Beautiful bike, Jim.

Back around 1972, I had become quite hooked on cycling, especially touring. I even put drop bars on my five-speed Schwinn suburban. My then-girlfriend-now-wife (named Sharon) and I decided we wanted "really good" bikes and bought matching Mercier road bikes with sew-up tires and Reynolds double-butted 531 tubing.

I think they were about $250 back then, a hefty amount for a couple college students when in-state college tuition was about $500 per semester. We were pretty naive, since we used them for fully loaded, self-supported touring in Michigan and Ontario.

We took them out to California for our cross-country cycle honeymoon, and had many flat tires. It seemed that about every three days, by the time the sticky blackened glue had finally abraded off our hands it was time for another flat. Many hours of relaxation time off the bike were spent opening the tires to repair the tube, and then sewing them back up.

We started the trip with an extra six new tires but at at least two different times en route we had to ditch our bikes in a motel and hitchhike to a city to buy more; in Flagstaff, AZ and Pueblo, CO. Soon after we arrived in Boston, we changed over to clincher wheels. My Mercier's bottom bracket eventually wore out, but my wife's bike is still around somewhere; our son the college graduate was using it last as I recall.