Day 54 Opportunistic bike repair and latitude 00.00.00

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Distance driven today: 193 miles / 311 km

Cumulative distance driven: 9,648 miles / 15,527 km

Today’s trip: Ibarra to Riobamba, Ecuador

Drive over the Equator: yes, but it was very hard to find due to complete lack of signage

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As we started getting close to the Ecuadorian capital of Quito, during our morning ride, Zoe and I were on the outlook for the sign posting that we had reached the Equator, i.e. the imaginary line on the Earth's surface that is equal distance from the North Pole and South Pole. This line is commonly used to divide the Earth into the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, and we were looking forward to make a stop at the exact location and take a photo. However, we were disappointed as it turned out that there is no sign along the main road crossing through the country of Ecuador as it passes by the imaginary line that has also given the country its very name.

Instead, I turned on a function on our on board GPS device which displays in real time the exact longitude and latitude. By the time we got really close to the imaginary line, our GPS device was showing latitude of 0 degrees, 0 minutes and 200 seconds. We pulled to the side of the road and rolled very slowly downhill, watching the latitude seconds on the GPS unit count down meter by meter, until we reached what, according to the global position satellite system, is latitude 0 degrees, 0 minutes, and 0 seconds. Zoe and I joked between ourselves that, if this has been Europe or the US, there would have been a huge sign by the exact location of the Equator line, a gigantic parking lot with a visitor center, lots of souvenir shops, probably a Starbucks, and most likely an area for RVs to park at. In the absence of all of the above, we instead snapped a photo of the latitude reading on our GPS unit, while we briefly stopped on the side of road.

Half an hour later, as we were driving through Quito downtown, I incidentally spotted the main BWM dealership of the city (and I suspect of the entire country) by the side of the road. This was purely accidental, as we had no plans to stop at a BMW dealership in Ecuador. I had researched online, and the main BWM website noted that there is no authorized BMW motorcycle dealership in Quito. But now that we drove by the main BWM car dealership in the country, I decided to make a quick stop, and ask for a bracket and screw that we were still missing for the rear mud guard. We have been on the outlook for these mud guard parts ever since the guard broke in Costa Rica. Previous stops at dealerships in San Jose, Panama City and Medellin didn’t yield any results as these parts are rare and usually not carried in stock. Not even the BMW shop in Seattle had them in stock; I know because I called them 2 weeks ago, hopping that my wife Kicki could pick them up and FedEx them to us.



I guess that today was our lucky day after all. The BMW car dealership in Quito we found had recently started importing BWM motorcycles, and perhaps more importantly they had the bracket tin stock! After happily parting with $50 for a tiny metal bracket, the BWM salesman gave us instructions to a hardware store in town that carried a screw with similar enough dimension as the one we needed. We navigated to the hardware store and paid $0.60 for the screw. By the way, I am convinced that the authentic BWM screw, should it had bene available in stock at the BMW dealership, would have cost close to $10. At the parking lot of the hardware store, I pulled out my toolkit and mounted all necessary parts of the mud guard properly now that we had found the last missing two parts. The bike is now completely restored since our little incident in Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica, and all parts are functioning as they should. Our next BWM dealership stop should be in Lima Peru where we need to make a major service stop, and probably change tires before the last leg to Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina.

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