Working through life or living it

There was an interesting post in TechCrunch couple of weeks ago by Mr Arrington about his presentation in Le Web conference that caused even more interesting reaction from the Le Web organizer.

"Conference organizer Loic Le Meur (a French entrepreneur who moved to Silicon Valley for his most recent startup Seesmic) says that Silicon Valley moves too fast, and that Europeans enjoy a good two hour lunch just to experience the joy of life.

My response, at about 17:40: the joy of life is great, but all these two hour lunches over a bottle or two of great wine and general unwillingness to do whatever it takes to compete and win is the reason why all the big public Internet companies are U.S. based. And those European startups that do manage to break through cultural and tax hurdles and find success are quickly gobbled up by those U.S. companies. Skype (acquired by eBay) and MySQL (acquired by Sun) are recent examples."

As a response to Arrington's statement Le Meur put up a poll to conference participants on whether to invite Arrington to Le Web next year or not. Touchy, if you ask me.

But all this got me (again) thinking of how important it is to succeed in business (or sports or whatever it is you're doing) at almost any cost in comparison to having a good balanced life. I'm sure it is not good to be too obsessed by the success. On the other hand if it makes you happy then just work 14 hours a day and always think of what's the most effective way of doing things. Personally I think life's too short so you might as well stop and smell the roses while you're here.

Oulun Kärpät

Today I'm going to go and see a CHL game between Oulun Kärpät and Metallurg Magnitogorsk While I can't wait to see my hometown hockey pride take on last the year's "European Champion" I'm also pretty pessimistic about the chances of the home team. Season start has been quite shaky for Kärpät and very important piece of the team is missing now that Jari Viuhkola is injured. Heck, they even lost their first CHL game to Eisberen in Berlin!

Even if Kärpät is going to loose, it will be interesting to see the event as there are strict rules from IIHF/CHL how the events must be organized. I hope CHL will be a success and will gain the same sort of status in Hockey that UEFA Champions League has in Football. But when I was searching for CHL home page I din't find it by using CHL as search word. If you type in NHL, the first link you get is nhl.com. If you type in UCL, the second link is the official page if Uefa Champions League.
I guess CHL has a long way to go before it is really established, well known and valuable sports brand. In the mean while it wouldn't hurt if they used some money for advertising in Google.

Go Kärpät!!!

My fun room is taken

Hmph...I rarely have time to play games or watch films in my home theater. When I would have time and feel like it then the room is taken either by my son or my daughter. My son plays games with his friends; Champions League soccer, Need 4 speed, Sonic or something else. And when he's not playing then my teenage daughter is playing with her friend or more likely watching a film with her boyfriend.

I think I have to get another game console for the TV room upstairs :)
Only I can't afford to buy much anything in the near future because we're getting drapes or curtains and curtain rods etc for the house. And those things cost a world. I had no idea they can be so unbelievably expensive...damn I could buy another snowmobile with that money!

Hey...it sounds like the fun room is free finally. Gotta go, see ya!

I feel very sad

The college shooting that took place yesterday in Kauhajoki got me very sad. I'm still not too afraid of safety of my own children when they go to school but this sure does get one thinking.

There is a lot to do to prevent this kind of things from happening. The safety measures at schools have to reconsidered. The fire arms legislation needs to be renewed. I agree with prime minister Vanhanen that hand guns should be forbidden altogether from private use as they are too easy to conceal and those aren't used to hunting anyway. As a quick and easy fix the guidelines for the police for the grounds to confiscate fire arms from people that have acted suspiciously should be changed. I think if a person is showing off his gun and acting in a threatening way in public (videos) there is enough grounds for taking the gun away and ordering the person to psychiatric check.

What is most important is obviously to improve the ways to identify individuals who are in risk of getting isolated and becoming twisted and developing the means officials, teachers, health care personnel and so forth can react and help. Also common education for parents for understanding when their child is in need of help and how to get the help is needed.

I'm sure these are all pretty obvious things and have been in discussions at least since the shooting incident last year. Now it is time to move from talk to actions!

- Marko OK

Home theater project approaching goal

It's been more than a month since the last time I blogged something...bad me. So now I thought I'd write a short update on how my home theater project is going.

