Henri Bergius - Motorcycles

First year of Qaiku, and a travel writing challenge

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Qaiku, the conversational microblogging service that launched a year ago had a refresh that launched today. While it hasn't yet convinced the twittering masses, it has already proven itself as a lot more thoughtful platform for the Finnish online community, and as a valuable workstreaming tool.

The new version looks quite nice and fresh. Notice the privacy information on the right-hand side, which is relevant as Qaiku allows channels and profiles that are private or invitation-only:

Technically the new version is also remarkable as it is the first major website to run fully on top of the legacy-free Midgard2 platform. So yes, every entry you see there is a GObject. And D-Bus signals fly when you post.

On to the challenge, then

To highlight Qaiku's threading, conversational nature I started a new "On my travels, I have" thread for sharing your most extraordinary travel experiences. This is not on Twitter or Buzz as with Qaiku it is so easy to keep the conversation together and accessible for the future as well.

To contribute, sign up on Qaiku, go to the thread and add your experiences as a comment. If you have a link or picture to include, you can also do so. My first entry was:

seen ice descend from the heavens and provide us with cold beer on a hot day in Lesotho

Will be interesting to see what comes out of this :-)

On to new motorcycle adventures

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Like many years before, it is again time to head out on a motorcycle trip. This time we're traveling together with Suski on my old Triumph Legend, the bike that has taken me around Europe and the Black Sea, and has been out of commission for last three years. But now it runs again.

Tonight we're taking the ferry to Gdynia, and then the idea is to head south through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria towards Asia Minor and the Caucasus. There are no strict plans or schedules, except that we must be back in Finland by the beginning of September.

You can follow our trip on Qaiku (feed) and Flickr. If you are somewhere on that prospective travel route, feel free to send me an SMS and maybe we can have a beer :-)

Technorati Tags: adventure, motorcycle

Personal passions: motorcycle travel

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday in GCDS there was a session about personal passions. First Jono Bacon gave a talk about the Burnout Cycle, and then various community members talked about what they do outside the sphere of hacking: running, cooking, building experimental airplanes and so forth.

I gave a quick talk about adventure motorcycling, speaking about my 2004 trip around the Black Sea, and briefly mentioning the Death Monkey trip on 50cc mopeds from Helsinki to Gibraltar.

You can find pictures from the Caucasus trip on Flickr and my travel log on Routa MC.

Technorati Tags: motorcycle, adventure

When reality meets product concepts

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Yanko Design's You-SB concept:

Jerry's real prosthetic USB finger storage:

The story behind this is that Jerry had a motorcycle accident last May and lost a finger. When the doctor working on the artificial finger heard he is a hacker, the immediate suggestion was to embed a USB "finger drive" to the design. Now he carries a Billix Linux distribution and the Freddy Got Fingered movie as part of his hand.

Yanko Design's concept via Gizmodo.

Technorati Tags: cyborg, usb

Spontaneous adventures: some autumn geohashing

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Geohashing, as introduced by the awesome web comic xkcd, is an spontaneous adventure generator. The geohashing algorithm uses the current date and the day's Dow Jones Industrial Average to generate a new location for each region in the world. Geohashers then use various means to reach that location in search for fun and adventure.

As out there was beautiful autumn weather, and I needed to go somewhere to air my thoughts, I decided to hunt down today's geohash of the Helsinki region. To do so, I fired up the Geohashing iPhone application, and let it count me the coordinates. As it happens, the spot was in the end of a gravel forest road between Renko and Hämeenlinna.

Calculating the route with iPhone's map software to be 108km, I put on some warmer clothes and jumped on my bike, heading leisurely north on smaller side roads. I had a lunch stop at Roosa, and then made my way to the destination.

The moose hunting season has just started and some gunshots could be heard in the woods. This worried me a bit, especially as the road's sign had some bullet holes, but the locals I passed on the gravel roads seemed friendly enough.

