Cleaning My Machine

There's a joke that Harley riders take their machines out for half an hour than then spend three hours cleaning them. There is much reason behind this apparent madness, and much psychological stuff too.
It's something Harley Davidson themselves understand. You clean the brightwork because it is there to be maintained; if you didn't you'd be a slacker. After all, you've just pummelled your lovely machine for hundreds of miles and you and it are filthy. Sometimes you get to like that road dirt, you appreciate it as evidence of the struggle, but sooner or later, there is the obligation to clean. By cleaning you don't just restore your machine to start all over again, but inspect it for faults; you are running your fingers over everything.
Cleaning a motorcycle or, in my case, trike, is not like cleaning a car. My brother gets furious that in Lincolnshire, people can't be bothered to clean their cars. Actually, he gets furious that local folks don't do it and the market is secured by enterprising Poles. That's not the point for me. If you don't clean your vehicle yourself, you stand no chance of understanding it.
There are many tools for the job, from toothbrushes up, and there are many custom devices to clean difficult or inaccessible parts. It is even a methodical process, clean this before you clean that, clean that with this, clean this with that. Your life, after all depends on it.
It's an exhausting process almost as much as riding itself, but the pleasure in making sure the bright bits are still bright makes you check every bolt and connection, so you are in the process of identifying with your machine. Matthew Crawford's book The Case for Working With Your Hands is a kind of contemporary Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It has much to say about a world, as in the film Wally, where humans drift about staring at screens with a sense of entitlement to do so; a world without engagement with such things. Even Wheeler Dealers' Ed China quit the show when the knew owners found the bits that made the show interesting, the fixing bits, too arduous for a millennial audience.
An old lady said to me, in passing, that you could live in my garage. Well no, but it does represent a form of second life. Even walking there, I find myself standing a little taller as I approach. I methodically release the locks, always in a particular order. If that order wasn't there, there would be more chance of error; both on the trike, and in life.
Julie smiles at my indulgence with the calendars; it's quite a collection.