I couldn't do a straight blade. Too much prep work for me.
It becomes a ritual, you clip your strop up, run the warm water, put a little soap in your mug, apply your beard conditioner, and then run your razor up and down the strop a few times {takes a couple minutes while your conditioner is setting in} wet your brush, mix your soap into a lather {or you can use a cheap shave cream}, and shave... your done.. the actual shaving part goes fast once you are used to it because your not rinsing and tapping the blade like a cartridge... and you can get really close with one pass, depending on how long I went before shaves, I go with the grain across the grain and then against the grain, thats the closest shave in the world... but going just once with the grain is really close too...
Its relaxing, it helps you spend a little time thinking about nothing, you can not concentrate on anything else, just shaving... ZEN LIKE...
