The Block Buster Trade

One of my favorite things about sports are block buster trades.  Trading value for value.  Who could forget such trades as:  Ken Griffey Jr. for  Brett Tomko and outfielder Mike Cameron, along with a pair of minor leaguers: infielder Antonio Perez and right-hander Jake Meyer or Wayne Gretzky, Marty McSorley

and Mike Krushelnyski, to the Los Angeles Kings for Jimmy Carson, Martin Gelinas, $15 million in cash and three future first-round picks?  And cycling trades are no different, except on a very personal level.  Why not trade value for value?

The following is a list of some of the more memorable trades I have been involved in.

Who is not a fan of ridiculous looking things from Italy?  My neighbor had a pair of new Briko Stingers, not too dissimilar to these, albeit in turquoise & orange livery.

Knowing he had a penchant for odd Frenchie things, I proposed a trade for something I had access to & thought he would find difficult to resist.

Yes, this is it.  The shortly seen, Le Groupement jersey.  Time has a strange way of changing values & while I got many years of service from the Brikos, I feel I traded away a piece of history with the Le Groupement jersey.  The newly formed team didn’t make it out of the Spring campaign that season without collapsing.  A line up of current world champion Luc Leblanc, he sporting such handlebar tape as the Gorges Sorel Personal Ribbon, featured in boutiques in Milan, Paris, New York & Brussels (as advertised on the box) & the final team of Robert Millar.  They rode Bianchis & were to have the premiere of the Suntour STi type shifter.  Such promise, never to be fulfilled.  The cherry on top of all this is the truly awful design of the jersey that just seems so French.

Speaking of Frenchies… one of the commandments is thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.  Well another neighbor had this Team RMO Liberia that he no longer rode.  He had ordered & imported it.  It was produced in the run of the tour team’s with Reynolds 753.  The original owner was similar in size to me & the bike was a good fit.  I could not manage a trade at the time, but this bike fell into the hands of someone maybe less appreciative than myself…however, the opportunity presented itself for what may be the best trade I have made.  Without spending time on the gory details, let it suffice that the trade was a 2 for 1 trade, an american made aluminum frame set & a few components for this, complete except for wheels & cross bike of various parts, needing a little love.  Truly a block buster.

A little wrinkle of the deal were the Campy Delta’s.  They actually came to me earlier.  Native to the bike, the previous owner had been bitten by them.  Knowing my appreciation, he knew they would have a good home with me.  Lovingly rehabilitated, they have returned to where they had once been- only now working a little better than before.

All trades however, do not work out quite so well.  Have you ever seen a Silca mountain bike pump?  I did not think so.  I should have known something was up when the trade was for another pump, a cheap taiwanese pump I had owned.  It worked great!  Yet, I was willing to trade it + a pair of leg warmers for the Silca Mountain pump & this fine Suntour Superbe Pro Rear Mech.  I think I can still hear the recipient laughing at me.  The Silca pump had a canister about the diameter of my arm.  My 135# body had to channel all the Mr. Miyagi wisdom of focusing the entirety of force my body could muster into pushing the handle down 4″-5″ to squirt 5 psi into the tire.  Pride fueled my use of this pump, until, one day the base failed under the immense pressure required to operate.  However, it did not die there.  It lived on, now the butt of many jokes, I bolted a 2×4 base to it to get a last few gasps of air into a few tires.  The only remaining player in that deal is the unheralded Suntour derailleur.