RR3 2010 completed, not not all skiing

Again the Rajalta Rajalle was a humbling experience in 2010 and 2011 will see me back again to try and ski the entire distance which an injury stopped me from doing. As always, it was the people attending and running the event that make this one of the most enjoyable events of the year.

If you participated, I’ve completed a photo album with my pictures and you will already have the link.  I’m amazed at how the hard cover photo album from ifolor turned out. It used photos from my Flickr collection.

With this post, Summer in Finland is about to start so now bicycling and kayaking take my attention.

 

2010 Rajalta Rajalle (Sking across Finland)

The registrations are open for the 2010 skiing event across Finland. Called the Rajalta Rajalle, it is an organised ski trip, not a race, from Finland’s Russian border in the east near Kuusamo, to the Finnish border with Sweden in the west at Tornio.
- The official web site has more.

My skiing friend from last year’s event contacted me and yes, I’m going to go on RR2.

This time, I’ll be a bit better prepared. You can surmise as to what happened on the last trip:

• Hot juice carrier (Can’t have enough of the hot berry juice to keep you going)
• No backpack (You have to take off your ski poles each time to access it)
• Quick release ski poles (To get to the food, drink and camera faster)
• Better fitness
• Charger for GPS tracking button
• Mobile internet

 

Organising photos on disk by directory name

Guide and tips for fast and efficient metadata tagging of your photos.

This give you an idea of the workflows I use store, index and tag and geotag my photo collection.

Quick guide by priority:

1. Directory naming: Group photos into directories named by date and grouping keywords.
2. File naming: Extend the photo filename with keywords. For special photos.
3. IPTC keywords: Add the keywords from the name and additional
4. Geotagging: Use a tool to geotag the photographs.

DIRECTORY NAMING

Principle: organise by date and grouping keywords.

This is simple enough to do when you first get your photos off the camera or memory stick.

Put your photos into different directories organised at least by date and grouping keywords.

eg (date) (grouping keywords)

where
date = yyyymmdd
grouping keywords. These are:
- short
- are used by indexing programs to find groups of photographs (eg Picasa)
- identify an event not a specific photograph
eg “fromBruce”, not “from Bruce” (otherwise a search for Bruce will be too wide)
eg “birthday party ofBruce, not “Bruces birthday”
- use leading zeros in sequences
eg day001 or day01, not day 1 or day1 (otherwise a search for Day1 will be too wide), as searchign day1 matches day1, day10, day11, day 110 etc

Here are some good examples

20090101 nyd atBobs house
20090101 nyd atSurnames house
20090102 surprise party forBill atJerry Helsinki
20090103 skitrip day02 Helsinki withBruce

This way, a search for photos of Bob or Jerry will be not confused with photos at events at or with them.

That’s enough for now, when you have time, continue with file renaming.
TIP: If you have photos from many dates, put them into directory with the oldest name. Then, as you separate them later, creating directories for each subsequent date, they will be in chronological order.

 

Photos to Flickr

I’ve posted some photos to Flickr, but not all. Only those that are the best and which do not have recognisable people. I may rethink this policy later. The link for the full set of photos have been sent to participants.

 

Finished!

Thank you to all the people both taking part and helping with the Rajalta Rajalle Hiito skiing trip across Finland. In fact, if it were not for the guide, I would not be have completed the trip at all! It was one of the best experiences I’ve had: Well organised; great people assisting the skiers at the services places with food and drink; perfect weather all the way through; a group of people who were international, fascinating, humorous, interesting with wide and deep experiences in many fields; and of course the challenge of skiing so much each day.

No internet access was available during most of the trip and even when there was or if I’d used mobile access, I was so exhausted it would not have been possible to update the blog. The only focus was on the trip itself, skiing, taking care of the equipment, eating and talking with the others. A great holiday.

Now I will focus on a short report of the trip and selecting tbe best of 718 photos for uploading to flickr…..  or put the horse to the stable and have a beer.

 

Day 3 – skiing Taivalkoski to Syötekeskus

Brilliant and beautiful!

 

Day 2 from Kuusamo to Taivalkoski

This was fantastic. Skipping Kuusamo itself, we started on an abandoned railway line. This gave some very good skiing with up and downhills galore at good levels. After one or two km of icy track beside a road, we arrived at the Taivalkoski kota and had hot warm fish and potato soup (kalasoppa) beside a warm fire.

The track was easy from the kota with a few amazing downhills.

 

About the first day from the Russian border

We drove from Oivanki to the Finnish border control station. This day I learnt a lot about skiing and especially skiing long distances. Expecting the service stations to be easily manageable, I didn’t have a water/juice drinking system with me (duh). Tommi, the guide, saved me with berry juice and rye bread (ruisleipa). Berry juice, salted cucumber (kurkku) has never tasted so good.

There were some killer downhills and uphills and on the first downhill, I slid down the hill rather well – with my face planted in the snow. No injuries so it was just exhilarating. Tommi figured I had 15 more falls before the end of the day – well there were just 8 remaining. Most were on turns where the tracks disappeared, causing me to overshoot the corner into the snow. At one of the bus stops, the tracks ended in ice, I couldn’t turn fast enough or stop and so the people waiting for us were greeted by me face planting once more into the snow beside the road.

My skiing partner, Reijo and I skiied until the last bus stop at 5:45pm, had a hot juice in the kindergarten near the igloo and arrived very tired at the Troppiki spa (kypyla) in Kuusamo.

 

Day 1 and Day 2 of skiing from the Russian border

Oooof! Day 1 54km. Day 2 59. And I am just keeping up with the others =). Now wondering how I will do the next day.

Thanks to a poor choice of clothing, I am now walking like John Wayne. Photos to Flickr.

 

Starting day 1 – apprehensive!!

Apprehensive but slept well and breakfast was the typical Finnish food of porridge, kiiseli and so on.

All are looking forward to the first day of skiing.

I’m using the old skis today. The new ones will be prepared with parrafin the first time tonight.

So…. here we go =)