I'm surprised I didn't crash the car today

And why, you may be asking, am I so surprised that I didn't crash my BMW today?

I washed the car the equivalent of four times yesterday.

It turns out that there's a lot of work involved in really getting a car clean. Keeping the paint in good condition requires an awful lot of work—in this case, it meant washing all the grit and grime off the car, clay barring the entire car, washing it again to get all the clay bar nonsense off, and then finally putting a good coat of wax on to keep the paint in good condition.

Of the above steps, you're probably familiar with numbers one (wash), three (wash), and four (wax), but possibly don't know a lot about two (clay bar).

Well, here's the deal: washing a car with a sponge is only so effective at removing dirt. Even though you're making contact with the car, the sponge will fail to pick up a lot of the grit left behind on the paint surface. This is doubly true with those touchless sprayer systems, which leave even more dirt behind.

The thing is that all of this added dirt will continue to damage the clear coat and paint on the vehicle, and if you really want to keep the paint in good shape, you need to remove this grit. The easiest way to do this is with a soft clay bar and a spray bottle of detailing fluid, and going over the entire car and rubbing all of the grit into the bar.

This is unfortunately painstaking work: I spent an hour yesterday with the clay bar (and an additional hour waxing)...which is fine, because it was really really nice outside and there were interesting things on the local radio station.

The result is paint that is nearly completely smooth to the touch—much more so than the typically gritty surface left behind after a car wash. A final coat of wax protects the underlying surface, and the car is ready to see the outside world again.

At some point, I'll start buffing the spiderwebbing out of my clear coat, but that's a job for another day.

P.S. Those sure are some blingtastic rims.