Since Gaija...

We left the Ecovillage just before lunch on Friday, just before lunch and bikes back to the train station in Ähtari. There we caught a train towards Vaasa... But we didn't make it! There was nowhere to buy tickets at the station, only on the train. However, the conductor's ticket machine only took chip-and-pin debit cards, not swipe cards. Damn you, America, for being the only country in the world that still uses swipe cards! Unfortunately we didn't have enough cash for the fare, so the conductor sold us tickets to the next big city, Seinajöki.

So we got cash and then had lunch at an all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. Perfect for hungry cyclists! Later that afternoon we got on the next train and got to Vaasa without issue. Once there, we scoped out the ferry port and then found a spot to camp nearby. The evening was spent reading, playing cards and not exploring the city. We regretted this after the fact, because it looked nice when we biked through it, but the energy was lacking. The following morning, we boarded the ferry and spent the four hour journey basking in the sun and hiding from the wind on the stern deck of the ship. Even though the trip takes four hours, because of the number of islands, land is always in sight.

In Umea, Sweden, we spent the afternoon partly at a bike shop, more on that later, and partly at the tourist office. There we found out that essentially no trains in Sweden take bikes. Very few bus companies do either. So that complicates things. After an early dinner cooked in a city park, we started biking south. We had bought a cycle map from the tourist office, and it turned out to be a signposted cycle route! Navigational bliss!

Dinner in the park.

The road south from Umiä.

Around eight pm we hit the coast after a long inland stretch, and, finding a deserted beach, decided to camp there. It was beautiful, and beach camping is always a bit special.

Late evening light lasts a lot longer this far north...

The next morning we continued biking the cycle route, which was slightly less signposted for this section, but with the maps, we were able to keep up with it.

We had our afternoon snack here, which would have been a very nice spot, except for this...

The view looking east. Those are the same pilings as in he previous photo. A local we chatted with told us it is a paper factory. All of the big towns along the coast seem to have considerable heavy industry like this. 

 By the time we found a suitable campsite it was about 6:00, and we were very tired after our hilliest day of cycling so far, and also our longest; 120-something kilometers.

Second breakfast in a church yard. All the churches have similar walls. We follow the Hobbit eating schedule of breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner and supper...

Here is an old forge, dating from the 18th century. Beautiful old buildings.

This morning, we biked into the town of Ornskolsvik. We found internet at the tourist office, but we had to wait for it to open at 10. There we got a rude shock; our host at the next place, where we were supposed to arrive tomorrow, sent us an irritated message that she thought we were staying longer, and that 3 weeks was already an exception to her normal rule of a month, and that consequently we shouldn't bother showing up, etc, etc.

Eventually we decided to call her, and decided that Adie will spend the whole month there, because it is his kind of thing (eco building) and that after 2 weeks, Lucy will head onto the next workaway, a permaculture farm about a day's ride west. Then we will meet up at the end of the month.

There is no wifi at the eco building place, so posts may be spotty over the next month.

Read More

Our Stay at Gaija

Well, if biodynamic farming seems like a break from the mainstream, Gaija Eco-Village is even further off the beaten path. Gaija, a community of thirty or so, has existed for about eight years outside the town of Ähtäri on a beautiful lake. The site, currently owned by the city and cheaply rented by the community, centers around a large building from the 1940s that served as a nursing home for fifty years. Abandoned late in the last century, it was occupied during the nineties by a now-collapsed intentional community before Gaija was established there in 2006. This building serves as a centering point for the community, containing a common living/dining area and industrial-scale kitchen, along with many rooms for housing. There are also a number of satellite structures, such as an animal barn, root cellar, greenhouse, community-built wood sauna, and a few smaller houses where more permanent residents live. Among all of these structures, there is a small forest and land available for agriculture, about four hectares in total. Of this land, only about 0.4 hectares are currently cultivated, though the growing techniques employed require about three times as much meadow to be left around the farmed plots to be cut for mulch. 

The main building. To heat it requires 1,000 cubic meters of wood per year, all moved inside to the furnace by hand through a window in the small shed in front (lower right).

