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It was another quiet day today in Croninland. Jack is still feeling under the weather but showing signs of life. I had to head off to Count Dracula, the lap where they draw off gallons of wine to see how much Oso Bucco I have eaten lates and guess how many glasses of wine I have had. (By the way, just made recent purchase of the Silver Oak Cellars 2007 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Great wine and we should be able to suck this up right away.) Anyway, I got the office and we are working on an article for the Undersea Journal and reviewing a huge document under review.

Because it is so boring in our house today, I thought I'd dig up a chapter from my never ending book, But I Digress. BID is a collection of stories I have written about memorable moments in our life. This one goes back to January 20, 2009. Inauguration Day. I hope you enjoy.

20 January 2009

I just watched the inauguration of Barack Obama, my President. (yes I was calling him my President back then. I gave him 365 days and the benefit of the doubt.) His speech made me think of the miraculous thing I did this weekend.

As part of my bucket list, you know that list of things you want to do before you die, I wanted to polish a sports car. I used to have polish my belts on that list, but after watching a good friend of mine actually polish his belts one day, I decided it was not all it was cracked up to be so I no longer have polish my belts on my bucket list. Anyway I had weak moment a couple of years ago and bought a BMW 650i

 convertible. It is my midlife crisis. It was one of the things I could do as part of my midlife crisis that I could almost afford and would not result in a divorce. But I digress.

I always wanted to detail a nice sports car. You know get in there with Qtips and towels, and cotton balls and all the things that make a car beautiful. I thought this would be really rewarding now that I have a sports car. So I asked Jack if he wanted to help me detail my car. He said "Why." I explained to him the personal feeling of reward he would have by helping me with this chore. Again he said "Why?" I explained how a car like this if treated well could last years and years. He said, "yeah, so." It was then I remembered he was saving up for an iTouch (So three years ago), so I said, I'll pay you $20.00 to help me with the car. He said, "Cool".

I also mentioned to him that he would be driving in about 6 years (that went by fast) and if all went well, this car could be his. He said, "Cool. I still get the $20.00, right." Ah, father son bonding. It doesn't get much better than this.

Anyway, I asked one of my guys at the office, what is the best car wax you can buy. Bob C. has owned more cars than I have owned underwear. He has won many acknowledgments for antique classic cars. He came in the office the next day with a 5 gallon drum of car cleaning products and a suitcase that looked like it held the atomic weapon launch device.

He quickly showed me the shampoo to use, the primer cleaner, the fine detail cleaner, the Zainco Polish with the Zainco actuator, the leather cleaner and leather conditioner (my favorite goop), and the polishing machine.

This looked like a machine tool grinder. It had Velcro a head and different pads and polishing heads and would spin my way to a beautiful high gloss sheen. I told Ellen, my assistant my plans to detail my car. She said, "Why". I explained that it would be a great bonding experience with my son, that it would be great exercise because you all know how I treat my body like a temple, (Laughter here. . . . . . . . . . . .) and the pride I would feel once I was done a took a look at my clean machine. The morning had come and it was time. Washing it was easy.

It was downhill from there. I had seen an infomercial before the Holidays about Shamwow. It is like this chamois on steroids. You can put this piece of cloth on an oil spill on your drive way and it will suck up an Arab from the center of the earth. The thing is incredible, on Television. Right out of the box came two big yellow Shamwows, and a bonus pack of 6 little purple Shamwows. I placed the new Shamwow on the back of my beautiful machine and expected every drop of water to go scurrying into my Shamwow. Perhaps you have to get the Shamwow wet before you use it. Now I was ready to have every moisture based molecule to stream right into my Shamwow leaving the glisten black paint behind. Ok, I was now pushing water all around my nice care leaving the same about of water on my car but the drops of water were now subdividing into smaller and smaller droplets of water. As I got more frustrated I came up with a new name for the product. SCAMwow. (you'll note you don't see the TV commercials anymore) Jack and I quickly changed to 100% cotton beach towels.

Fortunately Devin was at the stable playing with her horses so she did not see me drying the car with these huge 6 foot towels, dragging then across the driveway and gathering graphite in the wheel hubs of my chrome wheels. Anyway we got the car almost dry and managed to cover the car with thousands of little pieces of cotton spittles from the once new beach towels. Not to worry, because we have not been to the beach since the Japanese ran submarines off the coast. But I digress.

I was now ready to get out the polishing machine. First I had to take the Zainco polish and put six drops of actuator into the polish and shake vigorously for 2 minutes. Thirty seconds into the shaking thing, I suggested Jack finish shaking the polish. I took a rest from the vigorous shaking. I put a scant amount of polish onto the machine tool grinder. Once the wheel hit my car the rotating head stopped. Not understanding it was an oscillating polisher, it looked as though it had come to a stop. I lifter the head and knew I just had to increase the speed. I pumped it up to number 7.

I did not know what that meant and Bob C. had told me not to go above 6. Little spittles of polish were now being splattered on me, on the car, on the driveway, on the clean towels I chose not to use to dry my car, on my son, and on my Ford F-250 about 18 feet away. Cool, this was a real good idea.

After several attempts to apply the polish to this incredible car with the grinder polishing device I decided to use some cleaning towels. Jack and I finished applying the polish by hand to every nook and cranny of this beautiful machine. We then had the pleasure of using the magical mystical buffing machine and again, not understanding the oscillating nature of the buffer assumed it was not working despite changing the buffer heads and buffer pads at least 4 times. Cranking it up to 9 did not help either, but it do send the polish head about 34 feet into the air, way cool. As the polish began to dry, Jack and I worked feverously to get a nice sheen working on the car. The problem with getting polish in every nook and cranny on a sports car is you have polish in every nook of cranny of the sports car. A BMW 650i has a bunch of nooks and crannies. We used tooth picks and screw drivers to clean the polish off. This was a great idea. It was now hour 4 and I noticed that I had polished the scamwow droplets into the sheen of the car. It was really cool effect, but not what I had in mind. We cleaned the interior without a problem. I really liked the lanolin infused leather conditioner. My hands still feel silky smooth, greasy might be another description. As Jack and I sat there we realized the only thing left to detail were the windows. By this time the windows had 7 and a half million water drops, covered with countless spittles of polish and since we do not want the inside of the glass to be clean we made sure there was plenty of leather cleaner on the inside of the windows. A half hour later, we were done. As I looked at my car with the pride of having checked one more thing off my bucket list came a feeling of accomplishment and the need to schedule a detailing this week with people smarter and more talented than I.