So, this is taking a long time.

Three weeks ago, the frame arrived back at the LBS from Trek. I went and took a few photos of the cracked tube. I don't know how long it took to ship the frame out to Calfee after that. I called the LBS last week for an update, and they had not yet gotten an estimate from Calfee. Then the service manager at the LBS who is handling this for me was out sick. He was finally able to get the estimate today.

The actual repair will cost $180. For painting, I have two choices. The original paint job was silver with a white stripe running along the top of the tube, and the Trek logo on either side. My choices are: repaint the whole top tube silver for $150, or repaint to keep the original stripe and logos for $225. Since the stripe was actually not properly centered, and I'm not feeling the love for Trek right now, I told them to go ahead and paint the whole tube silver.

The Calfee website says it generally takes 3 weeks for a repair, so I guess there's still a chance I will see my bike again before 2012. But at this point I'm just assuming there's a backlog, and I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, some things I've realized in the past few weeks:

- It's really easy to clip in and out with the SPD pedals on my mountain bike.
- My mountain bike is really heavy to carry up a flight of stairs.
- On a paved trail, I'm faster on my mountain bike now than I was before I got the road bike in 2003.
- I don't even know what components are on it, but they shift really smoothly.