Upon arriving on Monday evening, we encountered a resident outside with her child who directed us to Teme, the young man that Lucy had communicated with before visiting. Teme came outside and chatted with us for awhile about the community and his role there, before directing us to a room and leaving us for the night. We were happy to have some beds after two long days on the road, even if they were tiny singles! After a quick dinner snack (still pretty full after all the chips and salsa we ate on the train) we immediately fell asleep...for eleven hours!

The root cellar. 

The edge of the sauna, the best product of collective energy at Gaija, in Teme's opinion. 

Next morning we wandered around, ate some breakfast, and waited until a man named Nikolas invited us to the cabbage field to work. We waited for Teme to arrive, ate another breakfast of rice salad and ligonberry porridge, then headed out. While weeding and mulching the cabbages, we learned that all of the agricultural work, and most of the general labor for the place as well, is done by only four residents.  And of these for, Teme and Nikolas are the two that do relatively full-time work. There is no work requirements for community members, so most people don't bother to volunteer their time to mulching the fields and chopping wood. Gaija does host volunteers through WWOOF, so they get some help that way, but the lack of labor explains the micro scale of their cultivation. Addtionally, there is no reward for working in the fields or with the wood for heating. The harvest goes to a food circle, which residents can choose to pay for, receiving communal meals in exchange. But even the people who are growing the food still have to pay to eat it. Nonetheless, Nikolas refused to classify himself as a volunteer, stating that the experience and low-stakes environment for experimentation and learning is invaluable. And this is true, the rent is extremely low at Gaija, as is the fee for the food circle, so those who choose do to agricultural work are able to utilize inefficient but interesting cultivation techniques without sacrificing profits the way a farm would. The system is not perfect, and Teme spoke to us about his hopes that Gaija will establish at least a small reward for involvement in community work, but for now the people who are participating seem content enough to continue. 

We spent the rest of the week working in the fields, chopping and moving wood, and relaxing by the lake. Our role was fairly ambiguous, so everyone kept telling us to take it easy and just enjoy ourselves. After long work days at Toivo, it was hard for us to adjust to such a laid-back work ethic! But we did listen to them eventually and spent a lovely afternoon rowing around the lake.

A cool public campsite on an island in the lake, complete with cook stove. This is what AT lean-tos should be like!

Though the people were friendly and the community felt welcoming, it certainly did not feel like it was at a stable equilibrium. Currently it serves mainly as a cheap apartment-building for hippies, people looking to get out of the cities, but not necessarily to participate in a lifestyle of manual labor or self-sufficiency. By Friday, we were ready to move on to a place where there was more commitment to a collective pursuit, so we said our goodbyes and hit the road for our next Workaway, in Sweden! 

Read More

The Trip to Gaija Eco-Village

We left Toivo Farm (we found out at Gaija that Toivo means hope in Finnish) at about 9am on Sunday, after a relaxed midsummer weekend. Various friends and relatives of Toivo's permanent residents came for the night, including a man named Pablo, who works at a bike shop in Helsinki. We talked bikes and touring with him, and generally enjoyed ourselves sitting by the fire, playing frisbee and reading. From Toivo, we headed west-northwest towards the town of Sysma and the enormous lake Paijanne. Once again, we had a route planned and queues written out from google maps. And once again, google maps let us down! Early on we could tell that google's route was overly complicated. Our directions would send us on zigzagging shortcuts on dirt roads, but they were a hassle to navigate, and the dirt made for slow riding. In places these shortcuts turned into little more than footpaths!

After riding through Sysma, about 70km into the day, we took a detour to a small national park on an island in the lake. Jere, one of the farmers at Toivo, had told us about an old lookout tower on the island which afforded great views of the lake and islands. We left our bikes at the entrance of the park, had a snack and, as it began to rain, headed into the park on foot. In keeping with the theme of the day, we took a wrong turn while hiking to the tower, leading us on a loop around the park and adding several kilometers to the walk. However, this gave time for the rain to clear before we arrived at the tower.

Back on our bikes, we got back on our route, and joined a road which winds its way across islands and peninsulas as it heads north along the lake. We would be on this road for 50km, which was about 40km longer than any other road that day. It was nice to be able to zone out while riding, instead of having to keep track of the queue sheet, odometer and street signs. Rain occasionally threatened, but thankfully held off. We knew we had to get to Jyväskylä in time for a train at 4:30 the following afternoon. So that we wouldn't be too pressed for time, we resolved to continue cycling as long as we could. We stopped to cook dinner at the side of a lake, which conveniently had a little dock to cook on, and a boat to sit in while eating.

