My First Shave with a Double Edge Razor

In an earlier post I told you about a gift my wife gave me. An Art of Shaving (AoS) Travel Set that includes pre shave oil, shaving cream, after shave balm and a badger hair shaving brush.

I liked the way the shave went so much with a disposable razor I did a little research on the interwebs and ended up buying a Merkur 23C Long Handle Safety Razor (aka 180).

I also bought a couple of blade sampler packs to go with it. I chose to use the Gillette Platinum blade to start. Blades are a very personal choice. What works well for one person my be a face shredder for another.

This blade worked out extremely well for me. I have shaved several times with this type of blade now and not a single nick, cut or irritation.  Knock on Sandalwood. aka

Man in a Can. This is the scent my wife got me for my birthday. It is a very popular scent in mens grooming products. On to the process.

I take a nice hot shower to start. Then I use the Art of Shave Pre-Shave Oil to prepare my face. Next I use the AoS Shave Cream. Just one squirt and dab it on my face, then take the Pure Badger Brush and dip it in hot water, then shake off the excess to build a nice lather on my face using circular motions at first to help lift and separate the whiskers followed by a paintbrush motion. Sort of like wax on wax off followed by paint the fence a few times.

Now for the hard part. I have never used a DE Razor before this day. I had seen my father use one some 45 or so years ago.  Carefully I place the blade in the razor and put it to my face. I have to

remember not to apply pressure as this can cut or scrape your skin. This is not a cartridge blade. It does not have the same protection I am used to and since I tend to use my blades way past their useful life I tend to press pretty hard.

So I smoothly and carefully rest the razor against my face and let the weight of the razor apply the pressure. I then find the correct angle (about 30 degrees) and pull the razor down my face from my sideburn to my chin. This is called the WTG with the grain pass. You can hear the whiskers being cut. Since it is a double edge I turn the razor around and make a second pass right next to the first like a Zamboni resurfacing the ice at a hockey game. Time to rinse of the blade. All in all it takes about 20 passes on you face like mowing a lawn except you only work in one direction.

I started with about 4 days growth. I wanted to make sure I had more whisker than skin on this first

try. This first pass brought it down to about a five o'clock shadow. Time to re-lather. There is still plenty left on the brush so just a quick rinse of the face with water and I paint on more lather still left on the brush till my face is nice and slick with a nice white frosting. It's amazing how little cream or soap you need to make enough lather to shave 3 or more passes. A bit the size of a pea goes a long way.

Now according to all the shaving gurus, across the grain ATG is how you should shave next. Just like

before let the razor do all the work and listen to the blade make a scratching sound making passes just like the Zamboni except just scraping in one direction.

Since you are not using 2 or more blades at once and tugging the hair past the skin before you chop it off it takes a few passes to get a really close shave. But your face will thank you for taking the time. Just think of it as foreplay.

After both passes my face is pretty smooth but not baby bottom smooth or BBS is shavers jargon.

So, me, not listening to all the experts who say don't go for BBS the first time out, went for the against the grain shave ATG. rinse, repeat. Listen to that wonderful sound of a razor cutting whiskers.

Talk about a wonderful shave without any redness, bumps or irritation from my shirt collar all day long.

After that last pass a rinse with cold water to close the pores and a dab of AoS after shave and man did my face look, feel and smell great.

I have learned since that first shave that even a 2 pass shave once you finish and dab on the after

shave is a very close shave. It's sort of like once you close the pores your face sort of sucks back the whiskers. All the pre shave prep actually hydrates and softens them up making them easier to cut. So once they dry they do shrink a bit.

I write this post almost 3 weeks after my first shave and I have changed some of the products I use a bit and have gotten bit by SAD Shave Acquisition Disorder. I now have many new soaps, creams and something called Skin Food. I especially like the Geo. Trumper Limes.

I might just do a review of some of this newly acquired stuff in a future post.

The Ultimate Driving Experience a.k.a BMW Uber Test Drive

Once a year in cities around the U.S. BMW USA holds events where you can learn more about their cars and even drive them more than around the block at a dealership.

https://ude.bmwusa.com is the link to find one near you. The locations change as they are scheduled. The one I did was just held in The Los Angeles Area. These events are sponsored by BMW and Area Dealers. They do hope to sell you a car. There are many of the latest and greatest cars to look at and a few to drive.

They have 4 different options to choose from:

Street Drives: Nothing really special here. Just a test drive of the car you choose. Free.

Auto Cross: A two hour class on how to drive a BMW M235i around a closed circuit course that test your skills as a driver. Fun and Free.

Teen Driving Class: A Half day class where any licensed or permitted driver under the age of 21 is taught some defensive driving and why you should text and drive. Accident avoidance is the main focus and I highly recommend that you take your young driver to learn these skills. And it's all free. Will your kid want a BMW when it's over? Maybe, but take them anyway.  A program like this costs at least $300 if not more where they are taught/

And I have saved the best for last. Why? $650  Not everyone can afford that much to play hard and drive fast in a BMW M3 and M235i.

