and just like that, joensuu goes off without a hitch and the tour is over.  the ups and the downs and the highs and the lows are behind me and i’m in paris.  my oh my what one can accomplish in a 24 hour period.  we’d forgotten about the finns.  they’re an amazing audience for us.  couldn’t have been sweeter.  a beautiful cap to the newly anointed ‘best day of the tour.’

it started with a 3 hour charter plane from austria to joensuu.  after a quick nap our friend junni picked us up and drove us to his parents cabin in Kunmasniemi.   along for the ride was natalia, junni’s colombian lover (they call each other ‘dahling’) and hillary, a finnish man with a girl’s name.  we picked up salmon from junni’s parents house that his dad had smoked that morning and set up a picnic while mike bordin chopped logs for the sauna.  junni had remains of last night’s makeup on his face.  he’s in a band that played the festival and they were dressed as clowns for their performance.  his family’s house sits on a beautiful lake.  i slipped in immediately.  everyone else waited til after the sauna.  hillary collected branches from a birch tree and made a whip that we used in the sauna to whack ourselves all over our bodies.  it stung and smelled amazing.  when we could bear the heat no longer we ran for the lake.  absolutely phenomenal.  we laughed and laughed and laughed.  best day of the tour for sure.