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It always slips my mind, thank god for the upcoming MotoGP in China and the Race event sponsor Sinopec Great Wall Lubricants. Now the tough choice is always which lubricant to select to lube the wall and who makes the best wall lubricants? Since China does have the biggest, longest and Greatest Wall, it would only make sense they would be the biggest manufacturer of Wall Lubricants.

A little history about wall lubricants.
The Great Wall actually began in the States Warring Period, from the 5th century BCE to 221 BCE, when various regional warlords built walls around their territories to protect their lands. It wasn’t until Qui Shi Quang unified China in 221 BCE and ordered all the interior walls destroyed and subsequently ordered that all the walls on the borders to the North be connected, creating what is now the 4000 mile Great Wall of China.

The unwritten story that has been handed down from family to family over the centuries is that during the reign of Quang a small group of peasants who had been ordered to spend the rest of their lives building the great wall for free started the first homebased business. They felt that this great wall project had to have hidden entrepreneurial opportunies. Several meetings were held and the men could not come up with any good ideas that they felt they could sell to the new Emperor. One idea was grafitti removal, but that didn’t go over well because the penalty for grafitti on the Great Wall was death, so there wasn’t much grafitti on the wall. Similiar ideas came and went until one night for what might have been the last meeting the wives were fixing dinner and complained about the awful oily and greasy mess they had to clean up after making up a big batch of Peking Duck. That was it……if the wall was to last for an eternity it needed to be protected from the elements. With a wall over 4000 miles long, you can imagine it went though a variety of climate zones, rainy, windy, arid. Duck fat and oil could be used to protect the wall. After some trial and error on producing the right consistency of fat and oil combination, the boys landed on what is today known as grease. Here is where the second invention came in - one of the peasants was a tool maker and he created the first grease zerk and grease gun. By injecting the grease deep into the wall it would naturally migrate out to the surface providing deep long-lasting protection. With product and application tools and methods in place, negotiations began with Emperior Quang, a contract was signed and the Great Wall Lubricants company was established.

If you’ve read about the Great Wall I’m sure you’ve read about the watch towers; actually these were Lube Towers where the hundreds of tons of grease and equipment were stored. The name Lube Towers didn’t go over well and since the towers were staffed with peasants to watch over the wall and make sure it was properly lubricated, hence the name Watch Towers.

As the years went by and things calmed down in China, economic hardships hit the Empire and downsizing was required, one of the first cuts was………you guessed it, stop lubing the wall. This turned out to be a catastrophic event for the Great Wall Lubricant Company, forcing them to go into the first known corporate bankrupcy. Additionally there were investigations into the owners of GWLC after the collapse, as apparently they had sold all their stock in GWLC right before the news that they would be losing their lubricant contract with the Empire. Additionally there were charges brought against the owners of GWLC for inhumane treatment of ducks.

Today the Great Wall Lubricant Company has been resurrected by Sinopec, formerly China Petroleum & Chemical Company. Not only does Sinopec sponsor the MotoGP races it is also recently named the Official Lubricant of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (that’s an opportunity for another blog).

Anyway, back to our fence, since I did not have the guys put zerks in our new fence when they built it this year, I’ll have to use the alternate method of application which is dipping a duck in 10w50. Actually, you have to initially soak the duck for several hours in 10w50 as the lubricant just wants to roll off the duck’s back. Then we just put the duck on the ground and let the dogs chase the duck. The duck will always run into the fence thereby applying the 10w50 to the fence. Obviously the more ducks you have the better.

So, is it time for you to lube your fence?