Members of Jukolan Pilotit ry, the flying club at Hyvinkää airport.
My intention was for me to do the oil change, but Pertti Heininen gave me a big hand.
June 16 — Forssa, Finland to Hyvinkää, Finland (after bus back to Forssa from Helsinki)
Changing the oil, meeting more friends
After taking the bus back to Forssa from Helsinki, my plan was to catch a cab to the airport, but it was a nice day and it was only about 4 kilometers, so I walked. The flight from Forssa to Hyvinkää took less than 25 minutes, and my biggest concern was glider activity. Fortunately, I didn’t encounter any.
Hyvinkää is a very active general aviation airport almost due north of Helsinki, with a flying club and a glider club. The flying club showed me great hospitality. Jorma (on the right in the top photo) helped arrange my oil change. Pertti, the mechanic, (on the left in the top photo) not only let me use his oil bucket but also let me use the hangar and helped me with the oil change. It turns out that Pertti owns a beautiful Mooney, reportedly the only one registered in Finland. He also owns a Yak, a rare World War II era Russian plane. He showed me both. Pertti was planning to head to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in July for Airventure, the huge aviation get-together, and he was going to fly in in a US-owned Yak. I’m not the only one who has flying adventures!
There was only one problem. When I tried to use my credit card at the fuel pump, it asked for a PIN. My credit card has a PIN, but I’ve never used it and don’t remember it. I had an idea. I’d go into town and get cash from an ATM, use one of the Finnish pilots’ credit cards for the fuel, and repay that pilot in cash. Jari, the airline pilot I had met in Forssa, gave me a ride into town to the ATM, and I withdrew a lot of euros. Then I got an idea. Maybe I could use my ATM card, which is a debit card for which I know the PIN, to pay for the gas. That worked.
After my oil change, Jari drove me to a hotel to drop off my bags, then took me back to Helsinki to show me around. We went for a walk along the shoreline, saw some sights, and then had a wonderful Finnish dinner at Ravintola Zetor, where I enjoyed the liver with lingonberries, plus a dessert of “squeaky cheese” stewed in caramel cream served with cloudberry jam. Squeaky cheese, leipäjuusto in Finnish, isn’t exactly like squeaky cheese curds you find in Wisconsin, but it’s a close cousin. Jari dropped me off back at my hotel after a very good, productive day.