Hey, I finally did it. We got our daughter to short bicycle trip. We spent two days in Finland, riding our bikes. The route was not so long. We wanted just to check our equipment to use for all of us and check is it possible for us to ride with child.

The bicycle children seat that we used allowed changing the angle of the back from 0 to 20 degree. This is minimal requirement that should be fit for long distance trip. In other case child’s head hangs out when she sleep. I selected the model that attaching to the saddle tube. That allowed me to use my bicycle bag which is mounted on the rear rack. I use 28” wheels so the space between the rack and the child seat was not so big to fully use all the bag space.  Theoretically the 26” wheel provides more space between rack and seat, but I can’t prove this. All the child stuff we placed to the Tanya’s front pannier and all our stuff except the sleeping system were placed to this bag. To use the bike with extra load I pumped my rear tube to 5 bar. And my bike has the 36 spokes wheels, so it was prepared to run with two riders on the back.

We started after noon. So it was not so much time to ride. It was a little rainy so we used the cape form our baby carriage. It suits perfectly to the bicycle seat and cower the child with her hands and foots.  It is pretty waterproof and lightweight.

On the next day we started at 11. We planned to check how long distance we could ride with child. The plan was to ride around Imatra and get back to our car. Each 40-60 minutes of riding daughter wanted to stop and to walk a bit by foot, or to eat or to do something else. So we had stops each hour.  Ride faster than 20 km/h with child was not so comfortable so, as expected the day distance was about 30 km. This is not so much, but good enough for small girl.

The results that I got from this trip:

It is still hard to say is the helmet necessary for child. Usually daughter takes it off and do not carry on hand for unknown reason. So probably better do not take it at all because it is not possible to control it usage permanently.

Child in bike seat has to be dressed much warmer than usually.  Even on small speed wind blows and cools child. At the end of the trip I wrap daughter with my windblock jacket to add one more insulation layer.

Bike seat without possibility to change back angle is useless. This feature must be implemented if you want to ride on long distance.

It is good to expect ride approximately 40 kilometers per day. In that case it is possible to stop each time it is necessary (usually each hour).

And of course it is really pleasant to ride bicycle with my daughter.

Thanks to Woodtrekker for the link to the video about how Finns have utilized axes in old days. For me it was interesting how Finns have made dugout. The approach and constuction is absolutly the same as what I have seen in willages around the Vologda - in the middle of the Russian west. At least something should be changed, but not. The only difference is that the Finn's boat is more accurate and so the thickness of the boards is smaller than in Russian one. So the boat overall is lighter and one man able to carry it.

Just found the very nice resource - Zen Backpacking Stoves a lot of stoves examples, howtos and other usefull stuff. If you wish to make the stove by yourself the site will be usefull as well. For example for the beginers it is possible to make zombie apocalypsis stove:

For beer fans could be useful this ultra light stuff:

and so on. Unfortuantely I didn't find this site before I've made my woodstove.

Usually mangroves could be found in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, and of course it is not possible to find it in the Russia. However each year I go to Novgorod for canoepolo competition, and In the first day's evening  I spend a half of hour to go to the shrubs and trees which grows in the river not far from the Novgorod's kremlin.

This is very nice and silent place in the downtown. After 5 minutes of rowing you are comming to the completly different world. There is no sounds from the outside and only bird songs and rustle of leaves.

This year I get the camcoder with myself to capture the view of this place, but unfortunately the water level was extreemly low and I was not able to go by kayak through all the forest on the water. But I still have the picture of some places of the Novgorod's "mangroves"

After I saw a lot of videos regarding wood gas stove I was impressed by this stuff. Looks that woodstove has no drawback - you do not need to take gas with yourself, it is easy to find wood for it even in wet weather, there is no issuses with the getting it on flight. 

To check that this stove really usefull I've tried to made the woodstove by myself. It is pretty easy - I need two cans one bigger than another and then make a lot of holes. It is only necessary to have space between this two cans for gas. After half an hour I've got the following  

looks nice, but how it will behave? On that step I understood that the size of the cat's food can is too small for the woodstove :) I looked in the google and found that the size of inner can should be at least one litre, but I have only 1/3 volume of it.  So my stove works only a couple of minutes. During this time it eats all the firewood I put inside. And of course it is not enough to boil water or prepare somethig. The result could be seen on the video below. What is nice for me is that all wood is burned to ashes and so the wood stove is more efficient than just burning the wood on the open space. I just need to rebuild the stove with the bigger cans to continue my tries with replacement of my current  stove.

As I wrote earlier, I’m using the very useful service to get condition of the roads around the Saint-Petersburg. The site has English version and pretty easy to use, but some of my friends still have trouble using it, so I prepared the short manual on that site.

So going to the link we see the main page that displays initial info and region of links to the roads around the St.Pete.

To go to detailed view we need to select the road we want by clicking on the blue link. For example if we need to have a look on the road between Moscow and St.Petersburg we have to click on the M10Rossia link. Then we go to the page with the scheme of the road

Here we can see differently colored circles which are represent towns along the road. The agenda of the colors is placed below the map. So if you click on one of such circles you go to the detailed info page. For example by clicking on the 09 Luban circle we go to the following page

Here you can see the image from web camera (if it is installed in that town) The detailed description of road condition and the map with the other circles that helps to navigate to another towns. I don’t know why, but the map on this page is more detailed than map on the start page.

So you are welcome to use this service if you are traveling by car around Saint-Petersburg.