Hey guys !!!
I'm posting a little message here to let you know how my day went.
Very well actually
I took the train at 5h30, arrived in Tampere at 8h and waited for Arthur (r2ree) to come to pick me with a little breakfast. He arrived at about 9h and we went straight ahead to the location. We had a great talk during the ride, about offroading in Finland, and he's a really nice guy...
Bummer you left so early and I couldn't say you GoodBye...
But thanks a lot Arthur, you've been very nice with me !!!
After the arrival, I met UAZman and his almost-son (I don't remember their names ; sorry, I'm very bad with names
). He gently offered me to ride with him in the Safari 3 group.
I took some pictures of the cars while waiting and finally decided to join someone else in the same group (stock Hilux with 33" tires ; don't remember the name again, I'm sorry) mostly about the added roof, and heater (french guy inside
)...
And we took off ! After a nice ride in the forest (were I admired the driving abilities of my new friend ; you guy can drive
) we arrived at the bottom of a nice snowy climb between the trees. I think we stayed there 2h because of the difficulty of this climb... Almost everyone had to winch
Except a fire-breathing HJ61 that heavy-throttled his way up, props to him !!!
I took some more pictures during the climb (sorry mate, the only ones I have of your Hilux is when you are towed
) :
We headed to camp, for some Finnish soup. It was HOT and really GOOD !!!! And made in an ex-army trailer that I liked a lot.
I started to squeeze around looking for some nice car to picture, and I found the two shinny Yellow prototypes of the Kutunjuusto OffRoad Team.
The owner of Krossi (Ossi) allowed me to ride shotgun for the rest of the afternoon.
That was AMAZING !!!
After some riding around in the snow, we reached a group of two broken cars which needed assistance. Being the nice guy that he is, Ossi offered to tow them, which leaded to one of the most amazing beatdowns I've ever witnessed in person ! Man, that thing has some ponies under the hood !!!! And the driver is not afraid to use them, AT ALL !!
And when the progression stopped, another car came to rescue : double beatdown, HELL YEAH !!!
I also had the pleasure to meet Sirpa who rode on Killy. She was really nice, and allowed me to take some pictures of her and her car :
500hp beast !
After the rescues, we went to the parking lot to put the cars on the trailers, and Ossi was nice enough to bring me back to the camp, many thanks to him for that and the ride !
I even managed to take some pictures of him !
Be sure to check and like their Facebook page :
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Offro...772?ref=stream
That's the list I can do for them.
I finally met Fintroll, who talks french (wooooha
) and we ended the day talking about offroading in Finland, around a fire and some sausages.
I took a few more pictures of the cars here, while Fintroll reinflated his tires, and we left after saying goodbye to UAZman.
Fintroll brought me back to Tampere, where I took the train back to Kokkola...
That's how my day went.
I want to thank personally all the wonderful people that made this possible, the organization persons, r2ree, UAZman, his almost-son, my morning driver (Hilux), the Kutunjuusto OffRoad Team, Fintroll, the couple in the grey chevy pick-up and all the nice people I met during the day. You were great !!
If you ever happen to visit France, be sure to register on :
www.pirate4x4.fr and send me a PM.
My username is the same as here : Bebop.
I'll do my best to show you what we do in my country. And if you come in summer, we do our annual meeting near Lyon the first week-end of July. It's an amazing week-end !
Here is the picasa gallery with all the pictures and videos I made :
https://picasaweb.google.com/Bebop00...CI-78teB-rC5cw
I hope you enjoyed my company,
Enzo