Good weather again when I got up for breakfast, around 8 a.m., an hour earlier than the first day, according to the txt I sent home. I headed into Toijala or Akaa (don't know why the place has two names!) the next town on my way, to pick up something as a gift for Marko at my next overnight stop, and for Matti and Kaija at my final destination. I had to reorganise my luggage to get the things to fit, and had to a shop that sold 'luggage elastics' to strap my sleeping bag on the back behind my headrest. After all that hunting and shopping, time was getting on, and I still had most of my day's ride ahead of me!
I found a couple of caches in the town, one being near the railway station. This cache had been muggled (stolen by a non-geocacher) last time I was there just under a year earlier, but now it was no trouble to find!
I got out of town, and was enjoying the good road surface and weather! I soon came to my next stop, a cache I'd heard about and wondered when I'd get round to looking for, called "Casillero del Diablo", which apart from being the name of a wine, could mean 'Devil's Locker' or Devil's cell. Lucky for me the location was quite close to my route, down a bank and among trees, where there was a pile of big boulders, with holes and cavities under them. You had to find the right hole, crawl in and find the cache, not far from the entrance. I was lucky to find it quickly, signed the log and was on my way. I didn't spend much time admiring the boulders (which I regret now) as I was concerned about my trike and gear up on the roadside (couldn't remember if I'd locked it up - I hadn't!) but luckily it was a quiet stretch of road, far from houses and people, so it was unlikely anyone would pass by other than by car.
Moving on, it was getting close to lunchtime, or I was starting to feel hungry, or a suitable place turned up where I could get lunch, I'm not sure which happened first! Anyway I stopped at a roadside cafe in something of a built-up area (village or whatever). Although I hadn't had any problems with my knees or muscles, it always does good to stop for a break on a longer trip like this.
The rest of day 2 was rather uneventful, if you don't count the caches I looked for (and I was counting them!) but the scenery and quiet roads were nice, despite being gravel roads half the time!
According to a txt I sent home just before 7 pm I was 5 kms from my destination, Marko's house. He has a walk-in cache on the side of his garage, with a normal-sized door. You just go in, and inside it's like the size of a phone booth, same width but a bit deeper or longer, so there's room to sit on a stool at a desk and sign the logbook. It's probably the biggest cache in Finland! His cache page for that cache welcomes people to stay overnight if they need/would like, so that's why I asked him if I could include his place as one of my stopovers on this trip.
I suggested I could cook us some supper, if that was ok with him, and it was! So we checked what he had for my recipe, then went by car to the nearest shop for the rest of the ingredients. I did a simple pasta sauce and it wasn't bad (although I say so myself!)!
He'd warmed the sauna enough for me (and him later) to have a wash before going to bed, showed me where the kettle was etc. for the morning, and wished me goodnight and a good trip tomorrow, as he wouldn't be up as early as me.
Total kilometres cycled today: 76.
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