This bike is also known as “badass mother 4000, Jr.” since I have have another Kestrel CSX, a ’00 model, which I named, badass mother 4000.

7/11/07 Update: This is currently he mountain bike I ride most often. I switched out the rear derailler’s gripshipshift for an 8 speed XT trigger-shifter since the gripshift was giving me problems setting correctly on the freewheel. 12/24/06 Update: Took this bike out today and had such an awesome time. The performance and handling is outstanding – it’s a great xc bike, and the frame is downright heavenly whether climbing, bombing descents or hammering straight-aways. The GripShift was great – shouldn’t be a problem at all having both rapid fire and gripshift as I thought it might be. I’ll change the pedals later on when spring arrives. God I love this bike.
(the old post: Arrived by UPS yesterday. I love this frame and the componets that came on the bike are all things I wanted years ago. I want to test it out this weekend. Never tried SRAM’s gripshift on a real ride before, but it seems alright so far. I have a set of XT shifter pods I;ll throw on if the gripshift doesn’t work out for me. I have to part with some of the other bikes to make room for this one.