I've been lurking a bit, but this is my first BikeForums thread. I bought a nice, new road bike a couple of years ago, which I've loved riding enough that I went from a couple hundred miles a year on my 25-year-old Raleigh Technium CityLite to a couple thousand a year on the new bike, which is fast and light. In short, I love, love, love the road bike and no longer even like, like, like the CityLite, which is nevertheless handy for short runs to the community garden, library, etc. But I'm completely paranoid about riding the newer bike into the city (about 24 miles roundtrip) if I'm going somewhere I might want to lock up for a while. And the old Raleigh is so heavy (I'm partially blaming the crazy old drum brake and the metal baskets) and creaky that I don't enjoy riding it for more than, say, eight miles, unless the weather is so beautiful that I don't care about how slow I'm going. I've been eyeing older road bikes. The last one that's caught my eye is a Raleigh Grand Prix mixte that's being offered for a bit more than $100--they say it's like new, but from the blurry pix, at the very least, the tires look rotten. I assume anything I buy, even if they say it's in great original shape, will need a bit of work. I'm no mechanic and will probably have to pay someone to any real work.

In short, knowing how many of you have had a zillion and three bikes (I've had three in my lifetime), I'm just wondering if I'm likely to like an old, low-investment road bike enough (meaning, are they light and fast enough?), compared to my other old non-road bike and on a continuum to my newer road bike, to justify having it, or if I should just put my money into doing some sort of overhaul on the currently upright CityLite.