Winter road in January
Being the first post of this blog, the default head line provided by WordPress feels pretty accurate. Hello world!
When I’m not busy doing other things, I drive my daughter to school in the morning, and pick her up in the afternoon again. 240 km. 60 km one way. This is how the road looks like more or less all the way. Depending on the weather and the time of the day, the scenery change.
When I start in the morning it’s pitch dark, and then the light changes from pale pinks and blues at mid day, to warmer colors at sunset when I drive back home in the afternoon. The darkest time of the year has past long time ago, in the beginning of December, but the sun is still a bit shy. It only shows up between 08:30 - 15:00 here at the arctic circle, and not very high above the southern horizon. In theory we have almost six hours of sunshine, but because of mountains shielding the sun, the actual amount is much less.
Not much trafic on the road. Sometimes a timber truck or two, but specially in the early morning hours there can be plenty of birds on the road. Mostly ptarmigans and black cocks. The ptarmigans are still wearing their white winter garbs and can be quite difficult to distinguish from the snow, and I’ve had some close encounters with them while driving. Sometimes they get caught by the headlights, and if I keep the right speed, the birds can fly in front of the car for some time.
While driving I also need to keep my eyes on the reindeer. They could jump out of the forest anytime. But I think the reindeer herders have moved most of them closer to the coast where there is less snow and easier to find food. An occasional reindeer or two can sometimes be standing on the road, but I haven’t seen larger groups of them for some time now.
If driving on these, sometimes icy roads, one has to learn not to jump on the breaks when something unexpected happen, but instead to shift to a lower gear and use the engine to get the speed down. Using the breaks will more often than not result in just locking the wheels and gliding without any control. Not very good if you suddenly meet a timber truck at a curve coming with high speed.
Tags: January
Wow! Nice to hear from you Petri!
I remember that you told me about your home place, but icoldn’t imagine that is so long way to the town.
And what’s the usuall (medium) speed of the car? If you doing 240 km per day, it must be pretty high, otherwise you’ll spend half a day only for road!
Yes, It is like a part time job when I do it. About four hours a day. And I don’t get anything paid for it, except for the gasoline. It’s a small school with only twelve kids, so I see it as supporting the school economically. To try to help it from getting closed down.
My average speed is not that high, I’m thinking about my daughters safety, but I can see why the Finns have done well in the rally circuit. Dirt roads with close to no traffic could encourage some of us to try our limits.