Last weekend I finally was able to take the first smoke out of the system. My setup includes
- Denon A/V receiver AVR-1909
- XBOX 360 (non-HDMI version) which acts also as DVD player for now
- Optoma HD80 projector
- Grandview Cyber screen 95x170cm
- 8 years old Audio Pro speakers (5+1)
- Leather 2+1 recliner (the back rest of the middle seat turns down into table)

I am impressed. The gaming experience has totally changed compared to 37" LCD that I used before. The picture is not just big (around 72") but it's very clear. Also the old DVDs look so much better than they used to. The scaling works very well on the Denon receiver. And the sound Denon produces through my old speakers is just amazing...I dind't know they could sound this good...my old JVC receiver must have been a total junk.

The recliner is just awesome as I can watch a long movie without any pains in my back. I have a bad back so this isn't the case with a regular coach or sofa.

I'm still missing some important components of the theater though. The most important piece is drapes for the window and the double doors with windows. Currently I can't really use the theater when it is not dark outside. Another important missing piece is Blueray player. I haven't decided if it should be PS3 or just a Blu-ray player.
I'm also planning to buy a media streamer but it is not all that important.

When I have the whole thing ready with decor and all I'll supply a picture here :)

My photo in Schmap San Jose and Silicon Valley guide

Wohoo...I'm rich and famous...well maybe not rich...actually maybe not even famous but anyway my photo with a link to my Flickr feed was selected for inclusion in the fifth
edition of Schmap San Jose and Silicon Valley Guide:

San Jose Sharks
http://www.schmap.com/sanjose/introduction_history/p=168157/i=168157_23.jpg

Talk about lucky shot :)
I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and saw an opportunity for a nice pic.

But that's the way it works for pros and photographing enthusiasts as well I guess. They just take a lot of pics and one out of maybe thousand is worth saving.

My Qstock experience

So last weekend was Qstock but I didn't have time to go see all the bands I wanted to because we were also moving to our new house the same weekend.
Anyway I did see Poets of the Fall, PMMP, Manic Street Preachers, Kotiteollisuus, Sahara Hotnights, Ismo Alanko Teholla and parts of the gigs from Amorphis, Radiopuhelimet, YUP and some local rising stars. The festival area was a lot bigger this year than before. The main stage was also bigger than before and everything worked very well. Big thank you and congratulations to organizers!

I'm very disappointed for not being able to make it to see Stam1na. I only heard the last three of their songs while walking from my car to the festival area. It would've been also nice to catch Mokoma but you can't have it all.
All the gigs I saw were good but the best by atmosphere was PMMP. The video here is of their first big hit, Rusketusraidat, and as you can see it still works.


Manic Street Preachers were also great but their gig was a bit shorter than scheduled and they didn't even do encore. The video is of the song they started the show with - Motorcycle Emptiness.


Ismo Alanko Teholla is amazing, it's just unbelievable what Teho Majamäki can do with all the drums and percussion instruments ...and Ismo's songs are simply genius. This is Levottomat Jalat:


I don't get why Poets of the Fall has not broken through internationally bigger. Here's a shot of them performing Carnival of Rust.


Overall I must say that I enjoyed most of these bands on Qstock much more than Kiss and Bon Jovi gigs I saw in Helsinki on May and June.

I've got also pictures from Qstock on Flickr. I'm sorry for the bad quality of the pics and the videos. The camera on N81 8GB is not that good :(
I should have taken my real camera with me.

Qstock...I can hardly wait for it

Allright, it's time for the local Qstock festival again next weekend. It'll be fantastic to go there to see great gigs from great bands on Friday and Saturday. There's an excellent set of bands on the menu this year, go check it out yourself if you don't take it from me: http://www.qstock.org/2008/index.php?sivu=bandit.
On Friday I'm especially looking forward to see Mokoma, Poets Of the Fall and Manic Street Preachers. It'll be also interesting to catch Sahara Hotnights.
Saturday's setting on the main stage is at least as interesting as Friday's. I just love PMMP live. I've seen the 3 times so far. Kotiteollisuus is also one of my big favorites although I haven't seen them live before. And the main act on Saturday, Within Temptation will be interesting as well although I havent' really listened to their music much. Stam1na will be on "Rantalava" stage and that's definetly a must see. I'll also try to catch part of Jippu's gig.

Keep Rockin'!!!

Salmon...what salmon?

Now it's official...I'm a bad fisherman. That's why this blog is called fisher wannabe :)
I'm now back to Oulu and done salmon fly fishing for this summer. This was the fourth summer since I started fly fishing salmon and the first time I didn't catch any of those beautiful and tasty creatures!
I was in Utsjoki for 12 days and fished in 9 of those days for about 40 hours altogether. I fished in Vetsijoki and Utsjoki rivers and the only action was in Utsjoki with a small salmon, tintti, which somehow escaped after a couple of minutes fight.

