So today was just a really off day for me generally. Monday’s are really my only “day off”, as Sunday’s I’m usually at the church most of the day helping anyway or participating somehow. Still it’s a chore day...
I’ve had to wake up way earlier than normal all weekend to get stuff done and also today (will have to tomorrow too). So needless to say things are falling through the cracks here and there. The morning today started off dropping the kids off to school, then going with the missus to a drop off place where she departed with some coworkers for a two day work retreat, took a 3 hour exam, came home to do my weekly yard work, but found out the older pooch had another accident, so got that cleaned up, then did the yard work, and by the time I was finished, took a quick breather then went to pick the kids up from school, do a delivery for my wife, then come back home. Thankfully the rest of the evening should prove uneventful and relatively simple compared to yesterday and this morning. ? /rant off
That left me at about 3:20pm and I realized I never got a shave in this morning.
So I made the choice to get one in now that things are settled for a bit, and I decided to test my manliness.
The soap I had wired up yesterday in anticipation for a nice day off and shave today (hah!) was Scheermonnik: Delfts Wit, one that seemed intriguing when initially sniffed out of Dave’s gift. I wanted to give the soap it’s due time but have a quick clean up today, so I made the decision to set it aside for tomorrow.
Instead, all I took into the bathroom was my folding Feather AC SS. Literally. No cleansing shower, hot water hydration, soap, brush, AS, alum, balm, or anything else other than cold tap water and the Feather.
I’d heard someone in “the other place” rave about the shaves they got with just water and razor. I decided to put it to the test myself. After all, tough, gritty, Ranger and Navy Seal type dudes do it all the time in movies right? What could possibly go wrong?
I decided to do a one pass with cleanup just to get
something done to my stubble; it’s was mentally irritating me that I hadn’t shaved. So, I rubbed on a good amount of cold water and let it sit for about 20 seconds. Then, I got to work.
To say the shave started out uncomfortably would be an understatement; there was skipping, stalling, pulling, and tugging. I
almost gave up, but I psyched myself up, to not wimp out, and kept going.
I rewet each area and rinsed the razor with pretty much every stroke. This allowed my face and whiskers to continue their slow hydration and give some kind of glide. My normal shaving angles did not work, so there was a lot of adjusting, experimenting, and I keep the razor at the absolute flattest it could go with a well-used Pro blade (today was the 14th shave on it). My pass and clean up settled largely into a WTG/XTG hybrid, closer to the XTG side of things. The shave smoothed out considerably after I found the angle and my face/whiskers had hydrated more. By my clean up, I was able to use almost no water except what was one the razor from rinsing it off between strokes. It actually turned into a decently smooth shave by the end.
Rinsed the face off with cold water and that was it.
Final result of this experiment was CCS all around, no nicks, weepers or cuts, no irritation, no dryness.
I don’t know what to say...
