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The weather was too good, and I had too much time on my hands. I'd run out of excuses, so I washed the car today. It's not the first time Kermit has been washed, just the first time by me. Every time I take him in for service, he gets a shower and a rubdown. We should all be so lucky.
The car wash kit the dealer so generously included when I bought the car turned out to contain six plastic bottles of various cleaning solutions. The only useful ones were the soap and the window cleaner. And the free stuff I supposedly qualified for never materialized, so I didn't have professional grade buffing cloths and hose nozzles. I had to make do.
Even with the best of intentions, I didn't make do very well. The one thing I have is plenty of water, and a fifty-foot hose to deliver it to the graveled area of the driveway where I parked for this ordeal. Less mud that way, is what I was thinking, but I didn't count on the fact that both of the spray nozzles I still have left over from last year leak generously, and almost violently.
It's a good thing I was wearing a pair of Levi's already dirt-stained from yard work, because I couldn't dodge the spray. Lucky for me it was the warmest day in a while. That means that (a) the soaking felt good, and (2) it dried fast.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but I don't think the car looks much better than it did before I washed it. Less mud around the wheel wells, and that's about it. I couldn't come up with anything that would wipe out the spots and streaks the water left on the finish. Ever since the paint was treated, water has beaded up on it. There ought to be some kind of cloth that will handle a treated surface.
Well, of course there is. I just don't have it, and I'll have to add it to the list of tools and materials I'll need to get before I was the car the next time. Which, at the rate I usually work, should be some time in July or August. | 