As any fisherman, good or bad, I can blame some of the bad fishing luck on the conditions. The early part of the first week I was up north there was still some new fish swimming up to Teno river and its tributaries and they were quite active. But towards the end of that week it all basically stopped as the water on Teno river got very high because of the heavy rains espeacially on the upper parts of the river.

The good news is I got much better casting the fly with a shooting head as I dind't loose any good casting time by playing with salmons :)

The Vision's fly fishing jacket I bought this spring was very good and I can honestly recommend it to anybody.

Fishing season ... argh, I wanna start it already!

This seems to be the 3rd summer in row that I don't start my fishing season in Kiiminkijoki but I have to wait until my summer break when I get to go to Utsjoki. This is my last week at work and on Tuesday next week I'll start my fishing season in Utsjoki...either in Utsjoki river or in Vetsijoki river. I've heard that there's quite a lot of salmon at least on Teno river. Aslakki says the salmon is climbing up to trees already :) (see http://www.tenojoki.fi/tenopaasivut/aslak/)

I've made only moderate equipment purchases for this season. I got me a fly fishing jacket and a Guideline's shooting head from Perhokolmio. The line I got is Power Taper DDC Connect Intermediate for one hand rods. It'll be interesting to see how it works...I'll try to report it here. The jacket is the long version of the Vision FlyWater jacket. Should be ok but if not I'll definitely report it here.

House deal done

A quick update on the house matter. We did get into agreement with the seller on the house I mentioned in my previous post so I'll be moving from the northern side of the city of Oulu to the the southern side. I'm so excited about moving to a new house...we've already started packing stuff and today we need to go select the tiles for kitchen.

Buying a new house

I've been lazy on blogging for quite some time already. Somehow Facebook takes quite a lot of my "online life energy" and it's hard to find time and energy to do blogging. Twittering I've almost totally given up on because of Facebook.

I've been up to so many things since the last time I wrote something here but the biggest thing is that we've sold our house and are looking for a new one now. We're already in kind of hurry as we should move out from our current house by the end of July. I've made an offer on a new house (literally new...it's supposed to be ready by 3rd week of July) yesterday and now waiting for the response from the seller...should know something by tomorrow.

It certainly isn't the best possible time to be upgrading a house right now as the interests are high and still going further up. Also it is expected that the house/apartment prices are going to go down in Finland. But we made the decision to sell our current house a bit before all the signs of the economy turned to red. But as a wise man once said, let's hope for the best and fear for the worst :)

New fishing story in the works

Today I decided that it's time for me to write a new fishing story. It'll take at least a few days until it's done and I'm ready to publish it here. Again I'm going to write it in Finnish like I did with the previous story called Uni because it's too difficult for me to write stories in English. This story is going to be about ice-fishing. It'll include description of beautiful snowy landscape of the fells of Utsjoki and - of course - fishing action.
I can't wait for the story to materialize through my fingers on the keyboard :)

Bad luck with weather

I was @ Ruka, Kuusamo again last week with my family. On Saturday the weather was great, -4 C, sun shining and no wind, and the slopes were in a very good shape. It totally looked like my luck with weathers had changed. But then on Sunday the weather was terrible, wind blowing so that the bubble ski lifts had to be closed and it was totally impossible to glide the east side slopes as the wind was freezing your face and throwing ice on it. So we were forced to stay on the west side slopes which was good in the sense that now the whole family is experienced on skiing/snow boarding on black slopes :)

As a summary of the snowboarding this season I have to say that I learned to do it better than before as I have never done that as much as this winter. My son learned to ski very well, he's doing great carving turns even on the steep slopes. My daughter also learned really snowboard. When the season started she was still sliding sideways and only doing the easiest blue slopes. Now she can easily do the red slopes and somehow handle even black ones. My wife got also better with carvers.
As total I was on snowboard on 9 days, 8 in Ruka and 1 in Iso-Syöte. Of these days the weather was nice only on one, last Saturday. In addition the weather was decent on one or two days but 6 days out of 9 it was lousy. I experienced raining, heavy snowing, horrible winds, very cold temperature and all sorts of mixes of these. I hope the luck with weather is better next winter.

First day in a new job

The first day in a new job is now pretty much behind. The morning was pretty busy with meetings until 1 pm. After that I've been trying to learn stuff by reading...there's so much to read!!!

