Friday, February 22, 2013

Winter and fat biking in Finland

Cycling in Finland is very popular. People of all ages ride bicycles regardless of the weather conditions. Many people bike everyday to work, school, shops, for sport or recreation.
You can see the bike racks in front of the shops, offices, schools, in yards etc. There are numerous cycle paths in most of the cities and villages. For the bicycle tourists Finland offers beautiful cycle routes for the bicycle touring.
Long and often snowy, harsh Finnish winters lasting from about November to April are any problem neither. During winter I still see many people on the bikes every day (even though less than in the summer).
Few days ago Finnish TV Yle news presented so called 'fat biking' (paksupyöräily) as especially good for winter conditions. The wide 'fat' tires keep bicycle more stable and make riding softer on the snow.
Petri "Shimaani" Nuutinen brought the first fat bike to Finland. I found information in internet about 50 fat tire bikes in Finland, but on this year TV news it was said, that there are already few hundreds. So the number is clearly increasing. The very first fat bikes came from Alaska. They look fun, I wonder how does it feel to ride such a bike. I do ride bicycle in winter, but sometimes it is more struggling than riding or I am forced to walk for some more snowy part of the road.
Photo1 from Global Fat bike day finland Photo2 from fat-bike.com (Fatbiking in Finland)

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