Would a touring bike be better for my purposes?

[Jolt]

I may have found a possibility...I looked at the website of the place where I bought the hybrid (there's this guy in RI who gets bikes from yard sales, thrift stores and people who just want to get rid of them, fixes them up and sells them) and found an advertisement for a "nice small Raleigh touring bike" that he says will fit "5'6" and shorter". So, I emailed him with my height/inseam to find out if it might fit and got a reply saying that he isn't too happy with the braking on that bike, needs to do some work before selling it and "really should pull it from the website but it hasn't been getting much interest" but that he thinks it would indeed fit and he plans to work on it this week. Sounds like it has potential once the brakes are fixed, although it appears to have downtube shifters which might be tricky for someone used to trigger shifting on the hybrid and it also has only a double chainring (maybe I could get him to swap that for a triple if he has the parts lying around). We'll see what happens...

ETA: I did some looking around online and it looks like this bike is probably the mid-80s "Portage" though I can't tell for sure from the low-resolution photo. Apparently that bike uses "650b" wheels--anyone know anything about those? Here's a link to the website that has the photo: http://siestabikes.com/bikes.php?page=2 It definitely looks like the bike has smaller-than-standard wheels given that it is a small frame yet actually looks in-proportion.