I must say that I'm looking forward on how the new job will turn out and how the whole service business that Nokia is now on will evolve for Nokia. It is very interesting to be part of building new business for a giant company like Nokia. This is not the first time for me though as previously I was part of the team that introduced Nokia Internet Tablets. That was a wonderful learning experience and I had the greatest job of managing partnering for internet applications.
Before that I was part of a team that brought SIP technology to Nokia S60 handsets. Again there my responsibility was partnering related as I managed the S60 SDK SIP plug-in introduction to developers (well, Forum Nokia guys took care of the last mile but anyway) and managed an early access developer program for ISVs.

Now it's time to go home and let the learning of the first day in the new job to sink in...

750 km of fun

Last weekend finally I was snowmobiling in the area of Rovaniemi-Levi-Soankylä with some fellow sled heads from work. Altogether we drove 750 km during 3 days. The trails were in perfect condition. Actually the straight and flat parts of the trail could have been in worse shape to make driving more interesting.

The trip was partly ruined by an incident that involved dealing with police. We drove past couple of stop signs without stopping. We did slow down to slover than walking pace but didn't stop. Police was behind us and we didn't know. That cost me 430 €. Damn expensive. Well I know better next time, lesson learned.

Serious snowmobiling

The next weekend after easter I'm going to snowmobiling with some Nokia colleagues for three days in a row. There'll be 6 of us all together. We'll start on Friday morning from Rovaniemi and head to Levi where we are staying for two nights. One of us will drive the maintenance car from Rovaniemi to Levi just in case for some problems. On the second day we'll drive Levi - Muonio - Hetta - Levi route. On the last day we'll drive from Levi - Sodankylä - Rovaniemi. So all togehter we'll spend on snowmobiles about 700-800 km on 3 days. That's more than enough taking into account that we probably can't completely resist the call of the Levi night life. :)

Ice fishing coming up

Yes, uippiciaee!!! It's almost easter and we're going to Utsjoki. I'll be driving my snowmobile and doing ice fishing on fell lakes with my family. Some sausage grilling on a stick over a bonfire. Coffee. Air dried reindeer meat. The sun is shining. Kids are laughing. My wife is laughing and I'm laughing. Work is only a word in a distant memory...

When I'm ice fishing it doesn't really even matter too much if I catch something or not. But surely it would crown the day if I'd catch a few nice big arctic chars. Or better yet if my son caught at least one.

Here's a nice video of ice fishing close to Utsjoki. That's what it's like when you are on the right spot at the right time :)
I only wish it was me on the video...sigh.

Price tag of the Lynx 's broken drive shaft

Earlier this week I received a call from Tuovilan Gummi. They had investigated the damage on my snowmobile. I have no idea what all those parts that need to be changed are in english but here's the list partly in Finnish:
- drive shaft
- both drive wheels (only the other was really damaged, but they both are changed)
- seal from the gauge unit end of the drive shaft
- liukukiskot (sliding bars???)
- Chain box oil.

The parts cost ~700 € and the work ~300 €. When I heard this I told the guy from the service company that the warranty of the sled had only expired about a month ago and that it's only been driven for 2400 km. So this should be covered by the warranty. The guy pormised to check if there are any marks of heavy impact on the driving wheels and verify the mileage and come back to me. Then he called me again after a few hours and told the good news - I'd only need to pay for the liukukiskot and chain box oil. Phew...what a relief :)

Now I'm expecting to have my snow ride to be ready well before easter.

Corkscrew

Funny small incident happened to my wife and I last Saturday. We were skiing/snowboarding in Ruka for the weekend. We had a wine bottle that she had gotten as a gift from someone but no corksrew. There was this bar on the same building we were staying in so I thought we could go and borrow a corkscrew from there. But it felt so stupid to go in a bar to ask for a corkscrew so we could go and open our own bottle in our own apartment instead of coming to that bar. So we stood outside of the bar arguing which one of us should go and ask the bartender. Finally I went bravely in and asked the big question - "Ehm...excuse me. I have a rare question. Can I borrow a corkscrew for two minutes?"
No problem there. The nice blond bartender girl smiled and borrowed me the tool. Then we went back into our apartment to open the bottle and guess what...the damn thing had a cap you open by just twisting it :)
When I returned the corkscrew I never mentioned that we didn't need it after all.

