Hi there

Sorry for not keeping you up to date for a while but here it comes:
I disassembled the fork in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and found an oil seal from some car accessory shop there, put in on and hoped it would work well enough but no; It started leaking like hell again after 200 km. It was never ment for a bike's fork. I continued on and decided to fix it in the next country, Kenya. So now I'm in Nairobi and was lucky to get a new REAL oil seal sent from Tanzania ( www.tanzania-adventure.com - big thanks to Ronny). Now the fork stopped leaking and so far it seems that the rebound is okay but I haven't done any off road with it yet.

About the straightened front rim then, I heard a theory which I tend to believe: The rim of Tenere is quite soft alloy so after being bended and straightened back it doesn't break as easily as some others would in the same situation. So I'm gonna keep going with it.

I guess I didn't need a new front fork after all. But a big, big thanks to everyone who helped me to find one. I feel kind of stupid now that I made such a big hassle about it.

Anyway, the bike's fine and my back is almost fine, just a little aching every now and then. Tomorrow I'll leave Nairobi and head to Mombasa. There should be cheap campsites along the beach so I'm gonna stay there about a week and just take it easy .

Jami