the wealthiest countries of the time. He built incredibly extensively all over Copenhagen. He is credited with many of the beautiful architecture that still remains. When he died, he left Denmark broke and in political ruin.

Off in the distance, you can see the turbines. Denmark has the most wind powered turbines in all of Europe. Denmark gains one third of their energy from wind. Their goal is to be carbon neutral by 2025 and energy independent and totally green by 2050.

Copenhagen’s National Gallery. Free with free lockers. World class

Rembrandt’s

Matisse

Andre Derain

National Gallery (no one could explain why they had chairs in the fountain).

Denmark has the least unemployment in Europe and pays the highest wages in all of Europe. There are 5.5 million citizens. About the same population as Finland and they go back and forth as rated #1 and #2 in “Happiest people in the world” despite rather depressing weather. Their engineering feats are world renowned; (bridges, tunnels, and chunnels). Also rated 1 or 2 in education, and medicine over the past 20 years.

An ancient star fort, one of the oldest remaining in the world, complete with moats. There are little to no large rock in Denmark, so early architecture mandated that they use different soils to build the star walls. All of which are designed to absorb cannon balls.

The triangular building is a man made ski run and jump in the winter and a hiking trail in the summer.

Water front opera building. Danish architecture varies greatly.

Old Town center original Opea building now used more as general theatre.

Quite a day overall, visited the National Museum, checked out local sights. The “Little Mermaid “ was underwhelming. I remember in 1976, while studying in Rome, a group of us with Eurail passes took a long over night train from Rome, drank most of the way sitting at the end of a boxcar on the ground. Woke to the old Copenhagen Station, hoofed it around the city finding the Little Mermaid in the pouring rain. Some took pictures, I don’t even remember if I had a camera? We then found a pub continued to party until we thought it time to train back to Rome. Wow, youth is wasted on the young.

I wish I had Jerry’s address, a Dane I walked the last two weeks of the Camino del Norte with. He was a big time Danish tunnel engineer, and I walked past “the Black Diamond” which is the head engineering building in Copenhagen. An impressive all black glass structure that reflects the canal next to it.

I love walking cities although my right achilles is still barking at me and I may need to chill out for a day. Also having a laundry issue. Need to get some clothing cleaned before my nine other bunk mates complain that my clothes are running around the room stinking up the place.

Finding a place to watch the Women’s Soccer game at 5 and then an early night.

Monday, July 8th…Canal trip around 5 little Copenhagen Islands.

Old Capital across the water from the new Water front Opera.

Tuesday, July 9th Happy Birthday Andrew!

Duplicate house pic walking the 5 little islands connected by bridge to Copenhagen. They were at one time all associated with Danish military. Now they are upscale living homes and condominiums, and the New Waterfront Opera House. One Island, called “Christiana” is a relatively new 30 years ago reclaimed by what I can only say as “Hippies”. They smoke a ton of weed, hash, and other drugs, even though these are NOT legal in Denmark or Copenhagen.

The following pictures are from Christiana. I was met with a couple of rough looking “Watchers”, resident police and told under no circumstances could I take pictures of the inner sanctum, where the kiosks of drug sellers have their booths. Outside this den of weed being sold businesses sell all sorts of jewelry, clothing and mixed array of folk art. (Allot of colorful shirts, hats, etc…tie-died Haight Ashbury 1960’s looking stuff.

A rough looking, rather dirty area with the constant wafting of skunk aroma in the breeze.

Later that same day a great free jazz group played right in front of the wild hostel i’ staying at.

That’s my residence with the top hat and mustache on the wall.

Wednesday, July 10th. Last Day in Copenhagen. Glyptoteket Museum( founded and donated to the Danish people by The Carlsberg Owner, operator, mega millionaire. One of the largest privately held art collections.