Thanks again! Everything does seem to be working just fine...it will even handily run through all the gears in one motion with no grinding, which is handy because I'm still a bit unstable shifting multiple times at max speed at the bottom of one hill just before starting up another...

You'll be pleased to know I'm not a modifier, so I won't be committing the sacrilege of painting it some awful color, turning it into a fixie, or swapping for brifters. From the beginning, I realized this was a bike I needed to change myself to fit, not the other way around. My reasoning is twofold: one, I'm cheap, and two, I realize this bike is approaching a museum piece. I love history!

$1600, WOW! These must have been some of the very best in their day, then! I might have been more willing to cough up the $150 if I knew that it cost so much to begin with. As it was, the guy gave me the bike for $100 less than asking probably because he liked the idea of getting someone started in road biking.