rafael pyton

It pains me to not have had time to dabble in dilettante football commentary the past gone weeks - but had I had the time, I would surely have made a fool out of myself and my predictions, usually Italian in both flavor and scent.

Bygones. Spain won. And do you know what? I came to cheer for those disgustingly talented virtuosos. Suddenly, even Torres made sense to me. Topsy-turvy has been defined. So has camera obscura. And who knows, maybe that Fernando Alonso guy is not half bad either… ?
[Hey, whoever you are, what have you done with the real Rafael Pyton?!]

Congrats, Spain. You rocked the hardest. You had style and class and hair and hot diggity damn, I just wish I I could run like Torres, run Torres run… ruuun Torres ruuun!

Welcome to the humble abode. What you see here is the result of a man who likes to paint, so much so that I painted the whole house twice. Yes, that is TWICE. Two layers mean double the effort, but also tremendous peace of mind.
When I do something, I really do-do. I have to, because I know myself all too well. Being terribly pedantic, borderline fascistic, I can not handle personal mediocrity. A frightening affliction, it will eat me until there is nothing left inside. But there is a vantage point; if I feel I’ve done a proper job, I get such a sensational sense of pleasure it is thoroughly tantric.

I’m high on the house, as you can hear. The only ripples on my ocean of powerful calm are: the windows. They need spades of TLC and new paint, and while I haven’t counted them, it feels as though they number in the hundreds. Then there is the roof over the cellar, which I must design from scratch. I would also like to replace the hedge with something a little more architectual. The driveway is not pleasing me either, as I feel only stone will live up to the new standards I’m setting. Furthermore… well, so much for the tantric ambience…

Looks spiffy, though, doesn’t it? That’s what complete strangers have told me, just walking by, reacting on pure impulse. And you know, such behaviour is rare in grumpy Finland. Here, they usually whisper behind your back when they’re sober, then they stab you in the back when they’re drunk. Haha.
Seriously, the response has been overwhelming. And even though I don’t really care what people think, sweet consensus warms my hardworking heart. Future inhabitation may begin!

Number 41 is painted in the famous Guards Red, color-coded after my own Porsche. I wanted something very special for this, because of a certain memory etched into my mind.
It was some 25 years ago, but I still remember the perfect pride on my father’s face, as he screwed these numbers onto the house. As a young kid, I figured it was a really cool way to cap off a long renovation. But I now understand that there was so much more symbol within.

He had provided for his family.

You can do few finer things in life. My circle has closed.

People were starting to feel sorry for me. Old women shuffling by at very low speeds made strange sounds of pity. Others were whistling, not because they were admiring my glutes, but because they were horrified by my workload. I overheard various conversations from up there, usually different varities of one man and a mountain. High time to change the subject.

Thus, painting commenced. Compared to scraping, painting is like escaping the ninth level of hell to get naked in the garden of Eden. Psychologically, you are once again creating, instead of destroying, and it makes all the difference in the world. Soon, the people who clutter the sidewalks going somewhere but nowhere in particular were talking again. This time, however, they were taking part of my vision, moreover, sharing sentiment; darn gosh, that stunt might actually work out!

I had planned wilder colors, rainbows, explosions. But once I tried the timeless elegance of Tikkurilan Vinha 362X, I fell head over heels in adoration over the way the blugrey made the house look like the mansion on the hill we all dream about. The yellow tracksuit was being replaced by the fine cut of a deconstructed Armani two-piece, and Mick Jagger put in an early bid of three million euros.
[Just checking if you're reading, or only looking at the pictures...]

I have great hopes for Tikkurilan Vinha. This is the kind of paint that won’t flake, which hopefully means no more scraping - ever. In time, the color will fade somewhat, but all you have to do is just add another layer, button another suit. Easy peasy, beautiful smoothiful, painting is black magic gone shiny white.

At this point, I actually started receiving helping hands. Big thanks to Jocke [proving particularly vital in helping me move the ladder], and to the Wilén couple. Stealing the show, though, was neighbour kid Robin, who turned up one day to chat about cars & bikes, then never really left. I have never seen such an unselfish sixteen-year old. He never asked for anything, and put in long days and lots of heart just to give of himself. It simply made my day to surprise him with a nice wad of bills recently. He even tried to refuse to accept! Wonderful!

The balcony proved to be a handful. Three layers of paint on the railing, ripping up the floor to wash, sand, paint the roof underneath with Rostex and Panssarimaali, then oil the floor with three layers, put it all back together. It wasn’t done in a day - but such are the things you do to be able to enjoy your morning tea regally…

It was an emotional moment to watch the last patch of yellow disappear into the Armani of choice. My parents bought this house in the mid 1980s, when the house was an ugly shade of light green. Soon thereafter the house underwent comprehensive renovation, my father painting it in the yellow that remained until today.

It’s the end of a great era, but the beginning of another one. When closure is rapture, you know that you’re heading down the right path.

