Goodbye!

This was probably the last time I rode on ice this spring. So today I took the plunge and swapped out the studded tyre. Now I'm riding a lot more quietly. :)

The ice fishers have been fighting a losing battle for a long time. Last week they still had some ice. The ice field was away from rapid currents of the hydro plant so it was slow to melt.

Here they only have a tiny bit left before they are beached. Or forced into boats.

Ice fishing report

It's flood season right now. Snow is melting, the ice is floating downriver... I guess ice fishing season is mostly over. Although I saw someone on the ice yesterday just a few meters off the free flowing river. He was nuts, I say.

The police reports about 200 bicycles has been stolen during January, February and the first two weeks of March. That's a lot, during the coldest months of the year. On the other hand, it shows a lot of people were riding their bikes, otherwise the thieves wouldn't have gotten them!

Which reminds me, go see the lost and found- maybe they've found my bike now that the snow has melted...

A few days ago on "King Consumer" (a tv program giving advice to consumers and testing things etc) one of the topics was convenience stores. The big malls and hypermarkets have taken a huge share of the market, but the small shops are still alive. The hypermarkets have the benefits of economies of scale: buying gazillion packets of toothpicks is cheaper per item than buying two packets. The hypermarkets have increased their share from 50% to 60% during the last ten years. Mid-sized shops lost, while the small shops have maintained the share. (Small shop in this case has less than 400m2 and they have a bit different regulations about opening hours than bigger shops).

The tv-show interviewed some big wig expert, who pointed out that the big shops have also outsourced the 'last-mile delivery'. Instead of having to transport half a dozen packs of toothpicks to dozens of small shops, the big shops get one big delivery. If the customer has to drive 10km for the toothpicks, instead of 2km, that's their problem.

The expert said the costs of shopping trips for an average Finnish family would be about 5000€. That's quite a lot of toothpicks!

Spring 2013 Collection pt 2

April 13th:

Add a few days of above freezing temperatures (even during the night!) and drizzling rain and the snow and ice vanishes in front of your eyes.

April 16th:

The sun has not been shining these last few days, but it has been warm and the rain gets through the trees, too. April 13th the bikeway had ice everywhere...

And on April 17th there was just a few tiny patches left. Nice fog between the trees, by the way. Very photogenic.

Spring 2013 Collection

Most of the bikeways are clear: if the sun gets through the ice is gone.

If there's trees blocking the sun, it will take a while. There was some water on the ice, because it hadn't been below freezing during the night!

And here's a collection of clips I've posted on youtube lately. "A trip to the beach", "Big Machines destroyed the castle" and "A Little bit of ice".

Some crunchy videos

Here's some clips showing "State of the Bikeways". Some asphalt visible, puddles, slosh, frozen ruts and solid, smooth ice. 

April 3rd:

April 5th:

200th Post: Waiting For Spring

Weather stats from the nearby station for the last 2 days. Pretty temperature curves, with the highs just above zero degrees celsius and the lows below -10°C. The daily averages would be below -5°C. Amazingly, it should be too cold for the ice to melt (or rather the puddles should freeze again) but still there is less ice on the bikeways than two weeks ago. Where does all the melt water go? It evaporates.

Weather stats from http://ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/saa/oulu

I've been taking photos of the same location for a while. The scrapes you'll se in the grass are made by the snow plows. The first photo is from 24th March:

25th March: it has snowed a little since the last photo

maybe 26th of March:

late March:

even later March:

March 30th : slosh and ruts, lovely!

April 3rd:the downhill is clear, except a little bit of 2 inch thick ice up there and lots of slosh and ruts and smooth ice to the left.