Welcome to Finland!

Well, it took me a while to get here. I've not posted for several days because my only internet access was at the pizza place around the corner from my apartment. Nice folks, but there is only so much hacking you feel like doing while sitting at a table with a pizza in front of you.

But now we are turned on at the apartment! I've been touring around Helsinki quite a bit this past week. It is a very nice city. I've got the Bike Friday rolling nicely and have been in to the heart of the city three times now already. Some areas are busy... but there are bike paths most everywhere. Some in parks, some at the edge of the sidewalk. You almost never have to ride on the street pavement... which is just as well because the cars don't like you much there either. From my apartment I can follow bike paths along the railroad into downtown or down the nearby ring road to the university campus. Downtown is about 45 minutes. The campus is about 20.

I've also taken a good number of photos. Here is the current web album for your viewing! These are mostly architectural images... but then that is what I am here for isn't it?

- B -

At the Holiday Inn Select!

Okay, I've now made it to Minneapolis. Snagged a standby flight out of Las Vegas, which is a good thing as it gives me plenty of time to make the Iceland Air connection tomorrow. Amazingly, my bags are here too!

I must say, even though USAir had flights going bad everywhere today, the employees were uniformly courteous and helpful. All but one that is. Maybe they are just used to it. They don't seem to have a very good reputation for being on time.

My level of boredom can be judged by the fact that the in flight movie was "Bridge to Terabithia"... and I thought it was pretty good! I was also trying to do some Java programming work on the flight but my Java installation seems to have gone south. I tried reinstalling it but that didn't seem to help. So I may not be able to do anything about that until I return.

I did come up with some good travel reading for this trip... some old detective noir pulp fiction. I already sucked one down. I am thinking I should start a book list to the side here...

Viva Las Vegas!

I've started marking my current world location on the google map at "A Brian's Eye View of Finland" You can find the link on the Right hand side of the blog. Over there ---->

Problem is, my current location is the Las Vegas airport. Engine trouble out of Portland made me miss the connection here, which means that I also miss the next connection in Minneapolis. I'm rebooked on IclandAir for tomorrow afternoon and hoping that I can get to Minneapolis tonight to make that connection easy.

TTFN!

Before You Leave Home: Bike Route Planning...

Helsinki has a pretty nice web site for planning bus and subway travel... turns out that it has a link for bike route planning too! Amazingly good! I plotted a route from the airport to my student housing... I'm planning to take the Bike Friday and have always loved the idea of arriving in an airport, unpacking the bike, and riding off to wherever I wanted to go. Do I dare do this? It is only 17 km. The satellite version of the map looks really good; you can see the bike path down there...
but it will require some very careful packing to make sure I can get everything I take into the trailer.

My house on Thurman St during the snowstorm last week. It wasn't much snow... about three inches. But it was very dense and slippery. I throughly enjoyed staying home safe and warm for the day.