Chain lube proved vital to wellness

My partner is into wellness. I like doing the stuff that I like which, I guess, in turn is also wellness. What I like about her being into wellness is that more often than not it seems to be about little tweaks and changes to everyday life that makes you a bit happier.

Eat a kiwi fruit in the evening for better sleep? OK - who doesn’t like kiwi fruit? There isn’t really a bad time (other than perhaps whilst driving) to enjoy one.

Get a tongue scraper to scrape your tongue a bit after you brush your teeth to promote good tongue… stuff? Feels like an easy win.

I think there’s a little bit of wellness in building bikes too. Brake levers perfectly level with each other? Of course. Tubeless valves matched to the same letter in the logo of the tyres heat stamp front and rear? Bliss.

But recently I’ve (re-)unlocked a new level of down-to-my-bones bike wellness; Squirt chain wax.

Don’t let that last word put you off. This isn’t one of those borderline perverse odes to having a mini deep-fat frier full of chain wax in your kitchen for you to coax your dripping silvery beauty from whilst feeling spits of molten wax burn your freshly shaved forearms.

Squirt is a water and wax emulsion which seemingly does everything that you could ever want a chain lube to do. It’s solvent-free and biodegradable, it can be applied in dry or wet conditions, it doesn’t leave a ‘grinding paste’ residue and it doesn’t separate in the bottle. To cap it all, it’s not that expensive either.

When I was buying my Forbidden Druid V2, I read a couple of posts and got advice from a friend who had tested one that the high pivot design necessitated above average chain care. This wasn’t going to be a problem as I am a bit of an obsessive when it comes to cleaning my bike and staying on top of maintenance. Cool guy vibes.

The wellness bit comes just before a ride when I apply half an application of Squirt. That sounds like an advert, it’s not meant to. But on cycling the chain through a few cranks you can actually feel it free up under the silky smooth influence of my personal favourite white emulsion.

Even when coated in bog crap/dark matter the chain runs smootly and when I come to clean it there’s no residue or fondant icing left behind on the jockey wheels.

Like a hot sauce, there are various different configurations and volumes that you can buy Squirt in. There’s even a cold weather version rated in temperatures from five degrees to -15 degrees centigrade which I didn’t know about and now need to get hold of.

Amongst the handiest applications are the small 15ml bottles which can be stashed in tool rolls, cars or if you are lucky enough to have a bike with one of those fashionable cupboard arrangements on the downtube.

Getting out the door for a bike ride is seldom straight forward and often wholly dependent on the many thousands of things that can be going on in our personal universe at any one time. But there’s that bit - when I feel the chain free up ever so slightly once the Squirt has been applied - that signals that it’s going to be a good ride and that this is what I do with myself. In short, it’s wellness.