My favourite canti brakes, and perhaps some of my favourite brakes of all time, are the XTR cantis I run on my Trek... they are mated to XTR levers but have also been mated to road levers. I believe that if one was to find a set you'd be looking at paying about $100.00 for NOS versions... they are worth every penny.
This is good to know, there is a set on ebay, im gonna check right now to see if they are still up. I was really heavily considering them... but thinking that they wouldn't work well with road/sti levers.
I'm totally gonna stay away from avids... and I'll save my mafac infatuation for something more retro. When the season comes around I really do want to try cross racing. it sounds really fun to me. If not that I'll at least do some offroad riding... this is the first non road style bike I've ever owned and I'm excited to try some dirt riding. Only thing that scares me about cross is that my right shoulder has been a mess for over a year now... falling on it, or huring it by throwing a bike onto it repeatedly would put it out of commission again. Are shoulder injuries a common cross riding problem?