I do hope you get an impression of height here… and while you’re getting hit by that impression, try to add my stiff, uselessly imbalanced, ever-hurting legs to the mix. Then, keep in mind that I stood on this ladder for two and a half months straight, usually ten hours a day. The odds of once mis-stepping were radically uncomfortable, to say the least. Frankly, I’m surprised I got out of this one alive… and I’m not just saying that for effect.

First I had to wash the whole house. Everything. Yes, including the overhang of the roof. I used my Kärcher powerwasher together with liquid mould remover. Great. But to call that junk a ‘remover‘ is a joke. All too often I had to resort to rubbing it in by a brush powered by elbow grease. It was early spring. The snow had just melted. The weather was cold. The water was freezing. My hands turned blue. I was wet down my soul and my feet were killing me harshly.
But I washed the whole god damn house in one week! Man, I thought I was Superman reincarnated!

Scraping off loose paint was next on the agenda. Unfortunately, far too soon it became obvious it was kryptonite to my earlier immortality.
Days and days and days and not another one yes more days passed by where I worked like a lunatic without making the slightest dent into that thing called progress.
To make matters worse, the house looked like God had puked on it. Having washed it, the house was gleaming, and I almost thought to myself, hey, should I leave it like this for a few more years? But I just had to start scraping, didn’t I? What an idiot! And as the house deteriorated before the naked eyes of the street-walking public, so did my spirit. Eventually, also my body.

The thing about scraping is that it is fucking hard and a close relative to impossible. You have to do it by hand, itty bitty cm2 after itty bitty cm2, hanging from a ladder ten meters above ground, trying to reach where very few men have gone before. I tore some nerves/muscles in my back working like this.
Now, when you can’t get out of bed in the morning, a normal sane person would take some time off for the back to heal, while whimpering about how bad it hurts and how you can’t sleep even though you are tired beyond spent.
Perhaps we can agree I’m neither normal nor sane? No stranger to pain, I slapped on some useless cream, threw down some useless pills, and forced myself up the ladder again. I was not even able to turn my head, but I never missed a day.

This lasted for two rather l-o-n-g weeks. Finally, the vicious stabbing relented - and I laughed! It felt as though I had, by pure stubborness, beaten it, almost like the pain realized there was nothing to gain with this guy; he just doesn’t give a damn! Someday, like this, mark my words, someday I’ll beat the pain in my feet too…
Upbeat like a circus freak I soldiered on, now once again infused with that splendid sense of immortality that can make one man perform glorious semi-miracles.

And the paint just kept on f-f-falling.

Until it was time to don the bayonet, get out of the trenches, and chaaarge!

What a beast it was! An old dirty rotten lump of a house, seemingly just sitting there waiting for someone to realize its value, a value so well hidden by the shoddy exterior. Everyone else in the family wanted to get rid of it - at least, not have anything whatsoever to do with the oh-so considerable guts it takes to maintain such a wooden antiquity.

I always had other plans. I always saw the beauty in this house. I was never going to give it up without fight, and I had no intention of losing. The mere thought of it ending up in the hands of ignorant strangers makes my blood boil like a volcano, so much so that I’d better move on with the plot before my spleen erupts.

History of the wooden villa remains mysteriously cloaked to me; all I can tell you with certainty in my fingers is that it was moved to hometown Karis [Karjaa] around the same time Empire State Building was being constructed in New York. But the thing in the picture above is easily older than the 1930s - when I say ‘moved’, it means it was dismantled and transported here from Svartå [Mustio]. The reason someone would go to such horrific trouble is that there are precious full log walls underneath the wooden panel. I take serious pride in those log walls - although it’s a fullblown education in carpentry and half a mental breakdown every time they need maintenance.

You need scars to be able to tell stories, I don’t mind telling you and often. Certainly, this dirty old dog could keep a poker night going for awhile; parts of the roof actually still bear the marks of a grenade attack during the last little scuffle Finland had with the Bolsheviks!
Speaking of which, wild rumors take the house all the way back to Viborg [Viipuri], now on the Russian side. Who knows? You move a house once, you can move it twice.
Personally, I always say the house is a hundred years old. It sounds good. It might be a lot older, but aren’t we all?

I spent a childhood here, the best you can dream of. This house has looked out for me, and I think of it as my best friend. You needn’t call the ambulance, unless it is for yourself - see, to have a relationship like this with your house is to have the true definition of H-O-M-E.

Well, let us - again - bid a final farewell to the track in no man’s land, Magny-Cours, the Oklahoma of the F1 circuit. Bye bye. But I don’t leave with hard feelings. The minute around mid-race when I saw that pipe burning in a hole in the belly of Kimi’s Ferrari, I said - screamed - to myself, “not again!” Not another race lost from the lead, not another silver plate presented to the competition like we - me & Kimi - are a white-gloved butler who bows very deeply and begs “Sir, I must insist. Please accept this humble gift of ten points.”

