Bob is back from Michigan

My neighbor Bob is back from Michigan for the winter, after spending the summer in Michigan on his 5 acre home, he was as he said tired of cutting lawn which takes 3 hours and was glad to be back in his maintenance free desert home. He brought his 98 Honda Forman ATV and was anxious to ride so we started out at 10 am with the intent of having a beer picnic up at the old silver mines, and then up to the water falls.  We barley made it on the desert trail beyond our community when Bob’s ATV started back firing and I thought someone was shooting at us as I placed one hand on my trusty “North American Arms 22 magnum” at the ready, but as I crotched and scanned the sage brush for a shooter there was only Bob looking puzzled and pointing at his engine.  After I straitening up nonchalantly as if nothing had happened, I tried a few emergency fixes and pulled the spark plug and determined that the spark plug was old, rusted and fowled.  With the spark plug barley working we made a u-turn for home and Bob went to the local Checker Auto since all ATV shops were closed on Sunday. Following my advice he had the plug cross referenced since ATV plugs are not normally carried in an auto parts stores ("uh sir we don’t carry ATV spark plugs”, “yes I know that, just cross reference it on your chart and pretend it for a car“.) Back home we discarded the bad ATV plug normally use and installed the Autolite car plug which fired right up. By this time it was after lunch but Bob at 68 with a spinal cage in his back still wanted to hit the trails so off we went. With the loss of time we decided to settle on the highest point we could find broke out the beers and started talking about his time in Arabia as a contractor and my time in Pakistan while in the Navy, riding Camels and our early start in off road racing. Two hours later it was time to get home as the sun seemed to race us down what seemed like a trail lined with pillows, I was for a moment 17 again, so we felt.