 After a meal of pasta and beans (which ended up very salty!), with fried halloumi cheese for appetizers, we continued cycling. By 8pm we were tired, out of water and getting hungry again. We eventually found a stream to purify water from and, all long the road there, wild strawberries! They were tiny, but so flavorful they almost tasted fake. While we waited for the Aquamira to catalyze, we munched away on strawberries.

 Somewhat revived, we continued on, looking for a place to camp. Eventually we found an ideal flat spot, surrounded on three sides by water, next to a decommissioned ferry dock. It was just after 9pm, so we had been on the move for 12 hours, cycling over 120km, and hiking about 4 more. We put the tent up as quickly as possible and crawled immediately into our sleeping bags. Several hours later, the wind picked up, and it began raining. We had pitched the tent in a haphazard fashion, not thinking about wind or rain. Unfortunately, both came. The tent flapped a lot, and wind-blown rain pooled on our plastic groundsheet, under the floor of the inner tent. Unfortunately, the inner tent floor had a hole (holes?) in it, so Adie woke up to find his sleeping pad the only dry island on his, downhill, half of the tent. Over the night, as the slow leak in the sleeping pad slowly leaked, this island got less and less dry. We woke up at 6, damp, ate a quick breakfast in the tent, inside our sleeping bags as it was cold outside. As soon as we began riding, the rain picked up again, but an hour or two later this abated. We rode on, stopping in a hay barn for a snack, then later at a gas station in the town of Korpilahti to dry out and snack again. From there our route followed a large main road into Jyväskylä. This road was thoroughly unpleasant, with narrow shoulders, lots of trucks, and a 100km/h speed limit. After 10km we were almost viscerally relieved to make it onto a smaller, parallel road. At about 1pm we cooked lunch at a bus stop, then continued into town, arriving with a couple of hours to spare. We passed these hours sipping hot chocolate at a café, where we considered writing a blog post, but were too tired. 

A two hour train ride, followed by a 6km ride delivered us to Gaija eco-village. 

Read More

The Plan

We leave Toivo farm tomorrow morning, and plan to be in Sandviken, Sweden on the 1st of July for our next Workaway. In the meantime, we plan on visiting an ecovillage north of here, in a town called Ähtäri. From our current location near Heinola, on the bottom right of the map, we will cycle for two days along a large lake - one of the most beautiful parts of the country, according to Jere - then take a train from Jyväskyla to Ähtäri, on the top left of the map. 

After a couple of nights there, we will use some combination of biking, training and ferrying to get to Sandviken, biking as much as possible given our time constraints. 

Read More

Saunas

Saunas (sow-nas) are a big deal here in Finland. Ryan and Heidi's apartment, a small one-bedroom affair, devoted about the same amount of space to the bathroom/sauna as to the kitchen! According to them, most apartments of that size would have a sauna, depending on when they were built.

Here at the farm, saunas occur on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, which is also the only time there is hot water. The hot water and radiator system is wood fired, but can also run on woodchips, which are automatically fed in from a hopper outside. A long screw pulls the chips into the fire. The hopper which is about 3x6x5ft needs to be refilled twice a day in the depths of winter!

The sauna is also wood-fired, with a big stove of the traditional design. Flue gasses are pulled through baffles in the wall of the stove before being released into the chimney, extracting heat very efficiently. A basin on the top of the stove contains stones, preferably smooth ones found underwater.

Though most modern saunas are now electric, everyone here scoffs at such a poor imitiation. Only a true wood-burning stove creates a legitimate sauna for them! Having now tried them both, we can say that the wood fire does make quite a difference - the smoky aroma of the wood and crackling of the fire are integral elements of the experience here.

There are a lot of traditions regarding the sauna. For example, one never swears in the sauna, nor has sex in it. However, saunas were the traditional location for giving birth; warm, easy to clean, and easy to sanitize (just crank the heat up to 100 C!). Opinion is divided on whether you should shower before the sauna or not.

In the sauna is a multi-tiered bench. Only the people sitting on the top level of the bench are allowed to throw water on the rocks over the stove, because they are the ones who feel the full heat.

Water is thrown from the bench using a ladle. Each splash of water is called löyly, pronounced loy-lu. 

