I just wanna lube my chain…

Recently, I’ve been seeing ads for a bicycle lube company posted – pasted is a better word – on Facebook. Facebook also now has made it so you see all the activity of your friends and what they comment on or like. I’ve since figured out that that ticker thing can be hidden, which makes the whole experience less intrusive feeling. There was one product or page, in particular, that kept popping up. It was for a lube company called Gnar Lube.

Being a bike mechanic and being interested in new products and being curious if there is anything better than the lube I use, I went to the Gnar Lube Facebook page and from their to their website to see if there was anything I could learn about the lube. You know, things like technical information about why it would be a better lube. Okay, okay, there was another reason I clicked on the link.

On other websites for bicycle lubes, there are silly things like MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) that list what’s in the lube, how to handle, what to do if. There is also more technical information about why and how their lubes work. Not on the Gnar Lube site. The only technical information I could find was that one of their lubes is “Teflon Enhanced” and the other is “Moly and PTFE infused.” There probably should be one of these ® following “Teflon” since big companies like DuPont™ probably keep an eye on how their products are used. Oh, and that it’s made with “the best unicorn dust in the multiverse and other stuff made here on earth.” Sweet! Unicorn dust!

Nope, not really any technical info on their site. However, technical information is always trumped by something else. What is on the Gnar Lube website and Facebook page, and likely why it has any popularity at all, besides being, you know, gnar, is a whole bunch of images and videos of barely clad women. Sure, they are pleasing to the eye and they used my buddy’s shop to shoot the video and for that I am forever envious of him. I do admit that their logo is pretty sharp and they overall look of their site and product packaging is good. But, and here’s the big but, what happens in a couple of years? Five years? Ten years? Can they sustain the gnar-ness for that long or will it wear off? It’s chain lube. Tri-Flow®, you know, boring old Tri-Flow®, has been around since I can remember in the mid-80s and has sustained itself without one moment of gnar. Just a bunch of dudes, average looking at best, hunched over bike stands dripping it on chains, inside shifters, on pedals, brake pivots… That’s how you sustain your product. Just make the product good. It doesn’t have to be gnar. The gnar is in the riding.

So, will I change to Gnar Lube because it’s, you know, rad, dude? No thanks. I’ll stick to my same old boring lube because I like how it lubes my chain and doesn’t yank it.

(What’s playing: KWMR Daybreak)