Well, I didn't get the bike
I called the seller, who told me he was at work and couldn't do anything about selling it until 10:00am the next morning. When I called him back at 9:30am, he told me it was sold. I even told him I would take the bike, and not to sell to anyone else, but clearly that wasn't enough.
I saw another bike later in the weekend that I also wanted, a late 80's Specialized Sirrus for $185. I saw this one two hours after the ad was first posted, and when I called a half hour later it had already been sold. So a lesson learned over the last few days; if you see a good deal on a nice 80s road bike in this market, if you have to research the bike at all it will be gone! Time to study this forum in much more detial than I have, and to make it a habit to check Craig's list every couple of hours, particularly on the weekend!
BTW, does anyone have tips on how to quickly filter throught the tons of junk on Craig's list bicycle area? There is a huge amount of listings to scroll through to get to the good stuff on the DC list.
Thanks!