Planning on some peaceful riding for my first days off and well it doesn’t always work out that way…always surprises. Decided to ride a loop in Laajasalo, which has some interesting trail riding and nice quiet paths by the water with some varied rocky climbs and twisty trails and some fast forest roads. A mountain bike–even fully rigid–is overkill for this route, which only is necessary on like maybe 100 meters total of the 30km loop. But sometimes it’s nice to roll out the 2.6 inch tires and to think a lot less about line choice and just float.

I do this loop mostly to see things changing. In the last two years the trails around Kruunuvuorenranta have changed every time I’ve gone out. This is extremely depressing; the construction fences in Stansvik forest move closer and closer into the forest and it’s surprising because I always forget how bad this makes me feel.

But the first surprise for this ride was a nice one. I haven’t had any time or energy to ride at all this summer so I forgot that I have my Juice set up with a friction shifter. These ENE Ciclo thumb shifters feel really nice with that sweet ratcheting feeling that never gets old. I don’t think these are available anymore, even though they are only a few years old. I think that Merry Sales had them produced alongside some other ENE bar end shifters that could pull enough cable for modern deraileurs, but they have been unavailable for some time. I can image that the thumb version is not so popular (well, I guess this is relative, of course they sold out quickly and people talk about them online…but…mountain friction shifting…).

It is fun and natural to use this with a wide-range mountain cassette. I originally had it on a Ritchey Commando fat bike as its one piece of real bling, but after it started just sitting there unused after the winter I moved it to the Juice, where it shifts a SRAM GX Eagle derailleur and a 10-52 cassette. If you are going uphill, you push it up–when you are going downhill, you pull it down. You can’t really miss a cog with a 12sp cassette and it makes you feel even more connected to the trail. Nothing new (or I guess old is new again) but it’s definitely new not having to worry about lazy shifting because of 12 cogs instead of 9.

Even though this made me happy, the second surprise is that I realized, crossing the bridge from Herttoniemi to Laajasalo, that I forgot my bottle…so I was a bit distracted with how to cut my ride short or find a bathroom sink. I’m not used to stopping and taking pictures like I’m planning to do now so I wasn’t going to just blast through the ride with no water as I normally would have. Just decided to go and check if the weird Kruunuvuorenranta K-Market had a pantti deposit sink I could stick my head under.

There’s a nice little climb leading to Kaivoskallio, where I had previously seen construction starting for some kind of more advanced nature reserve than it already had. Now the climb seemed a little easier from the bottom…all the rocks had been pulled out and the roots flattened or ripped and the path now had some flat sticky dirt, with tracks.

Guess it will be nice to have those ugly stairs to make it over the rocks and back down another set of stairs to see…a fenced off hiidenkirnu?

Or you can watch nature on stage? With some wood and railings that already look ready to replace even though they are months old?

The new path maybe is justified, because there is a lot or erosion and the path was very muddy most of the time, but still not sure about the entire project. Had to squeeze past the barriers to see most of this. Preview of what is to come later in the ride.

From the forest to the Kruunuvuorenranta movie set wasteland. Good to see there’s going to be a steady supply of ebikes blasting over the new bridge on their last breath to this frontier ebike shop.

I tried to make it up to the top of the point, here, where you can see all the work on the new bridge and the new developments, but the construction even seems to be trying to block this view.

Finally on the Stansvik kartano side of the peninsula, the real chaos is apparent. This used to be the entrance to the forest through some nice rocky trails, but now…three sets of fences.

There have been organized protests by the group Suojellaan Stansvik for the past few years, including sleep-ins with hammocks up high in trees, classic lock-myself-to-a-tree protests, and an outdoor art exhibit. I’ve been watching the fences move but now they’ve tried to completely block off access to this part of the forest, where it seems like they’re blowing up the rock to build a road so that the new apartments aren’t bottled in. It is so strange to me how the area just seems to be developing and developing with taller and taller empty apartments waiting until the bridge is finished and the gates are opened so that there’s not just one way in and one way out…finally people will start wanting to live there? Very bleak and very strange speculative development with an all-or-nothing mentality that seems to think that blowing up the entire forest is better to do all at once because the bridge somehow offers hope of sudden and total occupation of the thousands of apartments being built. This is surely because if it developed more slowly ‘no one would want to live there’ and resistance to the forest destruction would be a lot more difficult to manage.

The intended peaceful ride turned into a disruptive ride. I found a way picking through trails to somehow end up behind the construction fences.

Mountain bikes aren’t usually disruptive tools like urban bicycles are, disturbing the way cars try to own public space and challenging aggression hidden behind windshields. But it’s a good reminder that in general all bicycles help open up space, even if it is in the middle of being flattened.

And hey, I found a new grillipaikka!