Do Not

The time had come to wash my riding gear – too many days of rain and road dirt had resulted in things developing a bit of a personality, if you know what I mean. I’ve washed this gear before, but I always got a kick out of the cleaning instructions on the tag inside the jacket. Of course I ignore these instructions and things have always come out fine. This time around, I snapped a couple of pics to share.

Here’s the cleaning instructions tag.



If you can’t make out what it says, there are basically a lot of “Do Not”’s on there:

Do not machine wash the outer garment.
Inner removable liner may be machine washed.
Maximum Temp 40C.
Do not iron.
Do not dry clean.
Do not bleach.
Do not soak.
Do not wring dry.
Rinse with care.
Gently sponge outer garment with a non-biological detergent.
Completely dry before storage.

Jeez – for something supposedly tough enough to handle interaction with pavement at high speeds, this stuff sure does sound pretty dainty. Besides, it says over on the right side of the tag that both the inner and outer garments are made from the same material (100% polyester). So how come I can wash one, but not the other? Who cares! They’re going into the machine!!

(First, I gotta remove the body armor – that stuff would stay wet for days, otherwise.)

I did put the dryer on “medium” heat and that seemed to be nice and gentle enough for the gear. Out it came; Nice and clean and smelling pristine!

Too bad it’s raining again today…

Ride Hard, Smell Pretty