You get a full day of professional instruction by real race car drivers and lots of time driving these cars to limits that unless you take your car to a Track Day you would never do with you car willingly.

The day starts with about 1 hour of classroom instruction on proper driving technique. Not what your parents taught you or your High School driving instructor unless your teacher was Danica Patrick.

They teach you to put your hands at 9 and 3, not 10 and 2. When avoiding something like an accident or that car coming at you, don't look at the thing you want to avoid, look where you want to go.

String Theory. Not String Theory from quantum physics but driving string theory. The three ways of changing a cars direction. And you thought that the only way to change direction was using the steering wheel.

Then the real fun begins. They take you out on the track. In this case it was a big parking lot marked of with cones and chalk but for sake of argument we will call it a track.

The instructors will show you how it's done once and then it's your turn.

The first thing they do is teach you how to really use ABS Braking. ABS brakes are meant to be used hard when avoiding an accident. All the way to the floor as hard as you can. If 1 is light pressure and 10 is hard, 10 is how you use them to stop. First you accelerate to 30, hold that and drive to the imaginary line marked by a set of orange cones. Then you get to see how long the car takes to stop. You do this again increasing 10 MPH at a time until you get to 60 MPH. The distance to stop at 60 MPH is not twice that of 30 MPH. It increases exponentially.

Once you have learned how to stop straight they add a turn at the end. A 90 degree turn, with the brakes still on. The ABS on a BMW and most recent cars  is not just anti-lock brakes but Alternate Brake and Steering. Now days they can sense if the car is doing what you want it to do. They figure if you turn the wheel you actually want it to turn that way. Anybody who has driven old ABS or cars without ABS that if you are going fast enough and you try to turn the car will just keep going straight.

Not anymore, now when you turn the wheel and slam on the brakes the cars changes the pressure on the brakes at each wheel so the car will do its best to make the turn as well. This is why if you are driving on the street or if you aren't on a track you should never turn off the DSC.

The next exercise is a 40 MPH lane change, no brakes. You accelerate to 40 MPH and change one full lane to the right without taking your foot of the gas and then stop in a box in the other lane just ahead of you. How often do you that?

And the last accidence avoidance maneuver is the box just fell off the truck in front of you exercise.  You drive straight ahead towards a cone and when the instructor tells you which direction to avoid it at about 60 MPH you either swerve right or left and get back in your lane and then stop straight ahead.

So far everything above is in the Teen Driving Course.

Lunch Time. A box lunch from a place like Panera or Paradise Bakery.  Soft Drinks and water are provided all day.

Now comes the real fun. It's time to put what you learned into action on the Autocross Track. If you are not familiar with Autocross, it's basically a course built in a really large parking lot made by putting up a bunch of cones where you have a bunch of turns with a few short straight aways and one longer straight away. Most cars don't get over 50-60 MPH on the straights and many of the turns are done around 30-40 with at least one turn at the end of a straight where you get to 60 MPH and brake down to 10MPH do a 90 degree turn and then floor it to the next turn. The whole lap takes between 34 and 40 seconds. For the next hour or two you take turns doing 3-4 laps in a M235i.

Time to go back to the practice area and do some skid training.  Now for those of you who didn't grow up where there is ice and snow doing donuts in a parking lot around the light posts this next event is for you. They have these sleeves they put on the back tires so that the car skids at about 10 MPH. You get to do skids in figure eights and ovals around cones. Even if you did this kind of thing as a kid it's not easy.

Back to the Autocross Track to compete for best time against the other folks in your class. There were 14 in mine. A very good number because there were 12 instructors.  They divided the class into two groups so the teams competed for best team and best individual overall.

We did a relay style race where you did one lap around the track and had to stop in a designated box. Stop with a wheel anywhere outside the box and you add five seconds to your time. Knock over a cone anywhere on the track, add two seconds to your time. Since the best times were 100ths of a second apart one cone knocked over could set you back 4 places. Stop outside the box and it could put you dead last.

The times were individual for First Place and cumulative for Best Team. Since it was a relay how fast you changed drivers counted as well.  Team time was from the start of the first driver to last driver stopped in the box. Watching 6 others in your team driving around the track was very exciting. You also got to watch the other team.

The times were so close that it was hard to keep track. Almost all the drivers were in the 36 second range give or take half a second. A few had times in the 38-40 second range on both teams. One guy on the other team stopped outside the box. One guy on our team knocked over a cone. This race was in the brand new M3's. These cars are far faster and stop much better that the M235i.

Once the final race was done we headed back to the clubhouse and got right to the awards.

I found out my team lost by less than 1 second. I also found out I had the best time on my team but was 3rd overall. I missed 1st by less than 1/2 a second.  There were a couple of guys making fun of the clock that kept time to 1000th of a second.

