Imagine the scene if you will. Its a dark, reasonably mild December morning, its around 05:30 and a tall manchild is standing is a semi well lit room, smiling like the Cheshire cat.
As you can imagine, that was me and I was about to ride my FireBlade for the first time in a few weeks.
The UK is enjoying a unseasonably mild December at the moment and local councils have only put road salt down once. Its still very much biking weather and I'm making any excuse to ride now.
This was also the first real, long ride since taking the brakes apart and giving it a good clean. I was taking it very easy, making sure that I bed the pads in correctly and was just out there enjoying the bike. It was dry, with little to no moisture on the roads to be kicked up by the cars and vans around me. It wasn't bad at all.
I got to work in a good time, parked up, but caught myself post ride, standing back and just looking at the bike for a few minutes. Does that kind of thing happen to anybody else out there? I know what it looks like, hell, I've just been sat on the thing for two hours, but still I felt the need to just look at it.
Anyway, annoyingly the roads got very wet about twenty miles from home, so now the FireBlade is sat filthy again, back in the garage. I'm not going to give it a decent clean until the Spring, which may sound a bit harsh. If the roads get really salty, as I expect they will do, I'll give it a quick wash down with the hose after a ride and I'll keep all the lights and mirrors clear from crap.
I'm theorising that a layer of grease and grime on the bike won't do it any harm and will in fact act as a barrier between the elements and the bike.
What's the worst that can happen?