Leaving the Bikes

I called Ross's Garage at 8:15 and was told that the owner did the work on bikes but he was out until 10:30 or so. We gathered up our laundry, had breakfast at Starbucks, and headed to the coin laundry in the RV park that was part of the resort.  We continued our internet research and studied a parts diagram carefully and read postings on various Kawasaki boards about bikes with similar problems.

While the clothes were in the dryer we walked to the motorcycle parking area to have another look.  We discovered that someone didn't like the way I parked my bike and "keyed" a scratch into my gas tank ... a wonderful souvenir.  After some tinkering with the clutch cable tension and fiddling with the linkage, we were able to get the clutch to disengage. "Mission accomplished," I thought.  But the celebration was premature, a few shifts later the Ninja bike's clutch was stuck once again.

A woman at the coin laundry told me she had been at the park for eight months. The coin laundry  is a gathering spot for retirees to watch Fox News and get their daily ration of "fair and balanced" news. We folded our clothes in the company of a slack jawed group of conservative and elderly people who have chosen to spend their remaining lives in an RV parked in a massive paved lot behind a casino. Enough said?

We checked out of the hotel and loaded the gear onto the bikes in our now well-practiced ritual. We rode 1/2 mile east on Glendale Avenue to Ross's Garage. Along the way Marty had to perform the coast-through-right-turn-on-red-and-make-a-U-turn maneuver once to avoid stopping and stalling the bike.

Once at the garage, we talked to Charlie, the owner. We later learned that Ross had passed away five years ago and that changing the name did seem right. I told him about our situation.  Charlie quickly confirmed a) what we had gathered from our internet research and b) that he knew Kawasaki clutches. And with the strong endorsement from the man at the gas stop the previous night, I felt really comfortable with him.

And so we left the two bikes at Ross's Garage. Enterprise Car Rental came to pick us up, along with our saddlebags and camping gear. There was a bit of confusion in the pickup that led to us waiting an hour, but Enterprise made up for it by upgrading us to a bigger vehicle at the lower rate. We were soon on the road in a handsome and rugged GMC Terrain SUV headed northwest for Bonanza OR.

The looming question was whether the Kawasaki Ninja's clutch could be repaired in time.