A fellow bike appreciation friend who honors the quality of old steel lugged frames and such recently commented about how much he "hates retro bikes with a passion".  His rant had more to do with bikes refurbished in keeping with an older bike's original design and components with their inherent inability to perform or function satisfactorily.  An example he focused on is older non aero drop bar brake levers which typically provide poor comfort on the small rubber covers or "hoods" and simply do not provide enough comfortable braking power.  Hmm, debatable as anything else I suppose and to each their own.  However I enjoy finding use for components as I see fit, it helps to keep me open minded for solutions to repairs or other modifications.

I have found a nice use for the non aero brake levers particularly when converting drops bars to a trekking or touring style handlebar as pictured here when I modified a '70's Vista Summit steel lugged eighteen speed.  I wanted to convert the old drivetrain to a 24 speed cafe style bike without having to fork out a lot of money and I was confident of having plenty of spare parts kicking around the shop.  

After cutting and bending the steel handlebars to shape it is necessary to straighten the non aero caliper levers for sufficient clearance for the flat style bar as pictured above.  Recently I decided to add the Velo Orange Porteur Handlebars to our Puch Bergmeister in a classic commuter style for running errands.

Velo Orange provides quality craftsmanship with original retro styling which works very nicely in retro fitting components for bike restoration projects.  When I removed the drop bars from the Puch Bergmeister I decided to leave the bar tape, levers and orignial copper stem intact as an option so I didn't use the non aero brake levers to be modified.  Velo Orange Porteur Handlebars have an outside diameter of 23.8 mm so conventional caliper levers will not fit.  Velo Orange offers their City Levers which are a very simple design and uses a standard mountain bike style brake cable, whereas the modified non aero levers use the road style brake cables.  

At the very reasonable price of twelve bucks and free shipping I didn't see the point in tearing apart the original drop bars to use the brake levers.  However, the old non aero levers will fit the 23.8 mm Porteur Handlebars.  Just another reason I appreciate those old retro bike parts.  Nothing against Velo Orange City Levers but I personally like the style of the modified non aero levers better than the City Levers.  So, if you're looking to install some Velo Orange Handlebars with the 23.8 mm diameter and you have some old non aero brake calipers dormant in your parts bin pull them out and use them, they work great.

Happy Spring, good time to get those bike projects going for a fun year of riding.  Cheers!

Velo Orange Porteur Handlebars can be used with Inverted Brake Levers or Bar End Shifters as well.  I went with the City Levers as I may install Bar End Shifters later.

Things just keep getting better with this Chromebook.  Last week some squirrels made a mockery of our wifi network cable and we needed to find a solution for our store to continue conducting business as usual.  We learned how to "tether a phone as a wifi device".  As I educate myself a bit in an effort to keep up with techno gadget advances I am becoming more and more pleased with my recent investments.  I recently upgraded my old broken down forty dollar phone to a Moto G 4G LTE which as it turns out is waterproof even though it wasn't advertised as such and provides the "tethering" needed for me to go bike camping and stay in touch with work.  For approximately $400 this provides a new work from anywhere solution that I'm beginning to feel more confident about.  Both gadgets provide long battery life and are quality affordable products considering ease of use, portable and rugged enough for most bike touring and camping conditions.   Here's a Link for more information on Waterproof Gadgets for Bike Commuting and Touring.

After four months of using a Chromebook I have learned some new and noteworthy information about this handy little device.  On a recent road trip to Colorado our 12v power port quit working and we needed to have at least one phone charged at all times for our business.  So with the Chromebook turned on but closed in sleep mode we were able to easily keep our phone charged and when conveniently necessary we simply recharged the Chromebook with the AC charger.  Worked great as a small power bank for phone charging.  Another thing I am still learning is just how useful it is offline.  Documents, calendar and email can be easily accessed not to mention the ability plug a thumb drive into it and watch a movie or whatever.

Also, I let the gals working at our weekend farmer's market and organic food co op who need a computer with wi fi to process purchases and such, not only do they like the simplicity using the Chromebook but one of the gals dropped it on the concrete floor and the protective shell did it's job in protecting any damage occurring to the Chromebook.  In the past four months since purchasing our Samsung Chromebook we have used it a lot and have absolutely no regrets about our purchase and love how this keyboard feels while typing.  

Visit PC World's Magazine for an excellent article on how to use a Chromebook offline.  Excellent information.

Chromebooks are becoming very popular with students and other mobile users.  Reading over the reviews the main reason folks were interested in a Chromebook is peace of mind knowing that all important data and information is not being unnecessarily toted around.

That gave me the idea of using a Chromebook for bike touring trips where we need to stay in touch with our business while we pedal the countryside.  This review is not intended to cover all the potential usages of this nifty little computer but to share how it can be used while bike touring and the main concern is having the ability to share photos.

In a nutshell a Chromebook uses the Google Chrome browser as its' operating system, so essentially it is not an operating system it's a browser based netbook that connects to the user's gmail account and other gmail account applications such as Google Drive, Google Plus Photos and the like.

While this requires internet access there are some very functional features  for offline photo editing and document editing.  One of the Chromebook forums had an exhaustive list of question and answer sessions with folks very upset and angry about their Chromebook not being able detect their camera once they plugged in the USB cable to transfer photos.  I didn't have this problem, so let me add that I am writing this blog article with the Chromebook.  Not only that I was able to edit the photo for this article offline with the Pixlr Touch Up app.  I was able to rotate and resize the image for use on my blog as well as altering the image quality for faster page loading time. As I had several other photos I will edit and tweak for blog usage later they are all safely stored on my Google Drive.  This makes for ease of access should I ever want to sort through my older blog article photos and want to share them while traveling as I can access them from any computer. Of course another benefit is that I don't have to worry about my photos being lost if I were to have a minor mishap with my Chromebook and lose everything on a hard drive because there isn't one.  

That's right there is no hard drive instead when you purchase a Chromebook customer's receive 100 GB of storage for their Google Drive associated with their email account.  Depending on how many photos you enjoy taking while bike touring this is a viable option for most folks.  Also considering you can access your Flickr account with Pixlr Editor App Flickr's whopping 1 Terabyte of storage is plenty for storing massive amounts of photos.  Point being made here is that there are plenty of easy work around solutions for a browser based computer for blogging, emailing, sharing photos and bike travel. 

I purchased the Samsung Chromebook as I really like the feel of the keyboard, it is very light weight at less than three pounds, has a battery which lasts approximately eight hours and is quick to recharge. At a price of $249 I'm not worried about the Chromebook being damaged compared to say toting a Mac Air Book around.  

So far I am enjoying the simplicity of this product particularly when considering the potential uses for bike touring. For bike commuting when I want to go work at the coffee shop for a change of scenery this Chromebook from Samsung feels in no way burdensome.

Although this product is in no way meant to replace a full usage laptop for all business purposes it is providing a very affordable option for many folks looking for a convenient economical method of staying in touch with friends and family while traveling, such as bike touring.  Cheers!

Besides having a good amount of storage space on google drive, photos that don't exceed 2048 x 2048 pixels can be stored for free with Google Photos, I didn't know that and I'm sure glad I wrote this post.  Here's a link to a good article on using Google Photos.

Here's a good review of Chromebooks from Tech Republic where there are links to other quality reviews of the Chromebook