Heroes

 

Kristen and I have been absolutely floored by the people that have gone out of way to help us continue on our trip. It's been really eye-opening and has forced us to take a good look at our own generosity.

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After a night's rest, we woke up and got to work. 

Our portable workstation:

The beautifully fouled plugs:

And a dirty, rotten punk that mocked me throughout all our work in the parking lot:

After several hours of messing with the bike to no avail, I reached out to Chuck, a member of the Ural-specific forum Soviet Steeds who had offered his assistance. Chuck is retired Air Force and a self-described metalhead - he's also a swell dude. He drove from Clovis, NM (3 hours away) just to help us get our bike up and running again. It turns out that one of the washers underneath the spark plug was flattened by over-tightening or something - either way, it caused an air leak in the head. The plugs were so fouled that they were pretty much useless (running rich-much?), so we added new plugs and worked through the carburetors to change out the pilot jet. The elevation was obviously killing the bike, but with those changes all of a sudden Elga came back to life. 

Seriously, what a guy:

After a full day of working on the bike, we hit the jacuzzi. Job well done! 

Tomorrow we head to the mountains!