the gift

Heard a knock on the door this afternoon.  It wasn’t Santa in red, but it was pretty close...  he was wearing brown and it said UPS on the side of his truck.  The Box was from “Leatt” USA.
I’m moving up in the world!

I am going from this: 

to this:

My old tattered Dakine pack was a pretty good score (even with a broken main zipper, it was “like new” in all other aspects) from the west side Olympia Food Co-op’s free box.  I paid $25 to “Yi’s Alterations” in Lacey to fix the main zipper and have rocked that pack through 4 years of riding, building and commuting.  Recently the pocket zippers had even started to break on the side that I use them the most, so I just switched to using the zippers on the other side, for the last while...  The holes on the bottom were getting pretty big though, and were definitely starting to become an issue.

The better part of the story was that Leatt Brace puts on a facebook photo caption contest where they post a photo and the best entered caption wins some free swag....  Their photo from last month was:

My entry was: “start clicking your heels, dorothy...”

When I found out I won, I was keeping my fingers crossed for an actual Leatt Neck Brace, but figured it would turn out to be a set of elbow guards or gloves or something.  When opening the box to see the new “Elements Backpack”, everything just synced!  My old Dakine pack had accepted her fate and was stoked for me to move up in the world.

Even better is that it even has side pockets that are easily reachable while riding, just like my Dakine pack, that I have found to come in quite handy...