The unexpected pleasure of motorcycle care.
Every rider knows the Sunday morning. The bike's back from a ride, parked up, still ticking as it cools. A bucket, a hose, the low sun on the tank. The bike wash is about to start.
Washing it is, technically, a chore. So is doing the bins. The difference is nobody's ever looked forward to the bins.
That's the strange part. Most of what we own is a pain to clean and gives nothing back for it. Nobody enjoys dusting the coffee-table books, or wiping down the PlayStation, or cleaning the golf clubs they keep swearing they'll use more. The bike is the exception, and most riders can't quite tell you why.
Talk to enough of them and it slips out, usually a bit sheepishly: more riders than you'd think will admit they enjoy the cleaning. A few go further and call it therapeutic. We won't argue, though it's at best the second most therapeutic thing you can do with a motorcycle.
It helps to put it next to a car. A car you can run through a drive-through, or blast with a jet wash on the driveway, or take to your friendly neighbourhood 'hand wash' that leaves it with more swirl marks than a vinyl collection. Granted, there's another side to car care, in the world of detailing, and we respect that.
But if you own a motorcycle, chances are you clean it yourself. There are no big flat panels to hide behind, and no doing it standing up with a hose at arm's length. It's all angles and exposed metal: spokes, linkages, fasteners, the engine sat right there in the open. You get in close, by hand, which is oddly the appeal. Up close you start noticing the things you'd otherwise miss, a bolt gone loose, rust beginning on a fastener, a scuff you don't remember earning. You get to know the machine in a way you never do from just riding it.
The rest is the time away from the screens, the notifications and the rest of what we get too much of. Phone inside. Nothing to answer. It takes as long as it takes, which these days feels like a luxury. Everything else is flat out on the other side of the garage door, and for once you're not in it.
None of it is really about the bike. It's the trips, the roads, the people you met because of it. You look after it for the same reason you bought it. To keep riding it, and to have it look good while you do.
So we make a small range for that hour. Taking inspiration from the detailing world, we make products that make the ritual of looking after your motorcycle enjoyable again.
Care like you ride.
We care because you do.