Those rubber boots get hard as plastic when they set for a long period of time. The ones on your running bike will probably not be as hard to get off but one thing you can do to make it a little easier is get a can of P B Blaster from Wal Mart, it is good at softening up rubber and is good for it, not like alot of other penetrating oil that can hurt it. Just take your time at removing them, and have a good clean well lit place to disasemble them. They are pretty simple to clean just do a good thorough job so it only has to be done once. And no, the only way to do them is by taking them off, usually the cable can be removed once you get the carbs off of the intakes, makes it easier because you can rotate the carbs to get to the linkage where the cables are attached.