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I've gotten very attached to a vest I use commuting. It's really a Bill Rodger's runner's vest that I got on sale a long time ago (round about 1987), but I don't mind cross dressing if the price is right. It is actually very good for cycling, keeps the wind off, and with a couple of layers underneath keeps me warm in all but the coldest weather. I've always been a vest person, since it lets the armpits air out without building up too much heat. I got many years of service out of said vest, but then it started to deteriorate. The first nail in the coffin was when the zipper pull fell off. This was easily solved by substituting a large size paper clip for the former pull, and several more happy years of wear ensued. Then things got more serious when the zipper itself started to deteriorate.
It got harder and harder to zip up, until finally, it wouldn't stay zipped at all. So, I heaved a deep sigh, and figured this was the end of the vest. But then I got the bright idea that its life could be extended by replacing the zipper. I had some strips of velcro laying about from some sewing projects long gone by, and this seemed to be a good use for them. So the mark II version of the vest appeared with velcro down the front. This was only moderately successful, the velcro did indeed provide some sort of closure for the vest, but it was pretty hard to get it hooked up uniformly and it tended to get caught in the fabric. Also bad things happened to it when it went into the washing machine (yes, I do wash my cycling gear periodically, whether it needs it or not). So I gave up on the vest again, and started using another one I got for Christmas.
But I still liked my old vest better. I decided that maybe I should replace the velcro with a proper zipper, and as it turned out, I had recycled an old suitcase, but saved the zippers, since I thought they might be useful sometime. And, indeed they were, since I had a vest sans zipper, and one of them was just about exactly the right length. So I fired up the sewing machine and started on the mark III version. It wasn't quite perfect, since a vest zipper has a little tab at the bottom to allow inserting the other side into the pull, whereas my luggage zipper just had a raw edge, but after a while I got the technique down of zipping the thing up. The other problem is that is has a tendency to unravel at the bottom without the tab, but as long as I don't put on too much weight in my beer belly, I should be all right. The fatal flaw with this was that it also had a tendency to get stuck, so that I practically needed the jaws of life to get out of it. So, I finally caved, and started using the real vest. But on one of those really cold days this winter, I got the great idea of wearing it backwards under my real vest as yet another layer (I did a pretty good Michelin man imitation on those days). So, it lives again.
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