Another tradition is the vihta, a leafy whip made from the branches of a particular birch, called raudukoivu (koivu is birch). Here is one that Adie and Jere made. It looks a bit sorry because several people had already whipped themselves with it by the time the photo was taken! Leafy branches are selected, and laid up against each other so that the leaves are uniformly distributed. 

 The vihta is held together by rings woven from twigs of the same birch. Long thin twigs are manipulated (bent, twisted etc) to soften them up. These are called näre, and in the old days, they would braid them to make rope. The rings are made to just the right size before being slid on over the ends of the twigs forming the vihta.

After the sauna gets so hot that your nose starts to run, its time for a break, either sitting outside, swimming in the lake, or rolling in the snow. Then, repeat until satisfied, shower, and drink lots of water!

Read More

A Bit on Toivo and Biodynamic Farming

Toivo, our home for two weeks, is a small biodynamic farm in the lakes district northeast of Helsinki. A biodynamic farm is an organic farm that follows a particular set of principles, established by the scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. These principles center on the idea of connecting more deeply to the elements around us and enriching the soil, our food sources and our bodies both spiritually as well as physically.

One of the major components of this philosophy is the organization of farm activities around particular celestial conditions. For example, the farmers determine good planting times based on the phase of the moon and the particular qualities of earth, air, wind and fire. In fact, there is a yearly booklet for each country where biodynamic farming is practiced with a calendar showing when it is good and bad to plant or harvest certain crops. they are separated into fruits, roots, flowers and leaves. Unfortunately the only two copies of this booklet in the house are in Finnish and French, so we haven't had much luck understanding the details of this system! But the permanent residents here have done their best to explain the basics to us.

 Of course, the prescriptions for the timing of farm activities must be taken with a grain of salt. At Toivo, they try their best to follow the calendar, but sometimes the circumstances at hand make it difficult. For instance, this year the planting was behind schedule and we had to rush to finish before the date by which the EU mandates that all planting must be done. Kaisa, one of the permanent farm members, told us that she is first and foremost concerned with following organic practices and then incorporating biodynamic principles as able. Nonetheless, the farm has been biodynamic for its thirty-some years in existence, and all the permanent members seem to be committed to continuing this. 

A biodynamic ritual that we participated in yesterday was the annual anointment of the fields. In the fall, the farmers fill a cow horn with cow manure and bury it in the field. This is meant to counterbalance the extraction that is taking place at that time, i.e. the harvest. Cows are particularly sacred animals because they consume green matter, absorbing its energy but returning some of that back to the ground as manure. What's more, their horns are always pointed towards the sky, and so absorb a lot of cosmic energy. While the horn is buried over the winter, it continues to absorb cosmic energy, enriching the manure contained inside. In the spring, the farmers remove the horn from the ground, again balancing against the dominant activity of that season, planting. They then mix the manure from the horn into water (for one hour, first creating a vortex in one direction, then a vortex in the opposite, as in the photos below) to be able to spread it over the fields. Here's where we came in. Using small balsam fir (Christmas tree) boughs, we flung the manure water from buckets while wandering over the fields. Toivo was completing this ritual a bit late in the season - generally it is done before any planting - so we just did the fields that did not have crops in them. 

Anna mixing the manure into a barrel of water. 

This ritual is supposed to enrich the soil, making the nutrients more accessible to the plants that will grow there. But, perhaps more importantly, it is about imbuing the soil with one's good intentions, the well wishes for a fruitful season. There was some debate in the car ride home about the validity of this practice, whether the spreading of this special manure makes any physical difference. Anna, a farmer here at Toivo and the resident expert on biodynamics, says a German scientist has been experimenting with different growing practices and has found that the biodynamic activities do result in higher productivity compared to straight organic. Whether this is true or not, Anna and the other farmers certainly believe that we must treat the earth with care and respect and enrich it through our physical practices and with our spiritual energy. Jussi, a longtime volunteer, likes to joke that "these things fall into one of two groups: the mysteries of the universe or the amazing human capacity for self-deception. In this case it is unclear which!"

Read More

There are only nine cold months in Finland...

