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.