The winter is coming up, for a few months ago when it started to be dark and rainy outside it felt like the winter never will come, but now its a fact again the winter is soon, really soon here.

But actually the autumn wasnt so bad either, there is lot of good things with autumn too. For example the "summerguests" are going back to the cities and it start to be peacful again in the archipelago around the summerhouse. Autumn is also a exellent time to make some trips to south Europe and extend the summer a little bit.

In beginning of autumn me and Nives went down to Croatia and Austria by car for 2,5 weeks for biking, chilling and meeting Nives relatives and our friends. It was a damn long drive in my VW Transporter(without aircondition), but it was also interesting and fun. We took the ferry from Turku to Stockholm and then drove true Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria and Slovenia to end up in a hot Croatia/Zagreb.

We spent a few days in Zagreb biking around, biking up and ride downhill at Sljeme(highest mountain around Zagreb, about 1100meter) and visiting our friends and Nives relatives. One day we went to Nives granmas place close to the Bosnian boarder, the river Sava(largest river in Croatia) is floating next to her house and its a extremely nice place with no tourists at all and nice places for swimming and fishing in Sava.  The rest of days in Croatia we spent on the Croatian coast and Islands, we had supergood luck with weather and almost no tourists anymore when it was so "late" on the season.

After Croatia we went to our winterbase Mallnitz in Austria. Parked the car in Mallnitz and went for a biketour: Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse(the highest car road in Austria), we started in Mallnitz, rolled down to Obervellach, took the bus to Heiligenblut 1300meter and biked up to Kaiser Franz Josefs Höhe 2300meter next to Grossglockner then back down to 1800meter for a climb up to Hochtor 2500meter , after that climb was just one small climb for 200vert then we had 1800vert.meter downhill around 23km without any pedaling just breaking down to Zell am see.. :) From there we took the train back to Mallnitz, it was a tour with 2500vertmeter climb and 60km long.. It was a hard experience but really nice tour with nice scenarios.

Next day we started the roadtrip back to Finland, where a lot of work was waiting again..and a package from Haglöfs with all my new stuf for the winter.. :)) Then it was lot of work until Ski-and Boardexpo in Helsinki 4-6.11 where I actually also went for "working", but that doesnt count when you more helping your sponsors..

Friday 4th in the morning we(TeamHollsten) went to Helsinki, i had to check in to hotel and fix the "promomovie" to work in the Haglöfs stand before the expo opend the doors for people.  Then the whole day me and Mikaela was at our sponsor JK-shop/POC stand helping him while Nives was walking around and checked for new stuf for the winter. On evening we went to Vanha in center of Helsinki where Arttu Muukkonen had organized a supercool party including moviepremiers, photocompetitions etc. and 1100 people had paid entrance, largest freeride event party i have been on. It was really fun to be there and meet all riders and friends what you normally just meet wintertime, lot of plans for winter was made there. Only sad thing was that we had came straight there from expo  and missed This is my winter movie with Xavier de la rue.. and of course everybody said it was epic movie.. but at least we watched All i can what also was great, maybe just little bit too long..

Saturday i worked/was promoting(with a small hangover) for my clothingsponsor Haglöfs. Met a few "new" people from the team and so far everybody what i have met who is working with or for Haglöfs is supercool, and there was really relaxed atmosphere the whole day. On saturday i also met Mika from UlkoilunMaailma.fi first time live, and it was really easy and cool to talk with him and make the "plans" for the winter about the blog and my competition Ankogel X-treme Invitational what UlkoilunMaailma.fi will be sponsoring.

Later on saturday evening we(teamhollsten) took a chill evening and went to city to meet some friends, eat(extremely spicy kebab) and drink a beer..

Sunday back to work for Jouni JK-Shop/POC, promote and sell helmets and goggles. It was a chill day, had even time to check around the expo and see what they had. And i was so happy for Nives who was back dancing after after 8 months of break, big thanx to Xbox Kinect.. :))

Overall Ski/Board expo weekend was again this year a great time with sponsors and friends!

Yesterday i was to JK-Shop in Lojo, to pick up my stuf from POC and Kask, supernice clothes and protections. So from now its just moving all my stuf to my house, making all last plans for my competition Ankogel X-treme what gonna be in Mallnitz 6-8.1-12 and pack for the trip to Austria after 2 weeks.. Aaaand waiting for lot of snow to fall.. :)

Let the winter begin!

Nicke {jcomments on}