Lynx's drive shaft busted

My Lynx X-Trim 600 SDi's drive shaft was broke in two last Thursday. I had no idea that could happen, this is apparently a rather rare defect. Anyway I'm glad I wasn't too far away from the road. Big thanks to Mikko for towing my sled to roadside. We put a tarpaulin under the track of my sled to make it slide better and thus easier to tow (as the track was jammed and didn't roll). Little Ski-doo Tundra had to work hard to drag my quite heavy snowmobile for 1.5 km even though it was mostly downhill :)

Anyway, now I'm waiting for Tuovilan Gummi, the Lynx service in Ivalo, to check the reason for the drive shaft getting broken. If there are no marks for an impact from a rock or something, then this should be covered by the warranty although the sled is already 2 years and one month old. I can't remember hitting any rock like that so this should be a clear case. I just hope they get the sled fixed well in time for easter.

Snowmobiling in Utsjoki

I drove a couple of short legs today in Utsjoki with my kids. There is enough snow now for good old snow fun with a sled. For some reason the snowmobile trail to Utsjoki is still officially closed. There is a sign about 10 km before Utsjoki telling that trail is closed due to trail conditions and that driving is on one's own responsibility. It's nice that the Finnish Forrest and Park Service is active enough to put such a sign there when the conditions are not safe. It would as great if they'd go and take the sign away when the conditions are good again.

Ibiza FR, our new second car...what a fun car!!!

My wife and I bought a new, well actually a used car on Friday. The new family member is 2006 model Seat Ibiza FR 1.8T. The color is red exactly like in the pics below. I love the way this baby looks and I have to say it is one great car to drive. Even though sporty, the chassis is not too hard so the car is very comfortable to drive even on a street with cobblestone pavement. And turbo charged 150 horse power engine on a small car like this is moves it pretty quick. The engine sounds pretty good as well, makes me smile every time I start it :)
Now that I'm in Utsjoki on winter holiday with kids I won't get to drive Ibiza before Saturday. I hope my wife takes a good care of it in the meantime.

Now we have to get rid of the old second car, Renault Clio 1.4 RN, 2000. I placed it on sale on Nettiauto.com, Oikotie.com and Keltainen Pörssi already on Thursday. I hope we get it sold pretty soon because the yard is pretty packed now with three cars.

Snowmobiling in Oulu region

I went snowmobiling on last Sunday. I made a trip from Oulu (Hiukkavaara) to Ylikiiminki and back, althogether about 85 km. 85 km is not much as such but taking into account the bad condition of the trail it was plenty. My muscles are aching a bit after bouncing up and down the moguls on the trail.

This is the standard situation with the snowmobiling trails close to Oulu and I guess all the bigger cities not close to high maintenance trails of skiing resorts. The reason for the bad condition of the trails is simple, way too much traffic compared to the maintenance of the trails. There's no way in the current situation for the maintenance level to be improved...there's just not enough money. I would be ready to pay something like 50-100 €/winter if that would get trails in good enough condition. In my mind good enough trail is something you can drive (quite comfortably) on 45-60 km/h with a touring sled with 2 people on.

Is there any way to collect bigger money from snowmobilers for the maintenance of the trails? If the payment is purely out of freewill, it's not gonna work. Collecting the money as a tax from snowmobile owners is also problematic as it's difficult (read: impossible) to earmark any tax money to certain usage. I have a proposal in mind for this dilemma, but I'll write about that later.

Snowboarding again next saturday

My wife is going to hold eye doctor's reception in an optics store in Kuusamo on Saturday. We decided that I'll go to Ruka with kids while she's working.
I'm really looking forward to snowboarding in Ruka the whole day on Saturday. I did buy the snowboard from my colleague btw. I promised my daughter we'll buy her snowboarding equipment as well before Saturday so she doesn't have to rent any more.
The picture above is from Ruka's web page and it's the weather forecast from today until Saturday. So it seems like the weather is not going to be too nice on Saturday but it's not bad either. I wish the forecast is wrong and the weather on Saturday is what is now forecast for Friday :)

Missing summer ...and fly fishing

I just read my old blog entries from the summer. The one about a dream got me missing summer and fishing...badly.

I hope it's going to be a good salmon summer this year at Teno and it's tributaries. A fellow from Game and Fisheries Research Institute was cautiously expecting that there'd be much more 10 kg salmons next summer compared to last summer...I hope this is true.

