I started riding again in 2008 on a bike I'd had for over 20 years, and promptly wrecked it. It was still rideable but the frame definitely bent. My plan was to ride it until my birthday when I planned to buy a bicycle from a local shop whose owner went to the same church as I did. Note that my bike knowledge at this point was stuck in the pre-indexed-shifting age and I hadn't heard of BikeForums yet.

One day, the LBS owner mentioned that, "Mrs. O'Reilly has some old bikes she wants me to look at, but I don't deal in used bikes. Do you want to take a look at the bikes and see if they are any good? Otherwise, she's going to sell them at the church garage sale."

So I went over to look at the bikes. She had gotten them when her daughter-in-law's father passed away; he owned them. One of them was brand new! Well, kind of..... it still had the store price tags on it, the nubbies on the tires, and looked like it had never been ridden. She didn't know what to charge for it but since the price tag said almost $400, we agreed on a price of $100. It turned out to be a (near-vintage) 1994 Nishiki Sport XRS. When I brought it home, it looked like this:



After outfitting it for commuting and several upgrades, it looks like this:



But Mrs. O'Reilly had another bike, kind of an old clunker to my eyes. I decided to go back and look at it. After haggling back and forth a bit- she wanted $25, I offered her $30, since the money was going to the church garage sale fund- I bought the bike and brought it home:



Trying to find out more about the weird brakes it had, I searched the internet and found BikeForums. Y'all told me I had a Raleigh DL-1 Tourist and through the hub date, most likely a 1966 model. Cleaned up a bit, it looks like this: