Lubing and wiping it down like it owes you money
Okay. Chain's clean now, or should be, if you did the last lesson. Degreased, rinsed, dried. Don't skip drying, by the way. Water sitting in those chain links just invites rust, and we get hard water here that leaves its own residue on top of everything else. Give it a real dry before you touch the lube bottle.
Here's the thing about this step. It's the one people either ignore completely or way overdo, and both wreck your chain in different ways.
What kind of lube, honestly
Doesn't need to be fancy. A basic bike-specific chain lube from any hardware store or bike shop does the job. You want something labeled "dry" lube if you're mostly riding the Murdock Canal Trail or similar, because that trail throws a lot of dust and grit at you, and a dry lube attracts less of it. Wet lube is better if you're riding in actual rain a lot, which, let's be honest, isn't most of us most of the year out here.
Don't use WD-40 as your chain lube. It's a solvent more than a lubricant. It'll clean the chain in a pinch but it won't protect it long term.
Applying it
Flip the bike over or get it on a stand. Spin the pedals backward with one hand and drip the lube directly onto the chain with the other, right where the rollers meet the links. One drop per link, roughly. You're not painting a fence, you're just touching each link once.
Keep going for a full rotation of the chain so you hit every link. Takes maybe thirty seconds.
Now the part everybody skips
Let it sit for a minute so the lube actually soaks into the rollers instead of just sitting on the surface. Then take a rag, an old t-shirt, whatever you've got, and wipe the whole chain down hard. Spin the pedals backward again while you pinch the rag around the chain. You want to see grime coming off on the rag.
I tell people to wipe it down like it owes you money, and I mean that. Aggressive. You put the lube on to get into the mechanism, not to sit on the outside collecting dust. Any lube left on the surface of the chain is just going to grab trail dirt and turn into paste.
This is where I'll bring up an opinion I hold pretty strong. Over-lubing is worse than under-lubing. A chain that's a little dry but clean will outperform a gunked-up wet one every single time on a dusty trail. I learned this one myself, the hard way, dripping way too much lube on a chain and watching it turn into a black paste by the end of one Murdock loop. Disgusting. Took me another full degreasing to undo that mistake. So less is more here. If in doubt, use less lube and wipe more.
A quick aside on tools, since we're on the topic of doing things cheap and slightly imperfect
I bought a truing stand off a marketplace listing a while back. Drove clear up past the point of the mountain to grab it because the price was right. Got it home, set a wheel in it, and the thing was warped. Base wasn't flat. I used it for a solid year anyway, because it was good enough to get a wheel close, and close was what I needed. Same idea applies here. You don't need the fanciest lube or a laboratory-grade drivetrain cleaning kit. Basic lube, a rag, a little patience wiping it down. That'll get you most of the way there.
Checking your work
Spin the pedals by hand after you've wiped it down. It should be quiet. Not silent, bikes make some noise, but no grinding, no dry squeak. If it's still squeaking, you probably didn't get lube into every link, or you wiped off more than you put on. Go back and hit it again.
One safety note here, and it's a real one. Keep lube off your brake pads and rims if you're running rim brakes. A greasy rim means grabby, unpredictable braking, and it's a pain to clean off properly once it's soaked in. If you're dripping lube onto the chain, do it low and controlled, not flinging it around near the wheel.
Before next time
Do this after your next couple rides, not just once. A chain that gets lubed and wiped down regularly will last you years longer than one that gets ignored until it's crunchy. Bring your bike next time and we'll look at how the chain's wearing so you know what "needs replacing" actually looks like.