Oh my god. If the child was old enough to be out working on my bike with me, there would have been a whole lot of "don't do what I'm about to do" teaching moments.
Updates on the bike - I got my clutch sorted. Never met up with my buddy but was able to figure it out myself. Without looking it up, instructions were something like "turn in the screw until it's touching the push rod, then back a quarter turn." I think my issue was I was hitting a little bit of resistance early so I thought I was touching the pushrod but wasn't. Ended up putting the screw way further in until I think I'm actually touching the pushrod, backed it off, tightened the nut, and it's good to go. Healthy amount of lube on the new cable and the clutch feels great. Now that that's working and the bike moves I can get it over to my buddys place some time in the near future to give it a double check and show me how to properly fine tune it, but for now it's fine.
As for the spark plug socket, my mechanic buddy came over but wasn't able to fix it at my place and recommended that I bring it to his shop. He was able to (carefully) get the spark plug threaded back in, now the bike is firing on all cylinders again and I can ride it to the shop.
So heres where the stupidity comes into play a bit. I've had the tank on and off a bunch over the past two weeks so I've gotten in the habit of just barely reattaching the fuel line, because it's a bit awkward and I'm a bit lazy. So last time I put it on I did the same thing, expecting that I was going to have to take it off right away again, but then I ran out of time with what I was doing and had to clean up. Yesterday I wanted to go for short test ride to make sure the bike was actually running decent enough to get to the shop so I go for a quick little ride. It's running like hell but I had drained the old gas with stabilizer in it and just left a small amount to get me to a gas station. Fill it up with fresh gas and woohoo! The bike runs like a bat out of hell! Finish up my test ride and park it for the night.
I work at 8am and the mechanic shop is a half hour from my house, so I tell him I'll be there at 730. At 7 I go to kick over the bike and...nothing. Kick, kick, kick, nothing. Kickkickkickkickkickkickkick, sweating, swearing, kickkickkickkick oh wait... maybe my fuel line rattled off? Sure enough, it did. Take of the seat and lift the tank to make it easier to get in there, reattach the line and clamp it, kickkickkickkickkickkickkickkickkickkickkick, more sweating, more swearing. We have a high of 18C today but it was freezing over night and currently 1C, so I had thought it was just cold, but I kept hearing a bit of a faint hiss out the left side that seemed concerning but it disappeared so quickly I couldn't tell what it was. Finally, I get down close to where the sound is, give a light kick and realize... when I lifted the tank the vacuum line got pulled. Ugh. Re-attach it, single light kick and the bike fired right up. Whole ordeal took about 45 minutes, with me also working on the clutch at one point thinking maybe that was the issue (I know you can't get proper compression if the clutch is off, and despite it being fine yesterday I thought maybe I messed it up again). Had I not been up since 6am and frustrated that I was running late I probably could have figured out what was wrong in a significantly less amount of time, but here we are. Lessons learned.
Bike ran beautifully on the freezing cold ride to the shop and reminded me how much I love this bike when it's running as it should. Really excited to get it back, but it'll be a few weeks.
Most likely he's going to put a Heli-Coil in, but he said he'll look at some options and let me know. I'm also getting him to install my brass swingarm bushings and swingarm bolt tube, which I bought last year but never had time to install. Not a big job but here comes the plusses and minuses - the work is going to cost me nothing, but it'll take a long time because his shop is at a school where he is a shop mechanic teacher, so everything is teaching the kids as they go. The spark plug socket needs to be fixed and I don't feel confident to do it myself so it was either free with a delay, or pay somebody (if I could get in) to get it done quicker, but riding season hasn't really started here anyway so hopefully I get it back not too long after they clean all the sand off the streets!
I'll probably update back once I get the bike back home then hopefully not again for the rest of the season. Free time is a limited and precious thing when you have a baby - there are things I want to do with the bike still, but would rather ride than wrench when I can so hopefully I'm not updating here with any work that needs to be done until after the riding season ends!