Lo and behold, though, lo and bloody behold, the Ferrari just kept on going like the Husqvarna lawnmover I push around the garden, sputtering, yet cutting. There was nothing to do about little Massa, of course, but two points is a gift we can throw in the air like we just don’t care. We’ll take it back in Silverstone, anyway.
But if you thought I was sure the red number one car was going to break, if not before, then on the last lap like some sort of a reversed MacGuyver plot, you are spot on the money. I’ve been there before, and it is the kind of familiarity that breeds true contempt. This is why I celebrate second place like it fell from the sky.
No, I would not go so far as to call it luck, because he should have won like he would have won in Canada, if not. Yeah, if not. Whatever. And racing is racing… like that’s supposed to mean anything but filler material in post-race interviews…

I shan’t dwell. I’d like to, but shan’t. Instead, here’s one to Jarno Trulli. Steady job, signore. I know the late great Ove Andersson is loving it up there in racing heaven on cloud number nine. Godspeed, Swede.

To Lewis Hamilton: Man, don’t think we didn’t see you on that first lap. You were so out of control it was out of mind. Maybe you thought you were going to do a ‘Senna‘ and zap the traffic. But it was pure Jean-Louis Schlesser. [That's code for "you suck"].

There will be no cheap shots at Nick Heidfeld today. That would be unsportsmanlike. Let’s just acknowledge the fact that Nico Rosberg will probably drive one of the Bimmers next year. Just guessing.

And that concludes another edition of hot vapor and poisonous fumes. Be well, or unwell, if you want, until we meet again.

This is the first of a few rather big announcements I intend to make in the coming weeks right here on the blog. You may have noticed that I’ve had so much on my plate lately, it simply broke from all the weight. In fact, said plate also busted the table, then went right through the floor. But there are many reasons for it…

One of these reasons is a new job. Yep, started this Monday. You did not expect that, did you? Well, can’t blame you a bit. When both my legs were in a million little pieces, everyone expected to never ever expect anything from me again, and that included the doctors.

Winds have the habit of changing, much like roads do their winding.

I am now the REGIONAL SALES MANAGER for a gargantuan American company called SEALED AIR.

While this ain’t world domination, at least I get the Southern slice of Finland, not to mention a car, and the bread that goes with a job that takes up far too much time to have a life.
In case the man reads this, I’m only joking… speaking of which, my boss is the Scandinavian manager, which is why I have to get up at four in the morning every Monday to fly to Gothenburg or Stockholm or something small in between. In fact, I write this from a third hotel in three nights.
[Such's training; this will only last for the first month. Obviously, I am in dire need of industry-ignorance abolishment.]

Sealed Air is a Fortune 500 company, the mightiest of their field. But what the funk do they do, you must surely ask? Why, let me in turn ask of you, have you ever popped bubble wrap and found it absurdly irresistable and oddly addictive? Yes, me too. Sealed Air invented the bubble wrap.
More than this, today Sealed Air makes everything that protects everything else made [hey, not a bad slogan - I shall ask Sealed Air for royalties...].

Another journey beckons, but it does seem that there’s a fantastic world of plastic polymer out there.

Go on. Roll the dice. Sometimes you will hit a nine.

I hit a nine this time.
[Logo, geddit?]

Three little letters. But they stand for motocross bikes going upside down through the air, and it doesn’t matter how many times you see a bloody backflip, every time you think death, o death, imminent death. Of course, is there anything more exciting than death out there? I think not. I think never. I think not a chance. Then add loud rock music and hot strippers, and you, well, have it all.

To recap, I spent last weekend in Tallinn, where Andy + Madli = True walked the beaches and slept deeply into daylight. But we also went to see the biggest FMX competition in Northern Europe - and it was awesome, nothing less than the real deal, with plenty of top-quality riders. Mat Rebaud was there, and he didn’t win, which says it all.

As an old-school motocross die-really-hard, I tend to rank freestyle motocross as a freak show. But what a freak show! It takes balls to bust big like this, and nobody has bigger busts, I mean balls, than the FMXers.

Perhaps - no, certainly - the best thing about modern FMX is that they still use two-strokes. Braaaaaaap! It’s like coming home when you smell the pre-mix and hear the vicious whine of the race bike as it should be. Call me conservative, but four-strokes bore me. They’re all grunt, no explosion, easy to ride, won’t spit you off. Motocross ought to be too hard for common people… I did not say that. I did, but I didn’t mean it. I did mean it, but… well, all I meant amidst this thick mist of remembrance is, may God herself bless the holy two-stroke for generations to come.

The Jap Eigo Sato won the competition, riding absolutely recklessly and way beyond the edge. Somehow, he kept landing right side up, and eventually won over the hootin’ n’ tootin’ crowd, just beating Lord Rebaud. We all felt it. Why are the Japanese so cool? Beats me. But coolness is and was always a quality one is not supposed to be able to explain. I can only put it in pixels…

Dear Lewis Hamilton. Red light means brake, not break Ferrari.