Busy Saturday

So I was @ Iso-Syöte on Saturday with my family. My daughter learned to snowboard a lot better than before. Now she can actually make several turns in a row without turning the board sideways first. And my son has become too fast on skis for my wife...she can't keep up with him :)

I finally got to test ride the old and used Burton Custom, my new Burton boots and Giro helmet (see couple of earlier blog entries). The boots were fantastic and the helmet was ok. For the first hour or so I had some problems with the left boot as my little toe was getting numb, but then I guess the boot adjusted to my foot. The Giro helmet was otherwise great but my goggles didn't fit with it perfectly. The old Burton Custom board doesn't really look too pretty and it has some scratches on it, but boy how great it was to ride compared to the rental boards I've only ridden so far. I might actually buy it.

At the Saturday evening we were back to Oulu and we went out with my wife. First we had dinner in Marrakech restaurant which was great. Not only the food was tasteful and the Menu dishes huge, they also had belly dance performances :)
After the dinner we went to see Angelit concert. They were good as always but by far the best thing about the concert was that there were a lot of people from Utsjoki that now live in Oulu.

Snowboarding boots and a helmet

I went shopping today for some snowboarding stuff. I bought myself Burton Moto boots and a Giro G9 helmet. The lacing system used in certain Burton models including Moto seems fantastic. The G9 helmet fits at least my head very well and its' got good adjustment possibilities. I would have preferred matte black color though but they didn't have it so I got me a grey (ash) one.

I'm really looking forward to get to test especially the shoes. It'll be also interesting to see how the Burton Custom snowboard I have from a colleague for testing works for me. I'm afraid it's a bit too short for me, the board is 160 cm while I'm 179 cm and 80 kg. I'm also expecting to ride quite a lot in powder while I'm in Utsjoki during my winter vacations. I'm also a bit concerned about the potential toe dragging problem. This board isn't really wide and my shoe size is 9.5/42.5. So the board certainly isn't ideal for me, it should be 162-164 cm, but if the price is very good and toe dragging isn't a problem I might keep it.

Well, I'll be that much wiser after this weekend. I hope the weather is good tomorrow in Iso-Syöte.

Used Burton Custom

I've got a used Burton Custom snow board from a colleague of mine so I can test ride it to see if I want to buy it. It does have marks of usage on it but it doesn't look too bad. I'm looking forward to give it a try. Maybe next weekend in Iso-Syöte.

Snowmobiling season started

So I went snowmobiling with couple of friends on Saturday more than a week ago. We took the sledges to Puolanka (~130 km from Oulu) on a trailer. The load on the trailer was way too much on the front, which made driving interesting. But there was no way to load these three snowmobiles any differently on that trailer. And in the end my CR-V managed the task quite ok.

We drove the sledges from Puolanka to Paljakka ski resort and back. It wasn't too long trip for the seasons first one, 95 km all together, but the trail was in quite bad shape. Especially when the trail after 15 km leaves the pretty straight power line and you turn towards Paljakka.
I was totally beaten after the trip. My back muscles and thighs were absolutely finished. It took until Wednesday before I was fully re-covered from the trip (what comes to muscle pains). I also got influenza after the trip. I don't know if the disease kicking in is partly the reason I got so sore or whether the exhausting trip made way for the disease to get hold of me.

I must say that I haven't seen anyone treat touring snowmobile as my friend did with his Yamaha RS Venture TF. It's a very heavy touring sledge with 4-stroke engine and he drove it like it was a light sports model. I must say I didn't think that snowmobile can take that kind of beating.

Some comments about the new snowmobile gear I bought before the trip. The cloves felt very good in the beginning. Very tight grip and good feel with the break and throttle. But after 30 km jumping up and down on the worn out bumpy track
my left hand palm started to feel bad. By the time we got back from driving, I had 5 huge blisters in my left hand and one on the right hand. So these cloves were a bit of disappointment.
The boots on the other hand were very good. They are relatively light and support the ankle very well while also giving good cover for heel and toes against shocks.

New boots and claws

I bought myself a new pair of snow mobile boots and claws yesterday. Now all that's missing is enough snow for driving :(

The boots I bought are Dragon by MP-asu. They feel very firm and support ankle very well. The whole feet is pretty well protected and their not too heavy either. Looking forward to put them to real test.

The claws are Track Neopren from the same brand. I've never had neoprene claws before but everyone has been telling me how good they are for sporty driving. They do feel very good in your hand and the grip is very good. With these I shouldn't have that big problems with blisters and hands shouldn't get tired as soon because I don't need to hold on so tight to stay on the saddle :)

I'll write a short review after I've used the boots and claws.