Clean from Six Feet

(Originally Published in On the Level, the magazine of the BMW Riders Association.)

Last weekend my friend Ken and I headed down to Monterey for this year’s MotoAmerica races at Laguna Seca. For me, Laguna Seca is a place where all seems right with the world: beautiful country, near the ocean, the utter tranquility only broken by various wheeled conveyances going past at supralegal speeds, making lots of clattery noises. Perfect.

But for me, the best part may be walking the paddocks. There, in workspaces that look like the ICU at your local hospital, mechanics with clean hands spin wrenches that throw off flashes of chrome, blinding passersby. Multicolored brake calipers, emblazoned with red, bas-relief “Brembo” insignias, shine like jewelry. Places like the backside of a CNC-machined swingarm gleam with the radiance of the sun.

My bikes, in contrast, don’t hold up well to such scrutiny. Look too closely and you’ll find large arthropods of prehistoric dimensions lodged in the radiator fins. My windshield provides the clarity of the deep end of the swimming pool, with no goggles. God forbid you should lift the seat. There are things that live under there that would be regarded with suspicion by the EPA or the CDC. It’s a potential Superfund site.

The elite cleaners among us, including many of my riding buddies, have centerstands that look as good as a well-polished, enamel gas tank. When my centerstand is deployed, people gasp and run the other direction. The paint is chipped, and the underlying metal has started to rust and flake. Mud, long-dead vegetation, and calcified worms are also revealed. It’s not pretty.

My riding buddies’ bikes shine with sufficient luminesce to be identified from passing spacecraft. My bikes, in contrast, display a lack of cleanliness that has the singular advantage of serving as a theft deterrent.

“Hey Bob, this one is unlocked, but honestly, who would want it? If we’re going to risk arrest, we might as well go for something clean. Let’s move on.”

The best I can claim is that my bikes look good when viewed from six feet, with no glasses and eyesight dimmed by the decades. It’s been ever thus.

Motorcycle Messiness Disorder

It’s possible that dirty motorcycles are reflective of certain personality types—a kind of Rorschach Inkblot Test for gearheads. In this system, different parts of the motorcycle denote different levels of psychological disorders. For instance, if the only the center of your hubs are perennially dirty (a particularly tough spot to get at), then you have a modest case of Messiness Disorder, and are more likely, for instance, to occasionally dribble down your front during meals. Ditto for filth under the seat; not too much to worry about overall, but note that it could lead to bigger things in your psychological profile, like chronic mismatched socks, or embarrassing stuff between your teeth after meals. On the other hand, if some prominent and easy-to-access part of your bike is covered in grime, like the top of your gas tank, a full psychological workup may be in order, and it’s likely you have become so absent minded that you may step out the front door for your next ride in only your underwear. (My neighbors hate it when this happens.)

It’s like that famous experiment where participants are asked to watch a video of a basketball game, counting the number of passes made by a certain team. What they completely fail to see is the gorilla who enters the frame, pounding his chest, before wandering off. I never see the gorilla. Or the grime on my motorbikes.

I’ve also found that messiness increases in direct proportion to the number of motorcycles owned. I’m currently at five. My bikes were much cleaner when I only had two. Sadly, this particular condition appears to be going in the wrong direction, as I am currently in the market for a 1972 Yamaha RD350, for which, mind you, there is absolutely no room for in the garage. So please do my wife a favor and don’t let me know of any in your area that are for sale. There are five divorce lawyers in my town and I don’t wish to know any of them any better than I do now, which is not at all.

It’s also possible I was meant to live in another age, when racers wore scuffed black leathers, pudding bucket half helmets, and bikes were…dirty. Very dirty. I love old -black-and-white photos of tracks like Silverstone or the Isle of Man, the mechanics sitting in the dirt, covered in grease and oil, smoking a cigarette while filling a gas tank, the parts spread out on last week’s Times of London, just before it starts to rain. In terms of priorities, cleanliness in those days was a distant second behind having a motorcycle that would make it to the finish without ingesting a valve, throwing a rod, or spewing a quart of Castrol out the breather tube.

I’m keenly aware of what I call the “Wrench/Ride” ratio. If I ever get the urge to clean on a picture-perfect day, when at least one of my motorcycles is running, I observe the time-honored commandment: “Thou shalt ride before clean.” It’s a noble intention, but my motorcycles have certainly suffered for it.

You’d think that retirement would have changed my slothful habits. Now, for the first time in my life, I am possessed of an embarrassment of time. Alas, the surfeit of leisure has only resulted in the purchase of more motorcycles, and the reading of more books and magazines about motorcycles, rather than the actual cleaning of the motorcycles I already have. Things never change.

How Not to Clean, in Five Easy Steps

None of this is for lack of trying. I have collected, over time, sponges of every size, brass brushes, four or five different types of polish, degreaser, squeegees, mild abrasives of every imaginable type (Scotch Brite, Autosol, Simichrome). I have tried S100. Muc-Off, Meguiar’s, and Honda Spray Cleaner. It’s a marvelous system, which I have devoted years of thought to. And it works, well, not in the slightest. But the armaments look impressive. My utter lack of success with all these products can only point conclusively to one thing: operator error.

The addition of a hydraulic workstand has helped somewhat. I purchased this after decades of chasing split washers around my garage floor on my hands and knees. Now, at least, I can ignore dirt at eye level.

It’s not that I am dismissive of the need for cleanliness. If I had the ability to make every aspect of my motorcycle glisten like a 100-point concourse bike, I would do it. But this particular skill is unavailable to me, like understanding particle physics, or learning how to project motorcycle racing from the streaming app on my phone to the television. It’s one of life’s enduring mysteries.

After going through this extensive cleaning regimen, and upon entering the house, my wife strides over and commands: “STOP. RIGHT. THERE.” Upon seeing my general state of filth, she decides that I am to drop all my clothes at the threshold. Sadly, for me, this is not out of any romantic intention. Rather, the clothes are to be carried directly to the laundry room and deposited in the washer. Or, in extreme cases, doused with gasoline and incinerated. 

Despite my personal lack of hygiene, there’s an okay guy underneath somewhere. And so it is with my motorcycles. Somewhere, beyond the dirt, the grime, and the entomological display in my radiator fins, lies the ineffable essence of a motorcycle. Every one is beautiful, in its own way.

Just don’t look too closely.