So do I recommend paying $650 bucks to spend the day beating up a new BMW? Absolutely! If you buy or lease a new BMW in the subsequent 60 days you get a code you give to the dealer that gets you $1000 off. Would I buy the car? Well, many of the folks there already drove a BMW. One guy had and M3 that was 10 years old and was debating if he was ready to trade up to a new one. He still loved the one he had and it had less than 45k miles on it.

So am I going to take my coupon and go down to the dealer and buy a new BMW. No. I find the base car really boring. Not a car you want to spend the hour most people drive to work every day. And the cost of the fully loaded Leather lined 24 speaker Harman/Kardon Sound system? 50k for the M235i and almost 80k for a M3.  Sorry, I don't find driving the car on the street or even the track any more fun than my Mazda Miata. It's not as fast, and it's not even as technologically advanced but it's as much fun to drive and even brand new, fully loaded half the cost.

In the BMW M3 you can do 80 MPH in like 6 seconds and not even know it. In my Miata I can go 0-60 in seconds and feel like I'm doing 80.

If your interested I have a coupon that can get you $1000 of your next BMW for sale. Make me an offer.

Shaving. The low cost of going old school. Maybe.

Travel Set

I hate shaving. So much so that if I don't have to go to work that I skip doing it for days.

When I do shave I do it in the shower with a disposable razor you get by the gross at Costco. As for shaving cream, I just use what ever soap we have in the shower.

Well for my birthday my wife bought me a shaving gift set from The Art of Shaving. I sort of said thanks and was thinking you know I really hate to shave, don't you?

Well she couldn't wait for me to use it. I still had 3 days till I had to go to work but she wanted me to try it out. I made excuses for a couple of days but we were going out for my second bday dinner since the one we had on my birthday was so crappy (see my yelp review).

So I took a shower and proceeded to the sink to shave. Remember, I haven't shaved outside the shower in years. This gift (yuck) required this big ordeal to use. It had a pre shave gel, shaving cream and a brush that you use to put on the shaving cream and an after shave gel for when you finish shaving. The only thing it was missing was a razor. Why? Because the ones she saw in the store were lots of dough. Anywhere from $55 to $300. Yikes!

I now have to read the directions since I have never used any of this stuff before. Wash face with warm water. Put small amount of pre shave gel is hand and rub all over beard. Now get shaving brush wet and put shaving cream on brush and lather. To say it was complicated would be lying. It was actually pretty easy once you did it and followed the directions. It was just not a daily ritual I was used to.

Anyway, I get my face all lathered up per the directions and proceed to shave with my cheap trusty razor. A new one actually. Not one I have used 7 or 8 times till it rips the whiskers out of my face instead of cutting them. Did I forget to mention that I'm cheap and using a .75 cent razor once or twice is like cutting up a dollar bill every couple of days.

So after I shave I use the after shave gel and to my surprise I get a really nice shave. No pain, no cuts, no irritation. This using quality shaving creams and gels might have some thing going for it.

But although I like the shave and think I know everything because that's the way my father did it back in the 60's I say to my wife that you leave the shaving brush wet with the little bit of shave cream left on it in a mug next to the sink.

Well in our house we don't take the other persons word for it. No, we google it till we find evidence to support our case. In walks my wife with her computer and she shows me this:

"It is also important to take care of your brush after the shave. Rinse your brush thoroughly to remove all of the soap or cream and leave it in an open area where it can completely dry, since mildew and soap scum will also deteriorate badger hairs and cause breakage." from a website called Shaving 101.

These guys take shaving really seriously.  I have learned a lot from this site just reading a few of the 100's of articles this site has to offer.

The first and most important thing is shaving doesn't have to hurt. It can be something you actually look forward to.

Don't be so cheap that you cut your face and irritate your skin. Use a fresh blade every 3rd or 4th shave.

And the bottom line. Going Old School and using a DE (Double Edge) Razor and disposable blades can save you money.

www.shaving101.com wrote a really good article on the costs of shaving with canned shave creams and disposable plastic razors vs DE Razors and Quality shave products so I am going to link to it here. http://www.shaving101.com/index.php/education/double-edge-shaving/164-money-magazine-got-it-wrong.html

It can also cost you lots of money because you just might make it a new hobby like the guys who write the site.

After reading this I just spent another $200 on shaving supplies. The guy who dreaded shaving and hated spending a buck a week on a new plastic razor.

But if you just spend the minimum to get a good shave after one year (according to the article) you can save $26 the first year and more than $50 very year after that.

In the last day I have ordered a DE Razor, Travel Case for it (I travel 3-4 days a week) and some blade sample packs. Apparently you need to find the blades that work best with your beard and skin. The same goes with creams apparently.

Also if you travel like I do you can't carry on your razor blades, they have to go in checked baggage along with your creams and gels over 3 ounces.