Some of the things mentioned below might raise an eyebrowe or make you laugh (and you will find they are in a total dis-organised braindump sequence) . For sure, we had good laughs as well going through gaining the experience...but be sure that we are indeed talking from experience.

- Driving over ice and snow: Take care... After the first few 100 clicks of carefull driving like your driving on eggs, you get into a state of "hey I can do this", where you increase your pace steadily, to a point where most of us drive like we drive on a dry summer road. We found that the trick is to be on your bike with a sufficient amount of nonchalance...because it is just impossible to keep adrenaline running for hours at a stretch. At some point during the process you will get into a spin of somesort...or disappear of teh road in a cloud of snow...to get you back to reality.... it happened to the best of us. What you will not weare out are your brakepads... that is for sure ------ Drive safely.

- As a winterbiker you MUST mentally prepare for your bike to take a serious (hopefully only) cosmetic pounding. Slightly more severe..at each winter trip we see a lot of tie wraps and duct tape being used...Winter biking is NOT a good thing for most bikes...it leads to spontanous desintegration of parts and electric functions of your bike. As long as these parts or functions are non-essential accessories you are ok. Extreme winter conditions seem for one reason or another not be in the design specification of our valued bike suppliers. Anyway the good news is that anything that stops working or falls of your bike and doesn´t impair the engine to run, your lights to work and brakes to function, is to be considered an unnecessary accessory away. You migt notice that after a few years of winterbiking your wiring of your bike starts to spontaneously starts to disintegrate, and that connectors are the pits to have in multitude on your bike... as they usually suffer first... Take a soldrig iron, cbale and connectors wit you to "hardwire" and "bridge" desintegrating wiring.

- Use your psychic and Zen skills and try to estimate which parts of your bike might break and would be extremely rare to find up north at a rendeer farm, and would force you to give up your trip for trivial reasons... good luck (you will find it also just the part that you did not have with you that breaks anyway, but it is worth a try..). Take replacements with you (throttle cable, clutch cable, bulbs, tire-pilot, bearing for your side car wheel...). By the way, I have seen very creative and extensive work being work or real wheel bearings, farings, tires etc, just to be able to continue the trip and not wait for automobile club assistance or give up.

- A full deck of tools and wrenches divied up between the rally participants (try to coordinated who takes what with him..) is of the essence. Hint: wear black gloves... that way you do not see how dirty they get inside from alsways having greasy hands going in them after a roadside repair.

- Horsepower is not of the essence when driving in the snow. High bred bikes with dyna-kits etc have an immense more difficult time coming to grips with cold starts and sub-zero driving. BMW (all models new, old and very old) dnjepr, mz, one cilinder off-roads have been observed to work very well in low temp conditions... of course there other bikes that work ok in winter condition, but mostly these circumstance do not seem to concern the engineers when they layout design conditions for the engines, wiring and electrical systems (including battery capacity and accessibility). We have lost quite a few bikes along the way and have witnessed spontaneous incineration of one bike upon return of the Älg rally !! The automobile club is your best friend.

- Beware of rendeer - if you see one there are at least 50 of them. The ones on teh left side of the road will go to the right side and the ones on the right side to the left...occasionally you will see and indecisive one that keep runnig in front of you. Use your horn liberaly. Elk, moose, karibou or whatever you call them usually travel alone are rare to see... but are real big succers and slow... so be carefull.

- Make sure you have good coverage with your automobile club to repatriate your bike (just in case...). Also check medical assistance coverage in the country that you will visit (just in case).

- Beer does freeze when stored in your sidecar...cans do burst open if this happens...not a problem as long as everything stays frozen...hard liquor doesn´t.  (basic hint.....)

- Spray your whole bike with S100 wax (except the brake disks :-) ). This somewhat (with emphasis on "somewhat") mitigates effect of sand, salt etc. Grease on areas that are supossed to keep moving (clutch, rear brake lever..) and protecting exposed areas below or at your bike are essential. To keep grease in place and prevent sand and salt to intrude, get creative with thick plastic flex material and tie wraps. Bye the way--After the winter make sure you do not overdo the de-waxing and highpressure cleaning...blocked brakes, clutches, cables etc etc are frequently observered.

- Check the rating of your motor bikes dynamo/generator and beef up your battery to the biggest one you can find. Regular car batteries are the real works. Using two batteries (connected through a battery separating relais fi Cyrix 80/12, like used in boates and campers), ie one for your bike, and one for your heating equipment is a good option to invest in, and prevents surprises in the morning. While driving be carefull with overdoing it on electric consumers... heated grips, extra lights, heated socks, heated visors have a tendency to suck even the biggest battery empty within a few hours. This especially happens on older bikes (K100, old boxers) that have a weaker generator (400-500W) and driving at 80km/h at low revs in top gear. A definite hint is to drive i a lower gear to rev up teh engie and get more output from your dynamo. Also fuly charging you rbattery in the evening is a good way to keep extra stress away from your generator. Beleieve me. me and my buddies have lived through a stuttering and completely electrical dead bike a few time before i figured out all this.

- Being able to easily remove the battery from your bike to take it inside is a real good thing to have. Get creative ! Very nifty designs of having a large battery in a side-suitcase, attached to outide of a sidecar or inside the sidecar have been spotted. The easier to remove and take inside the better. Just make sure to use large diameter cables to prevent voltage loss.

