Richard Polishes Cars And Stacey Polishes Teeth

I wrote in my last post how I had taken my MINI to the shop yesterday. I forgot to mention that the shop owner, who I had never previously met, let me take his heavily-modified and way-too-fast BMW M3 convertible over to Downtown Disney. Ummm...let's just say it was a risking-loosing-my-license event...

Anyway, the shop I used is the same complex as my friend Richard Lin's car-detailing business, Show Car Detailing. Richard's one of those guys who's taken what he loves and turned it into a business where he gets to play with really expensive cars every day. Here I am with Richard in his shop with a customer's brand new 5-series BMW:

When most people think of car detailing, they probably picture random dude at the local car wash who washes your car and maybe waxes it too. Well, the word detailing doesn't even begin to describe Richard's work. It wasn't until I went to the dentist today that I realized that what he does should be referred to as "car-paint plastic surgery" or something like that. Let me explain...

That picture above is me with Stacey, my great dental hygienist. I love going to the dentist because of how clean and smooth my teeth are when I leave. No matter what they look like when I go in, she spends as much time as it takes to make sure that every square millimeter looks and feels perfect. Take this idea and apply it to your car; that's what Richard does. Both of them have an ability, no, an addiction to make things super clean and shiny.

I don't have any before-and-after photos of my teeth; you'll have to trust me on that one. I did take some before-and-after photos of Richard's work to give you an idea of what he does. If you look at the reflection of the right-most fluorescent light, you'll see the the top part of the light's reflection is all fuzzy (the "before") and the bottom part almost looks like a mirror (the "after" polishing but, believe it or not, before the final wax has been applied):

This is probably a good representation of how my teeth feel when I leave the dentist. On the car side, I had always thought that I was a bit crazy when it came to taking care of my car but I didn't know what was really "possible" until I met and learned from Richard. He's so obsessed with the details, he even has the license plate to prove it. It's somewhat hard to see in this photo but his MINI Clubman's plate says "OBSSSSD":

Next time I'm in getting my teeth cleaned I'll check out Stacey's ride to see if she's got something similar. Thanks Richard and Stacey for making my world just a little bit cleaner! :-)