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[ice6900]

10€/rally dollar  eat all u can buffet every evening

[ice6900]

same menu everyday, pizza was available in other areas, also bbq fire sides of smoked salmon which we wanted on the last evening but was sold out!   gggrrrrrrr!

[ice6900]

breakfast with musical entertainment

[ice6900]

u can pack all you need in this lil dethleffs trailer/caravan   

[ice6900]

drinkin water n watching the activity go by

[ice6900]

saturday afternoon at the speedway, boy did we get dusty, the circuit crew would flatten the track and spray it with water after every 4 races to keep the dust down but with the lack of shade and the 30°c heat there efforts were in vain

[ice6900]

speedway moped

[ice6900]

this poor lil guys decided to play chicken with me but i couldnt avoid him and my rear tyre ran over him

[ice6900]

this picture was taken at midnight on saturday nite, this was as dark as it gets for the 3hours that the sun goes down at this time of year

[ice6900]

Our sunday ride was not a good day, we decided to check out some of the local attractions we rode to a shop that specialised in selling american cars, we arrived there at 10am but it didnt open till midday, so we peered through the windows to see which cars they had in there inventory, caddies, ponies, pickups, stretches  etc etc


we decided to ride another Brothers Keskinen Ltd which is the biggest village shop in Finland opens from 9-20 on sundays, except this sunday it was closed.........bahhhhh  humbug!
we had seen a sign for a go-kart track a few Km^s back so we rode there 1km up a very bumpy dusty dirt track in the middle of the woods only to find there were only a couple of guys there practising.
Oh well lets ride back to the rally sight, 10km to go Robs bike (04 Heritage) starts to play up missfiring, he thinks he needs gas, so i pin point him in my tom tom and ride off to fill up. The nearest gas station was closed, so i rode to another pulled up at the pumps finding it was a unmanned site, payment with credit card or euro notes. there was a small shop across the road so i bought a 1.25ltr lemonade pet bottle drank a little and poured out the rest, then i found my credit card wasnt accepted, so back to the shop to lower a 50euro note. I rinsed and filled the bottle with fuel and topped up my tank with 20€. Rode back to find Rob who was patiently waiting, he told me loads of bikes had ridden past but nobody had stopped to ask if he needed help. He topped up his tank but the bike still ran rough, we rode to the same gas station and he filled up. still running rough we nursed the heritage to the rally service depot.

[ice6900]

buy then his engine light was burning, they checked it out and diagnosed the rear cylinder wasnt firing so they replaced the coil and the plug, charged him 210€, rode it around the parking, seems ok.
my springer was due its 24k km service so i had the engine oil and filter changed out 180€, full service was booked the day after my return home

we rode off the same fault cropped up again, so back to service............ after rechecking they told us they didnt have all tech equipment so it was best they contacted the local dealer n they repair it. So the dealer turned up 2hours later on sunday evening and took the bike to the dealership where it was looked at on monday morning, we had a a 5hour ride and a 7pm ferry to catch monday evening.
Monday morning we were up early packed up our stuff and left it all in Robs tent, after breakfast i took him to the dealership, we explained our priority to the tech, who after chilling and drinking his coffee started to check the bike, diagnostic also indicated the same fault, he checked all cables connecters etc, told us he couldnt fault it, go for a ride n come back. Well it was ok, then it missed abit then it was ok again, i told Rob to give it some gas on a faster road, seemed to be ok now. so we went back to the Seinajoki dealership, they didnt charge him for picking the bike up or for the hours labour. I gave the guy 20€ to get some beers. We rode back to rally site and finished packing, then set off towards Turku and our ferry, but the intermittant missfiring was becoming more and more troublesome, by the time we reached a gas station near Tampere it was running only with the front cylinder firing, decision time, call breakdown n miss the ferry or plod on! As Rob had 2 extra days before his next ferry from France to the channel islands we opted to nurse the bike 300km to the ferry, she wasnt making any undue noises and managed a reasonable speed on the back roads away from the busy traffic. We arrived in Turku about 3pm, i said as we have a few hours lets go to the Turku dealership for another opinion, i asked the tech if he had time to hook the sickle up on the diagnostic, bring it down he said, no messing around we had 3techs searching for the problem they tried all they could then decided to remove a ecm from a used fat boy that was for sale, salesmen dont like us he said. Puuuuurrfect it ran like a goodun but the fatty had a standard set up and the heri stage1, one of the tech guys tried to phone Sweden to ask on availability of a ecm but no joy, so we asked him if we could use there ecm to get home then we would post it back to them, he asked the owner of the dealership who said Rob should pay500€ for the ecm and give them his bank acc details and they would reimburse him when they recieved to ecm back. They didnt charge him for the 2hours tech time either, WHAT A GREAT DEALERSHIP,  TURKU Dealership SGN BIKES in Finland.
The pic below was taken at the Seinajoki dealership.

[ice6900]

Back at the ferry, i spoke with a bunch of guys from Belguim, who said they were held for 3hours by the police, one of them was over the limit eventually they were allowed to leave and told they had 5hours to reach the ferry after that there driving licenses would be suspended in Finland for 2months. A letter would be sent to the justice dept in there home town, from where he will expect to recieve probably a large fine and suspension.

[ice6900]

all aboard again

[ice6900]

Every morning the Heriboy wasnt happy until it warmed up, as the mapping/tune wasnt good.  But it held out!

Boy what a temperature difference from the hot sweltering (up 2 30°c) few rally days to +13°c air temp in Stockholm
We took a different route through Sweden travelling down the east coast on the e22,  tom tom said 12hours but we did it in 9. We arrived near Malmo about 3pm so decided as the weather was closing in again from the north to press on over the bridge to Copenhagen, bad judgement as we were not happy with any hotels in the city and now it was rush hour, we waited 1/2 hour in a gas station for the main traffic to pass then pressed on towards the next bridge and Odense, eventually we found a trucker lodging hotel on the highway (ouch 100€ per night)

next morning same as the day before Heriboy wasnt happy until she warmed up, we put on rain gear to keep out the cold, there were ominous black clouds coming in from the north heading south east, we just caught the leading edge (so last nights bad judgement turned out to be good) and we rode though Denmark and Germany via Hamburg Hannover Essen and back to Venlo in Holland.

[ice6900]

After a good evening meal and 2 beers we asked for dessert, sorry none today but i^ll ask the chef, chef will make a surprise is that ok, sure is!!!!!!!!!!
We were due to ride in different directions the next morning, Thursday, me to Switzelrand and Rob to west france where he had a ferry to the channel islands on saturday evening.
The next morning was cold n drizzly to start but i decided to add on a few extra Km and hours and ride with him as far as Namur in Belguim.
Heriboy was felling worse today and Rob indicated to me to stop at the next gas station, he asked me to check with tom tom if there was a dealer nearby, only 18km in Belguim so we headed there, checked the condition of the plugs which appeared a lil black but mech said no worries, Rob bought a couple of spare plugs n we set off. Heri was running a lil better by now, we parted company on the highway and i headed south.