That's One Fine Coat

One of the ongoing problems I've been continually trying to address is that of comfort. With the extension of atrophy in my arms, which are essentially skin and bones these days. I'm finding that propping my elbows on pretty much anything can get rather uncomfortable rather quickly. Including my wheelchair.

I looked up all sorts of elbow pad options in the past, these tend to be rather tight fitting around the arm making them happy and not terribly comfortable to wear. Not to mention hot. The gel filled elbow pads were particularly bad for heat. Not to mention they were rather heavy. I will admit, they worked rather well.

Velcro insert pockets
on the elbows!

The other day while rotating around the Internet doing some window shopping for a light coat to replace the one I have I stumbled across the tac.u Coat from propper. It's basically a military style field jacket. But what is interesting about it is it has Velcro insert pockets on the elbows. Allowing you to insert elbow pads, or in my case a thin sheet of high density foam. The foam is very lightweight and being only half an inch thick makes it rather flexible. This is just enough padding to add an extra layer of comfort and take the sharp edges off of whatever I'm putting my elbow on.

The jacket is available in all sorts of other military colors/camouflage and is quite reasonably priced at US$40. Myself I chose the black one, but I do have to admit. The subdued urban camo is pretty cool.They are easy enough to find on Amazon.com, eBay and various tactical websites. I ordered mine from ACU.com which seem to offer the best shipping rate Canada.

On a side note, one of the fun things about the Coat is and has all sorts of Velcro patches on the shoulders which are intended for military badges and insignia. However, we've taken a bunch of Velcro tape and stuck it to some fun things/toys from my Four year old boy to Stick to me. Including the back of my iPhone. He finds it rather hilarious to watch YouTube while it stuck to my shoulder.

As limiting as I am in the way I can interact with him, got to find ways to be creative. And this that means looking a little silly, so be it! ;-)

All in all, so far I quite like the jacket. I should point out however the slaves are quite baggy. I ordered a large, which usually works out quite well for me. However in this case it turned out to be rather loosefitting around the chest. I probably could've done with the medium. But it does make for very good spring jacket.

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I would also like to just take a second to send a big thank you to Albert Wojciechowski for his contribution to this site :-)