And the other three are very cold! So says Jere, one of the farm managers here at Toivo, and so we learned this morning! After a stretch of pleasant weather with only a few mildly cold days, we woke up to a temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (less than 40 F)! Not to be deterred, we headed to the field with Jere to finish planting the kale. Toivo has an agreement with a superfood company to grow, dry and pulverize kale for a supplement powder the company will sell. So the kale had to go in the ground! Even with many layers, we quickly realized it would be a very uncomfortable job. Sitting on cold metal seats on the back of a tractor affords little opportunity to keep oneself warm. 

Things deteriorated when all of a sudden the wind picked up to a biting velocity and a mixture of hail and snow began to pelt down on us. The poor baby kale! And our poor fingers and toes! We rushed to plant, doing jumping jacks and running to collect new trays of transplants at the end of each row. Finally, the field was full, and we jumped in the car for the three kilometer drive back to the house for some hot tea! 

This type of cold snap is not uncommon in southern Finland, even at midsummer, as it results from a shift in the weather, bringing cold Arctic winds down from the north. Kaisa likes to joke about all the partiers who get drunk on midsummer night and then freeze when the temperature quickly drops! And even now, only a few hours after the storm, the sun is shining again and we prepare to return to the fields. 

Read More

Weekend Ride

AAfter a long week of work (about 45hrs, including half of Saturday) we decided to have a nice relaxed weekend...not! Mid-afternoon on Saturday, we set off with a day's worth of food (more on that) and camping gear. We had planned out a route mostly on back roads for the afternoon and the following day, and since we didn't have a map, we wrote out a cue sheet with road names, distances etc. We rode about 20km, almost all on dirt roads, to a trailhead called Pirunkirkko, which translates as Devil's Church. Actually, according to one of the guys at the farm, Jussi, Pirun was actually a pre-Christian pagan god, but they all get translated as devil in English. Kirkko, a rare cognate?, means church. We left our bikes locked to a tree in the woods, and immediately the mosquitos attacked. Well, Adie, at least. So, with long layers and bug headnets, we rigged up our panniers as back-and-front-packs and set off. 

 It wasn't as comfortable as we hoped. We followed the trail about a kilometer into the woods before reaching Pirunkirkko itself, a 15m high overhanging rock. Theoretically climbable? Looked a bit wet. 

Unfortunately at this point the camera battery died. We continued up the trail, which climbs to the top of the rock formation. It was quite a magical landscape; ecological succession in action! Bare rock ceding to lichen, moss, blueberry, then in more established spots, shrubs and trees. We decided to camp up there. Finding a flat spot with deep enough soil to put tent stakes in turned out to be a challenge! We cooked dinner, pasta with tomato sauce...enough to pretty much fill our 1.5 liter cooking pot. Well, we could eat the leftovers for breakfast, we thought. Jetboil, the stove company (incidentally, founded in Hanover, NH), calls this their "group cooking system" but clearly they haven't spent enough time with touring cyclists (or farm workers), because we surprised ourselves and ate all of it! We got in bed around 8pm to read and sleep, but it felt like morning as the sun had just come out from behind the clouds. In the summer here, the only time it's dark is when it's cloudy. We slept well on our 6" thick bed of moss, which was especially convenient because Adie's sleeping pad had a slow leak and was entirely flat by midnight. 

The next morning we packed up and decided to try the camera again. We tried the trick of rubbing the camera battery vigorously, which won us an extra couple of shots before the camera really died. This captures a bit of the variety of mosses around. 

After hiking out, we returned to our bikes to complete the route we had planned. Unfortunately the back roads we had purposely selected turned out to be a bit too "back" for our tastes, or at least for Lucy's tire size! So we backtracked and took a gamble on some roads half-remembered from google maps the day before. Thankfully it worked out, and after 10km or so we found ourselves back on route. The day was spent riding mostly on dirt roads that exist almost exclusively to serve Finland's many lakeside summer cottages. Most Finnish families have a cottage where they spend several weeks in the summer, and we are in one of the regions most popular for these cabins. 

We also discovered that, for a flat country, Finland really isn't flat. Like, not at all. Adie's theory: in most parts of the world, the topography is mainly dictated by uplifted mountains and eroding stream beds. Roads, by and large, follow these stream beds as a path of least resistance, with the occasional pass to hop from one valley to the next. Not so in Finland. There isn't much more than 150 feet between the lowest and highest parts of the land here, partly because the land is still rebounding from the weight of the Laurentian ice sheet. So the road builders just go wherever, which means a lot of up and down. Small hills, but constant hills. Lucy adds: the roads we were on mostly serve summer cottages on the lakesides. There were a lot of lakes, on both sides of the road, so the road would wend from one lake to the next, crossing over the ridge of higher land separating the lakes each time. 

