Greetings from Minnesota
 

I'm pleased to be in contact with you FinnShark folks. From what I've been reading on your site, I think Finland would be a good place for me to happily spend my next life. You all seem to be greatly enjoying those 'glass chariots. As it happens, my father's parents emigrated from Karijoki and Isojoki to Minnesota, USA in the early 1900's. I grew up on Minnesota's Iron Range (iron mines) and many of my school mates were also of Finnish descent. I still have relatives in Finland, mostly in the Tampere area.

I've had some contact with a few FinnShark members already and look forward to more in the future. As a young man I owned a few Corvettes but a great deal of time has passed since then. Now we have a C5 convertible in the family and it's wonderful to be back. This July we'll be attending a Corvette rally in Colorado called Vettes on the Rockies. Let me know if any of you might be around these parts.

Best regards,

Roger Haro (mnpoika)

Welcome to FinnShark.com! :thumrigh:

Welcome to our forum. I believe that originally your last name had some dots over a and o, like "Härö" ?

Actually Cocco, there is another guy here in the Twin Cities area with my same name, and he is also of Finnish descent. However, he and I are not related. As I understand it, his name was was always spelled Haro, but with the dots over the "a" as you suggested. Perhaps it was my grandfather who changed our name from the original Iso-Haaro which never had any dots over any letters. So, I believe the other Roger Haro's last name is pronounced (English pronounciation) HAY-ro, while I pronounce mine as HAW-ro. Does that make any sense?

Thank you for putting up with English-speakers such as myself. I so wish I could speak Finnish. Unfortunately, my father was the baby in the family and they no longer spoke Finnish at home when he was growing up. However, I do have two friends here who spoke only Finnish when they first started school. One of them gets along very well when visiting Finland, while the other has unfortunately never been there.

Hi Roger,

Visited in Colorado august 1989.Then it was 16th annual Vettes on the Rockies.Place was in Breckenridge. Me and my friend stayed in Beaver Run
Resort where I still have bill that reads we came from Helsinki,Poland!!
Yellow manufacturer ZR-1,king of the hill was taken a place too..There was
small accident too when vette conway startet from parking area.Anyway
nice memorys from the mountain.

Regards,Ratblock.

Warm welcome to Finnshark.com. I'll make sure to drop you an email next summer when I'll be touring around your area again! :bball:

Welcome to Finnshark mnpoika! Greetings from Montreal Canada, I've been here for few months, but heading back to Europe soon. I haven't made roadtrips that far west from here.

Let us know if you ever coming to Finland! I'm sure we can make something for you to see there! :cool:

Welcome to pages mnpoika!
Mnpoika? Does it mean mammanpoika? :D
Maybe you first want to see generally our activities during the years, then go to "galleria". There is lot of photos and at the end of the title page also videos.
You send me very interesting photos from your racing days, and I am sure these people are very happy to see them also!
Welcome Roger!:thumrigh:
Are you familiar with these?

Thank you all for the warm welcome. I'll try to respond to all right here.

- Ratblock - you stayed exactly where we will be staying Breckenridge. We'll think of you in July. What a small world it is sometimes.

- Groovyjay - I look forward to hearing from you regarding your travels here next summer. What are your plans so far?

- FinnShark Montreal - I do hope to visit Finland once more before I'm too old. It's been twelve years since our last visit and that's really too long. Of course, right now there is that thing about the economy and the exchange rate.

- V-P - Yes those are familiar photos, especially the one of your Minnesota relatives gathered around the stone monument. Unfortunately my two little Finnish-English dictionaries don't get me to the word mammanpoika. The closest word is mammutti. However, the explanation of my handle is quite easy: MN is the official postal abbreviation for Minnesota, so mnpoika it is. Does that appear strange in Finnish? Please feel free to share any photos I have sent.

Best regards,

-Roger-

Mammanpoika is mummys boy in English. But I think "mammanpoika" means something like coward, sissy or chicken. At least me and my friends have been used word mammari (mammanpoika) if somebody for example didn't jump down from the roof where everybody else jumped.

After you said MN = Minnesota, your nickname looks very sensible.

