Southern Exposure

Wednesday, January 28

Before we left for the Galapagos, we had scheduled an appointment with their Kawasaki dealer to take a final shot at fixing Inna’s oil leak. I also wanted to get both bike’s an oil change as this would be the last major city we’d be in for a while. Additionally, my rear tire had maybe 1000 miles left on it on pavement, but with Peru ahead, it was time to finally put the rear tires we had been lugging down from Los Angeles on.

Inna’s had more tread left than mine, but ultimately we decided to change tires on both bikes. We were at the halfway point of the journey and there were plenty of dirt roads ahead, so any extra traction would help.

The mechanics at the dealer were very helpful, and I gave them the usual description of where it was leaking and what had been done so far. He popped off the latest seal, took a look, and did something no one else had looked at yet, the o-ring. Inside the bushing there is an o-ring, and it looked a bit worn. Ultimately we replaced the o-ring and put on the 4th or 5th new seal of the trip, but at least the o-ring was a new idea. The bad news is that if the new seal and o-ring don’t fix it, the shaft is probably warped and will need replacing. Major surgery I won’t do until we get home.

We spent 4 hours at the dealer, most of our day, and since we were so behind on the blog, and I was feeling under the weather, we chose to have an early dinner and spend the evening catching up on our writing and posting. While I had been supervising the mechanics, Inna had been in at the dealer writing and organizing photos, so we had a lot to post.

For an early British style dinner, we went to the famous Turtle’s Head Pub owned by an ADV rider. Back at the hotel, we wrote, posted, and went to bed early, determined to actually see something of Quito before we left town.