Something is screwy with the chain it appears. I gave it a 10 minute try and no luck. Soooo, feeling vindictive, I broke the chain at the KMC Missing link and replaced it with a SRAM connector I had around. The SRAM connector came off of the old chain just fine (1 second job). However, I'm finding the SRAM connector difficult to remove as well. I tried for only a minute, though. Any thoughts about that?
I think I'm going to invest in the Park Master Link Removal tool.