I am back in Utah, back into the swing of things.  The shop is open in the afternoons this week.

I'm trying to get ready for cyclocross season but there have been a few hurdles.  It was too smoky to train much up in Montana, and now I've picked up a sinus infection.  I went to the fairgrounds yesterday to do some race-pace laps and my handlebar broke.  Five years of heavy use will do that to aluminum.  Like I've always said, steel is usually a better choice than aluminum for bicycle frames and parts when it come to fatigue strength.  Aluminum will always fail.  Here is the Wikipedia explanation:

Ferrous alloys and titanium alloys^[2] have a distinct limit, an amplitude below which there appears to be no number of cycles that will cause failure. Other structural metals such as aluminium and copper, do not have a distinct limit and will eventually fail even from small stress amplitudes.