- Battery charger for on board accu ! Jump start cables !

- An extra canister of fuel. Having 10-15 liters of extra fuel in your side car is a sound strategy. Gasstations are not that sporadic in south an midde of nordic region, but higher up you only see one every 150-2300 km or so (and usually they are the place to hang out and center of activities in those regions... If you are on small roads and hit bad weather, you might have to turn around / make detours at inconvenient opening times for gas stations.

- An extra head light on your bike is a good thing. Up North days are very short and public lighting is not very popular. Also fun are the occasional trucks that you will encounter that have a whole array of huge lamps. You will feel like a rabbit being hunted and you buddy behind you sees you as being x-rayed. Best is to stop and wait for the pass...

- GSM phone with charged battery... to call 112... carry the phone on your body so it stays warm... (see "batteries" below")

- Batteries / electronic equipment: Carry (extra) batteries for your photo, film camera on your body to keep them warm. In the cold you will find out they either hold no power or you can film for 10 seconds... Same for flashlights...at very low temperatures in your sidecar you might be in for a surprise when you need it...

- Use thin oil SAE 5W"something" or 10-W"something" is ok for most cases. SAE 0W"something" is even better but  exponentially more expensive. Watch out with SAE 0 in wetsump bikes where the clutch is also in that oil... you will usually have a very slippery clutch...

- If you have watercooling. Make sure to (re)fill it with coolant that can withstand -30 deg C (the lower the better...). Keep your radiator cean from sand and stuff... you can have your engine cooking at -20 if your radiator is blocked.

- If you adhere to above (ie big battery, thin oil, coolant), you are ok for most circumstances. Real nerds go further and put electrical 220 volt heaters in the oil sump or cooling circuits. Looks prtty cool and fuls good conversations up North. For more info on this "contact us".

- On some bikes it is good to put electrical heaters in the carburators. Especially when it is not that cold (+2C to -5C), carburators might freeze up due to dewpoint of watervapour in the air. Some bikes are more susceptable to this then others. In scandinavia additives to prevent condensation of water in the fuel are sold. Some bikes are more susceptable to this then others. (fuzzy advice ? Hey, you wanted some adventure he ?)

- Cover all "holes" (locks, tank filler cap etc) on your bike with tape whenever possible. Snow gets in everywhere...and its favourite hobby is to disable locks, keep caps from opening etc. Btw, keep the little flask of lock defroster in your pocket...not in a case on your bike which might have a lock. (Duuh, get it ?). Covering your bike at night is recommended.

- Anything that has still a drop of water in it wil freeze up / block if your reach below -20C. This goes for throttle control cables, tank filler caps, electrical switches,helmet visor mechanics, rubber of side car hatch etc. This a particular funny dynamic if you come off the ferry having driven thorugh the rain for a long period....making sure vital things have been sprayed with silicon...

- Prolongue your front wheel mud protector with some flex material (welding screen plastic works well) all the way to the ground. This prevents snow, stones, dirt etc getting slung onto your engines front. Funny to see overheated watercooled bikes at -20C, because radiator is blocked with snow... Same thing might be don at the back...more as a social gesture to your buddies driven behind you.

- Opening a sidecar cover with aged plastic side windows that need to fold (like on a EML boat) at ultra low temperatures (below -25) is a liability. You could hear "crraack" and your windows are in pieces...

- If you are driving a side-car. Putting normal but real car winter tires (not the all weather stuff) on them is fine. Experience has proven that after a few winters the grip starts to fade, even though the tires might still have "plenty of profile". Go for safety... You will develeop a sence of gradiations of "slippery" very fast when you are driving.. there is nomal slippery, bad slippery and insane slippery. If you drive with someone in your sidecar (ie not only carry teh normal 20kg of beer s deadweight), you will need spike tires. These are available at normal car shops for very moderate prices. When you return to the continent, you can pretty easily (with some skill and determination and a side-cutter) remove the spikes while witing for the ferry or on it.

- If you drive solo you definitely need studs / spikes. Best is to get a pair / reserve a pair and coming off the ferry go to a bike shop to have them changed. Good thing is of course to look on the internet and make arrangements before. Again, comin back you can remove them with a side cutter.

- Related to the above: avoid forcing stuck plastic controls and switches at low temperatures (below -20C). Plastic has the habit to break rather easily and spontaneous these temps. Try lock defroster...and some deliberation.

- Any plastic will have a tendency to become very brittle at low (below -20C) temperatures. Trying to remove a side panel to inspect a carburator can result in breaking it in pieces. Opening a side car hatch with a cover with "flexible" plastic windows can reult in having them crack (especially if the lost some flex already due to age..).

- Take a shovel with you (foldable ones from military dumps shop are fine). Don´t ask why. Every winter biker will find out sooner or later...

- Towing line... your buddies or nordic car drivers may have to come to rescue due to having to get out of the snow (see "shovel" above) or due to bike malfunctioning.

- A few reels of Duct tape are a good companion. Although at very low temperatures nothing sticks anymore.

- Tie wraps....winter biker best friends. As with the shovel, you will find out their use sooner or later.