Raleigh Redux on Rainier

This is the first good road bike, and the first nice thing of any kind, that I ever bought for myself. I bought it new in 1983, for 0.00 earned with 162 hours of flipping burgers at McDonald's in Fox Lake, IL, for .35 an hour. Since then I've ridden it on six continents, more than 10,000 miles worth. After all those years and miles it had taken a beating. I finally decided to fix it up and found Troy Courtney in Geneva IL, near Chicago (www.cccycles.com). He did a fantastic job replacing the damaged top tube, installing S&S couplings (www.sandsmachine.com) and respraying the bike. It was originally black metalflake with gold decals but I wanted to invoke Washington State with the respray. I was in the air force for six years there and fell in love with the state. The main color is Dark Emerald Pearl, a Honda color, for the Washington forests, accented by a bright silver for the clouds, white decals and white and bright blue accent stripes for the mountain peaks, the sky and Puget Sound. Its coming out party was held on Mount Rainier in July. The breakdown, travel and reassembly went fantastic, the riding and companionship were magical and I couldn't be happier with the whole project. The old Raleigh has just begun its second life.