While Google Maps didn't show it, the spot was actually easier to reach, as it was just some ten meters from a small gravel road. I took the necessary picture proof, had a chocolate bar, and then headed back.

This was my first geohash. Definitely a fun way to experience your surroundings spiced up with some randomness!

Volkswagen's 1 liter car looks promising

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Volkswagen has released some information about their 1 liter per 100km car that will supposedly debut in 2010, and I have to say it looks cool:

It provides the combination of compactness and fuel economy that usually only motorcycles reach, and at the same time protects from the elements. As I've always loved the old Messerschmitt mini-cars it resembles I may be strongly tempted when it comes out.

At one liter, the mileage is even better than with my current extremely economical Royal Enfield...

On motorcycling

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My good friend Skoll recently wrote of the motorcycling life:

One of me favourite bands Manowar one sang "Riding horses made of steel". What kind of mental image does that provoke? Riding a Harley Davidson to sunset on an empty hightway, a beautiful young girl on your back seat? What a load of bullcrap! Motorcycling is about rain, it's about being soaking wet and freezing your ass off. It's about losing your friends in the traffic because you can see shit in the rain. It's about jams, about highways full of trucks and mobile homes and passing them being scared your ass off because there's no traction. It's about acheing shoulders, acheing back and numb ass. It's about water finally reaching your balls through your so called waterproof gear (yeah, I know, my pants are only water resistant). It's about waking at 6:30 am and driving 800 km.

Now, there have been times when the things above have been very true. But there have also been times when the biker’s life has been closer to the initial mental image, including the nice ride to Porvoo yesterday.

Everybody is invited to make their own decisions on which view is more correct…

FTW!

Technorati Tags: motorcycle, travel

When a holiday gets "interesting"

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My holiday motorcycle trip of this summer was an interesting one, in the Chinese sense. The plan was to first ride to Switzerland to attend the first Haidong Gumdo European Championships, and then continue from there together with Juha to Montenegro. As it happens, Juha never got his motorcycle working, and my trip was filled with various adventures and misfortune, but also with friendly people and beautiful scenery.

I left Helsinki on June 9th, heading south following the Via Baltica. My first stop was to Lodz to meet Piotras, the Midgard core guy. From there I followed the nice, curvy country roads of Poland to see Natka and her new country-house near Jelenia Gora.

Unfortunately I lost the sense of what bike I was riding, resulting to a tumble in a dark, tight corner. So, the next day was spent repairing the bike and getting my arm x-rayed.

From Silesia my trip took me to Czech Republic, and I stopped for the night in the city of Karlovy Vary, destined to be the site of the worst adventure of the trip. I went out for dinner, after which I ran into a local girl who invited me to join her for a drink. Soon we were joined by another local woman. After some chat with them, and a couple of drinks, I suddenly lost consciousness.

The next thing I realized was that I woke up in hospital, filled with plugs and pipes, cell phone and Nokia 770 stolen and with no idea of what had happened. Apparently my drink had been spiked. I was struck with paranoia and just wanted out and away. The staff didn’t speak English, but after some attempts I was able to convince them in a combination of German and Russian to let me leave. Once out, I took off towards the border as quickly as I could.

In Switzerland I was able to get a new cell phone, and got a rather unpleasant call from my credit card company: the thieves had withdrawn 9,900 EUR (about 13,500 USD) from my card, and the company wanted the money back. I’m still wondering what to do about this, as insurance doesn’t protect from it.

The Haidong Gumdo championships themselves were a well organized and nice event. While my personal performance was hindered by the aftereffects of the drugging and lack of practice on the trip, Team Finland brought home two medals and we had a lot of good time meeting Haidong Gumdo practitioners from other countries. The Night of the Sword gala contained some of the most amazing swordsmanship I’ve ever seen, although the video doesn’t do it full justice.

After the competition I stayed at Michi’s place, chatting about various things and getting some encouragement to continue the trip despite the catastrophic drink-spiking incident that had left me without credit cards and feeling physically very weak. At this point it became apparent Juha wouldn’t be able to join me, so I switched Montenegro for riding back home via Hungary and Romania.