The second half of the day was a bit of a struggle (at least for Adie!). To eat, we had a couple of apples, leftover bell peppers and carrots, a jar of jam, some crackers, crunchy muesli (aka granola) and mixed nuts. Breakfast, lunch and all the snacks in between were composed of various combinations of these ingredients. After about 100km, the bulk of it on dirt, we finally made it back to Rihuntie, the road where the farm is, but we had neglected to note how far we had to go on that road. Turns out it was 10km. Adie spent the entire time drafting behind Lucy. Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the week working in the fields. 

And this was supposed to be our rest day...

Read More

Our First Workaway: Toivo ("toy-voh")

On Monday morning, after a quick stop to buy stove fuel and playing cards (shops had been closed on Sunday because it was a holiday), we caught a bus from Helsinki's central bus station, Kaampi. This took us 2hrs north of the city, to Heinola. From there we rode 30km east (a significant portion of it on bike paths, even though it was literally in the middle of nowhere!) to our first Workaway, Toivo, a biodynamic (read: physically and spiritually organic!) farm. 

After feeding us, they asked if we were tired, and we said not too much. So at around 3:00 we all trooped off to the fields where we spent the next 5 hours planting cabbage, celery, corn, beans and swedes. Then we certainly were tired! The crazy thing was, there were at least three more hours of light, which is the one actual limitation to how long you can work!

In general, Finns eat breakfast three times a day, and dinner once. First there is breakfast (which is often sandwiches with cheese and the traditional black bread), then around 11:00, the main meal of the day, a cooked lunch. Then after work, at around 5:00, is a small dinner. Then just before bed they eat another small meal of the same sorts of things as breakfast. Here at the farm, its a bit different. Breakfast is porridge, yoghurt, bread, butter, jam etc at 7:00. Then we work from 8:00 to 12:00ish, before a big cooked lunch and a long lunch break. Work resumes from 2:00-6:00 ish. Dinner is another big cooked meal. We eat a lot.

Planting parsley...

...for hours!

Read More

From New Hampshire to Helsinki

Preparing to depart...for our test ride, that is. 

Last minute haircut...

Icelandair has a sense of humor!

From the plane window as we descend into Reykjavik...

Arrived in Helsinki, early afternoon.

After receiving printed directions to Helsinki center from the airport info desk, we reassembled our bikes just outside the main entrance of the airport.

We then proceeded to get thoroughly lost, taking almost an hour to do the first 5km! The trouble is, there are a LOT of bike paths in Finland! Coming from the US, where if there is a bike path, there is certainly only one, we found it hard to navigate. Also, for the first time in a long time, we are in a country where none of the signs are in English and the native language is completely incomprehensible. We can't tell a no parking sign from a road name sign! Eventually, after getting directions from a number of people, we got on the right track. With some lucky guesswork we made it past downtown Helsinki, to the island of Lauttasaari, where we were staying. 

Lucy and Ryan Livingston, a family friend who we stayed with in Helsinki.

Ryan did his masters at Aalto University, formerly the Utaniemi Technical School. The original campus buildings were all by Aalto, and include the auditorium below.

The building is interesting in two ways. First, the exterior reflects the interior in the sense that there is an auditorium inside, and the outside itself also forms one (or at least an amphitheater). This was a theme in Aalto's work. Another important theme is light. Those rows of windows don't directly light the interior. Instead the light is diffused and reflected through channels so that the interior does not receive direct light but the whole room is evenly lit. Curtains can cut out the light, and electric lights in the channels can be turned on giving the same diffuse light pattern. 

Speaking of light...we haven't even seen the dark yet! It is dark, or at least dusky for a couple of hours a night, but we haven't been up to see it!

We spent two nights in Helsinki. Ryan and his partner Heidi were excellent tour guides. Helsinki in summer is an amazing city, with miles and miles of beautiful bike trails next to the ocean. Obviously its a whole new animal in winter, but being able to ice skate straight out onto the sea ice sounds fun!

Read More

We're off!

Read More