When I graduated from high school in 1974, I fly with a friend from Toronto to London, where we went to F.W. Evans, near Elephant & Castle, and picked out two bikes to do a European tour. My friend ended up with an orange-and-black "Eddy Merckx," while I had a pale blue Dawes with sort of burgundy Bluemels fenders. We paid probably $150 each at the time and rode those bikes, with heavy saddlebags, through England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany before selling them in Munich for about $50 each to a high-end shop that didn't really want to take them. We found cycling in Germany was pretty scary then, unlike the current pro-cycling climate there. We took lots of photos on the trip but I don't think we actually photographed the bikes. The Dawes, and the bargain-basement Merckx rode very well and provided amazingly cheap and fun transport for a summer for two teens. I have no clue as to what the model of the Dawes was, or how it was equipped, but happy memories still of my first big cycling adventure.
Leslie Reissner
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada