This is the before. 
I took this pic, took all the stuff off, and then looked at the pic. D'oh! You cannot really see anything, but it was a six speed (twelve speed to people who don't know any better) with indexed downtube shifters.
When I spotted her at a second hand store in the Spring of 2001, I snapped her up on the spot: I always wanted a bike like that--a road bike but with indexed downtubes. I was not into bikes when this baby was new, then being a morbidly obese couch potato, and missed this in-between time. In-between, because indexing was new but STI and Ergo had not yet come in. This was a brief but cool period in biking. I found this gem in a second hand store for forty bucks. A similarly equipped Raleigh is in a local bike shop, used for a couple hundred. I didn't know at the time that Centurion was the name Diamondback put on their road bikes before 1993 or so...
Anyway, not long after this I discovered Sheldon Browns's wonderful bike website. He is a big singlespeed guy, and after quite a few miles and fun on it as a singlespeed (with a BMX freewheel), I decided to go the whole way, and turn her into a fixed gear.
My baby.....and my three-year-old daughter. Before the conversion. The bike's, I mean.
Click here for what I did to this poor creature...
