I bought this Raleigh DL-1 Tourist new in 1977 at a bike shop in the Knox St. area of Dallas. The shop also sold me a full chain case they had lying around but phoned me later and asked me to bring it back because they said it had been special ordered for another customer.

The reason the bike came with an open chain guard was that the full chain case would have boosted the weight above 40 lbs., incurring a higher import tax, or so I've read.

The bike sat in a shed at my mom's house in Dallas for decades, then underwent full submersion by Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The inside of the seat and head tubes don't show a lot of rust, however. I've sprayed the inside tubes with Boeshield, and am working on the exterior rust spots with steel or bronze wool and touch-up paint.

The point is, in spite of all the abuse it's undergone, the bike keeps on ticking, which is exactly what it was designed to do. The rod-actuated brakes never break, but the downside is that they don't brake very well, either; and when it rains, forget about it.

The riding position is very strange. Although the 24-inch frame has a fairly high stand-over height, mainly due to the 28-inch tires, the bike is still too small for me. Even with the seat adjusted out past the insertion mark, I can't get enough leg extension on the pedal stroke to be comfortable. That probably explains why the bike sat unused for so long. On the upside, the handlebars feel like they're sitting in my lap, which makes the bike work exceedingly well with a Carradice rain cape. As you can see from the photos, I just came back from a rainy expedition to the grocery store and a stop at the public library. The made-for-Rivendell Carradice saddlebag (also a Katrina survivor) swallowed most of the groceries, while the Topeak basket handled the overflow and the books.

This is the type of bike one sees hanging from the rafters of bike shops nowadays. Ever notice how the best bikes are usually hung high on the walls like antiques or parked in the "employee's only" area of the shop instead of displayed for sale on the showroom floor?

ericnye@hotmail.com