Talk to me in the woods

Snow 1

Snow 2

Snow 3

Snow 4

Snow 5

The photographs were taken in Meiko on February 20th.

This morning I went once again to Sipoonkorpi National Park, to the same place as yesterday. In the beginning there was a little bit of fog, but that cleared away, and it was bright and sunny indeed. I took a different route than yesterday, though. It was fine walking once again, as the snow was frozen and carried. (There is a word for this kind of snow in Finnish, "hankikanto", and I guess there is a word for it in Russian as well, "наст".)

I had a look at the bicycle, and it turned out that the rear wheel is more broken than I thought. The rim is worn out, and it got bent and broken, and that may have been the reason for the punctures. I started thinking about all the repairs needed, and then I realized that maybe a new bicycle would be a better investment than trying to repair the old one.

The bicycle is 11 years old, and I have got almost 30,000 km of riding on it. The Nexus 8 Premium gear hub is now 3 1/2 years old, used for almost 15,000 km, which means that if I would try rebuilding the rear wheel around the gear hub, the wheel wouldn't last very long. The rim in the front is also worn out, the brakes and cables should be replaced with news ones, etc.

And then I found a somewhat similar bicycle on sale (at 24 percent discount), a 2015 model, with good components such as an Alfine 8 gear hub, of which I have been thinking about for a while. The price difference with all the components needed to the old bicycle isn't that great, when including the cost of installation work. So, after debating this for only a couple of hours, I went ahead and ordered a new bicycle. This is the first time for ordering a bicycle on the net, without trying it out at the shop.

I'm not sure what to do with the old one. There are some parts I'm able to use in the new bicycle (such as front and back lights, and lock pedals), but most of it is too worn out to be useful. Should I keep the frame in case I get interested in building a new bicycle out of it? Maybe not.

(Posting title is from the poem Dear Ra by Johannes Göransson.)