The next two days were pleasant riding in the Alps. Old towns and castles, mountains and curving passes.

But after visiting the Neuschwanstein castle, misfortune again caught up with me, this time in form of an engine failure. A valve seat had became loose, making piston and exhaust valve collide. This obviously required new parts, leaving me looking for Enfield shops in Bavaria. With the help of my “ground staff”, I got the bike towed to Iwan-Bikes, the Enfield dealer near Munich. They had the parts needed, but not the time so we made the deal that I would disassemble the cylinder head, and they would change the parts and put the bike back together. Two days after the engine failure I was back on the road, riding in Austria.

After rainy and a bit cold Austria, entering sunny Hungary was a pleasure. I stayed with Ferenc’s family at the lake Balaton, enjoying swimming, local cuisine and home-grown wine.

Romania showed itself to be quite a contrast to the Hungarian plain. Coming from a hot, flat land, I was suddenly again riding in mountains. A fascinating country where almost half of the traffic consisted of horse carriages. In the border town of Suceava I felt a bit torn: whether to head home, or make a detour through Moldova and Transnistria to Odessa. Following the old guideline of ”A pig who doesn’t fly is just an ordinary pig”, the decision was easy. But again fate took part in the game.

I was riding in the borderlands between Romania and Moldova when the engine decided to stop again. Luckily a border patrol was close and helped me to get the bike towed to nearest city, which in this case happened to be Iasi. After a night in one-star hotel I limped the bike to nearest car repair shop. They didn’t understand much about bikes there, but the shop’s owner was very friendly and helpful. Some phone calls were made, and soon I was in a motorcycle repair shop explaining the problem.

The guys started working on the bike immediately, and after couple hours said I could ride. I thanked them, packed the bike and headed west through the city. But in two kilometers the engine failed again, and I limped back to the garage. A new repair attempt was made, more successfully this time, but as it was already late the guys invited me to stay with them and to go to a gathering of local bikers.

I spent the night drinking and chatting with the group, and in the morning left with the bike towards Ukraine, the rest of the trip going without incident. I visited Lviv, a city I had seen the last time during the Orange Revolution, and then crossed to the Polish side of the border.

Riding in Poland already felt almost like home, and soon I was back on the familiar Via Baltica, taking me through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the port of Tallinn, and on a ferry to home. At this point getting back felt really welcome, as can be imagined.

More photos can be found in my Flickr gallery.

Technorati Tags: dinersclub, hdgd, motorcycle, theft, royalenfield, thieves, travel

Royal Enfield: Built Like a Gun

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

My Triumph Legend TT, which has been a trusty companion on various adventures, had an engine failure last summer. As a result, I’ve been without a working motorcycle for almost a year.

This week finally things changed, and I bought a brand new Indian-built Royal Enfield Bullet. I’ve been drooling after this simple and beautiful bike for years, but have been hesitant. Finally last summer’s Death Monkey rally with the 50cc mopeds convinced me that motorcycle adventures can be enjoyable also on a less powerful bike.

220 kilometers later, I can say I’m already very happy about the purchase. While the Enfield isn’t really a bike for quick dashes through Germany on the Autobahn, it compensates by happily thumping along on an enjoyable pace on the country road. And it is gorgeous too:

The durability of the bike remains to be seen. Based on various trip reports, it seems the bike breaks often but is easy to fix, which should suit my traveling style and locations quite well.

Update: For those wondering about the fate of my trusty Triumph, it is now being fixed and will be ridden by Juha.

Clearing the photo backlog

henri.bergius@iki.fi (Henri Bergius) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve again gotten quite backlogged with publishing photos from various adventures. Today I fortunately had time to push tree sets on Flickr:

Midgard developer meeting in Komorniki, Poland

GUADEC 2006 in Vilanova i Geltru, Catalonia

Death Monkey 2006 rally from Helsinki to Gibraltar

Enjoy!