Ooh that Raleigh is nice, Mike, reminds me of mine, whose Campag parts ensemble came from the rusty Windsor Pro that I pulled from Goodwill's dumpster back in 2001 I think.
I'm not sure when C&V got started, but for me, I worked in a shop in 1978-79 while attending college, and after getting my Super Course stolen on campus I assembled a Fuji S-12S from shop discards, even built my wheels from parts.
I later got caught behind the times while I was slow to upgrade to SIS, so I found myself in the Suntour world in the early 90's, always tinkering with my Command-shifted Cannondale and my newer Epic. I became "without home" after the Northridge earthquake ruined my place so I rented a room from an older road bike coach who taught me a lot of bike history and often kept me busy working on his and his friend's mostly-older bikes.
The C&V bug bit hard after I had moved up to Silicon Valley and and day found an old PX10 sticking out of a dumpster! I rebuilt it of course and put my first pair of STI levers on it as it was my goal to build a bike using these RX100 8s levers that I had sourced at the bike swap.
One thing led to another and suddenly I had almost a dozen road bikes! Then I started racing them, especially the 1893 Pedersen replica that turned up while I was searching flea markets for the contents of my burgled L.A. garage (luckily they took tools, not bikes).
Then I found the CR list, what a huge amount of info that one can gain there, especially the appreciation of bikes left in their original state versus (resto-mod builds).
Around 2010 I found C&V here, and it's been a double-dose of old-bike musings ever since.
