Getting Buff

One of the things I’ve noticed in the Southwest is the amount of car washing that goes on — cars and trucks are washed continually. There are small setups everywhere – no do it yourself but rather guys who tackle the job as a team. Here in the RV park, roving entrepreneurs will wash your rig or your vehicle for very reasonable prices. Needless to say, they are hard-working Hispanics. When I got a haircut the other day, the young barber said that next time, I could get my truck detailed while I got my hair cut — they had a guy to do that.

So when we arrived, we had by far the filthiest RV unit in the park. We had hit a lot of slush and grubby roads on our trip down from Vermont and the first time I had a chance to tackle the job was when we got settled here at Americana RV Park. You can’t use the potable water system for vehicle/RV washing but there’s an abandoned water system here that available. The water has a lot of minerals but it gets the caked mud and salt off leaving lots of spots and cloudy areas. That prompted me to start working again on polishing, not just for aesthetics but more for protection of the aluminum.

So far, so good.

I brought my polishing supplies and equipment with me so for the last several days, I have spent an hour or two dabbing on polishing compound and buffing it out. The system I use has a coarse grit, a medium one, and a final polish. I’m working with only the medium stuff and it is slow going, and pretty dirty. I have to wait until people are up and about since the buffer is noisy, and need to finish before the sun gets too high and the temperature too hot — and a morning when I’m not birding or otherwise engaged — so it will be a slow process. It’s a pretty good upper body workout to wrestle with the buffer while balancing on a stepladder.

I’ve got about a quarter of the rig done and will do a little more here before we leave. It’s good to see the unit shine — just to know that it’s better protected. It also sets it off from the SOBs (Some Other Brand) that fill these parks — Airstreams are few and far between.