I have a bunch of news about my weird disaster (in which you will remember, my trusty Kestrel 200 EMS was badly damaged by a coat hanger).  Some of this you will not believe.

First, Edgar at RR Velo reports my bike is on the mend, he has machined two new dropouts, one for each side of the bike (the left one was undamaged, but this way the stiffness characteristics on each side will be symmetrical, a great idea), and is in the process of bonding them back into the stays with carbon fiber.  He says the frame should be repaired by next Friday, at which point he'll mail it back to my local shop, they'll reassemble it, and poof! I will have my bike back.  Yay Edgar.  fXf

(That's Edgar at right, with Greg Lemond.)

Next, during my Google searches to seek help I found "Ron", a blogger at The Cozy Beehive, who is a mechanical engineer and avid cyclist.  We exchanged sympathetic email and he ended up blogging about my disaster.  In the comments left on his blog, "Luke" linked a post from Matt Spohn: Holy Shit! in which he reports almost the exact same thing happened to him about a week ago.  "The hanger is not replaceable, therefore the frame is toast."  What are the odds of that?  Matt, meet Edgar.

Even more amazingly, in another comment left on Ron's blog, I met Brenda Lyons, an avid cyclist (mountain bike racer) who is also the SoCal territory rep for Kestrel!  She seems really committed to keeping this happy Kestrel customer a happy Kestrel customer, how cool is that?  Apparently Kestrel have refocused themselves on road bikes and have a new model out, the RT900, which they think can compete with the best in the world, to the point where they've sponsored Rock Racing for 2009!

I am trying to figure out if I can ride an RT900 somewhere - my friends at Nytro, for example, who are a Kestrel dealer, but who didn't have any Kestrel road bikes in their store, only tri-bikes.  This would be a serious entry into the lust or love sweepstakes, not only is the RT900 beautiful, and featherweight (15.2lbs!), but we have history together.  I could so see myself on another Kestrel, for another 10 years.

Anyway that's the news, as always please stay tuned!