indyfabz

Funny. I was thinking about that the other day. When referring to the original group that was dubbed the Luddites, yes. However, when it's used generically to refer to someone who opposes change, I would think not.

shelbyfv

What I was getting at, would those wheels be OK for your Baltic trip? Don't know how Great Divide is involved.

Squeezebox

Some research about road conditions is necessary. But for basic gravel roads with some chuck holes. Yes.
For bouncing off of fist size rocks on a fast steep downhill? Maybe not. It came with 2 inch tires, I'm not sure how much wider would fit. Or the effect of tires any wider.

shelbyfv

Probably I wouldn't worry about it. Best to concentrate on getting your passport, visas, logistics in order. Summer is fast approaching and does not last long at those latitudes. Lots of pics, please!

skookum

Are you planning an off pavement route? In general Scandinavian roads are pretty good, you shouldn't need anything special for tires.

According to the review at bikepacker.com

That set up should be good for anything you are likely to encounter. It looks like that bike would be a fine choice for the trip. Make sure that you have a good tent, lots of mosquito repellent and lots of money as the beer is expensive.

BigAura

@Squeezebox It sounds like you & your bike have been cleared for takeoff. Keep us posted on how your trip plans progress.

Timequake

What happened? One of the WarmShowers hosts he ripped off finally track him down? He get sued for plagiarism?

indyfabz

He got hit by a car in CA.

shelbyfv

yeah, apparently it was unrelated to past transgressions.

jefnvk

How you handling the Russian bits? Going to tackle getting a visa and dealing with entry/exit, or are you going to stick to the Schengen states?

Timequake

If he did actually get hit by a car, that sucks and I wish him a speedy recovery. However, it wouldn't surprise me if he conveniently set up a Go-Fund-Me page and is just sitting at home watching the donations roll in.

skookum

If it was me, I'd just take the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, and forget about the Russian part. Although St. Petersburg is pretty cool and worth visiting, Russian visas are expensive and require jumping through many hoops, at least for Canadians. Maybe its easier for Americans.

I think EU nationals can easily get visas for Kaliningrad, more difficult for others, but again its easy to avoid.

indyfabz

Tough crowd.

Squeezebox

Thanks for the questions and comments. Certainly must be decided about. My guess would be that visas would be the same for Americans. I need to find out more about road conditions, and food availability in the more remote areas.
I'll check with the tourist dept for each country.
Thanks!

You might like Ty's style but this is not the place for insults.

gemini

Replying late to this, but for the record...

The coast is populated. If you ride around the Gulf of Finland, Haparanda-Kemi-Oulu-Raahe-Kokkola-Vaasa or so, you're never going to be very far from a grocery store or gas station. The area around Oulu (the major city of the region) is very flat and a somewhat famously boring ride for that reason. Oulu is known for urban cycling partly because of the flatness. They have an extensive network of bike lanes and possibly the highest bicycle mode share in Finland, despite the location at 65 degrees northern latitude.

Lapland north of Oulu is much more sparsely populated and there you have some long distances between grocery shops, but even there, it's not much of a difficulty on the main routes.

If you're going to ride from Oulu to Helsinki, I guess the lake district of central Finland might have more interesting scenery than the coast. It's a lot more hilly than the coastal areas.

If you do follow the coast, there's the Turku archipelago and Åland islands in the southwest. These are likely the best-known bicycle tourism destinations in Finland. The scenery is beautiful, but doing a loop around the islands (involves a number of ferries) is probably going to add at least two days or more to the trip.

FOR THE RECORD, THE NATIONAL BIRD IS THE SWAN! But yes, off the record, the mosquito. Sometimes I read/see video of foreign bicycle tourists and others getting eaten alive and they don't seem to mention repellents. I don't know if they simply didn't mention them or actually didn't have any, but, for the record, you should use a repellent. They're not perfect, but they definitely help.

Incidentally, attracting mosquitoes depends somewhat on your personal scent, too. I happen to be a mosquito magnet by nature, but I know some fellow Finns who seem to repel them naturally. I once went jogging by the waterfront in Oulu in early July without repellent (not recommended) with a colleague of mine, and if I stopped for a second, there'd be a could of mosquitoes around me and none around him. Which was deeply unfair.

bikemig 

I find that lemon eucalyptus works well as mosquito repellant. I had no idea that the swan was Finland's national bird; you learn something new every day,

gemini

Apropos food and national birds, locally produced food is often labelled with a swan logo. It's likely to be more expensive than imported food, but supposedly more clean and local and suchlike. There's been some shenanigans around the requirements for the use of that logo, e.g. imported chicken strips that were packaged with a marinade in Finland and therefore considered Finnish enough to get the logo. I believe they've since gotten stricter about it such that these days the labelled food ought to actually be from Finland.

There used to be swans on Finnish bank notes before the euro. I'm not sure about the regular euro notes and coins, but apparently the Bank of Finland made a special 2 euro coin with a swan for their 200-year celebration in 2011. The roughly equivalent 10-mark coin from 1995.

And here's the only nice noise made by swans, from Sibelius's 5th. I have no idea why it's called the swan call motif, the birds sound nasty in reality.

jaacco

Saying this as a Finn and a cyclist who has also lived in St. Petersburg: Skip Russia and SPB unless you're out to prove something. The road conditions are really bad and yes it's really dangerous and stressful to cycle in Russian traffic. If you want to do a quick visit to Russia while in Finland I recommend taking the Allegro train to SPB which is cheap (~60€ round trip) and fast (2-3½h depending on where you hop in).

Also, geminis recommendation about cycling in Turku archipelago via island hopping is spot on - it is really nice and unique experience!