Thank you for that explanation, ippe73. I sure wouldn't want to be thought of as "momma's boy" - and I'm way too old for that, besides.

Sometimes I've used minnepoika for Minne-sota and Minne-apolis, but I prefer the simpler mnpoika. On eBay I applied for the handle "poika" but it was already taken. Apparently there are others here who are equally proud of their Finnish heritage.

How is your winter?
Do you have snow enough? What about the temperature day/night gap?
We have a real winter after many warm winters.And now it has gone many weeks temperature bellow freezing point and lots of snow.

Just for info motivated by V-P's question...

Here in middle of Finland last few years, like this year also, has been very poor of snow. Take for example having snow mobile fun. Otherwise we had good freezing weather at beginning of this week, -20 C degrees and there is only something like 20 to 30 cm of snow around. Lakes are well frozen and some iceroads are opened. No polarbears met "This is quite a local joke" about how we finns and our conditions are thought in southern europe:D

Minnesota resembles Finland in some ways, Cocco. Though you are farther north, we don't have the warm ocean currents, like Finland does, to keep us from getting too cold. As a result, we may have more extremes of climate - hotter summers and winters a bit colder than in Finland. Lately our winter weather has been going back and forth between warm and cold. Friday we got about 14cm of snow and today the ground is nearly bare again as it was sunny and above freezing. Tomorrow a storm is coming which is expected to leave 15-20cm of new snow. This time of year it probably won't stay around very long. One difference here in MN is that we don't have the winter darkness, other than on cloudy days. On the other hand, we don't have a midnight sun to enjoy in the summer.

Hi mnpoika!How are You?I spent 2 months in South-East Asia ie Thailand,Kambodia and Malaysia.I have never ever had
so much fun in my life.In Pnomh Penh,Kambodia I met an american retired fire officer from Minneapolis.He´s been living in Kambodia for the last 14 years and riding his enduro motorbike all over Kambodia.So we had our breakfast meet on March 19 at my hotel,enjoyed good food and nice conversation.John told me that he knows a good motorbike rental company in PP.Off we went and one hour later I had a Honda 4-stroke endurobike under my ass.Traffic in PP is very hectic but I just followed John`s trail and felt safe.But in the country side situation became a bit stange for me.Big signs telling:Caution,landmines!John told me that Khmer Rouge put millions of landmines back in the 70`s and only a minor part of mines have been removed.He told me if I wanna take a leak,don`t take a step in the bushes but pee in the middle of the road/path.We hit a very muddy road in eastern Kambodia and made only 20 miles in 24 hours.We had to overnight in a local village.They have never before met falangs (foreigners) and it took only 30 minutes that the whole population of the village (50 persons) were in our front yard watching us.I have a beard and it was something totally new to the locals.They all came to me and touched my face.John speaks Kmehr and he told them that I come from the cold Scandinavia where all men have beard to fight the breezing conditions.They said it sounds logical.Next question was:do you grow rice in Finland?I had to admit to their disappointmet that we do have rice in grocery shops,but the brand is Uncle Ben`s produced somewhere out of Europe.
It would be nice to meet You face to face and have some chat,but I am going to work very long days for the following 8 months.
With my best regards:Jompe

Greetings again from Minnesota. Well it has been a long time since I visited your site because of technical difficulties where my computer could not gain access. My apologies for not responding to your comments, Jompe. Your visit to Cambodia sounds like a real wild time, though I, myself, have never been to Asia. My favorite destination is Europe and it happens I'll be in Finland during the first week in June. First I'll be traveling with a group from here on a World War II history tour, which ends in Moscow. There I'll leave the group and fly to Tampere to visit relatives. Perhaps if the FinnSharks parade through Tampere during that time I can arrange to stand on the curb and wave to you.

Incidentally, last summer I attended a 50th anniversary party for Corvettes of Minnesota. It's the club I joined when I had my first few Corvettes. Once the largest club around here, it's now probably the smallest. But it was a fun party and great to see old members from as far away as California.

P.S. I've been enjoying some email correspondence with your V-P.

Best regards to your club,

-Roger- (mnpoika)