Sorry in advance if you consider this to be thread hijacking, but I just want to make a suggestion for you and others who have a MBA with Lion up and running (hopefully you'll get things working soon).
I know you can do this same kind of thing with Time Machine, but one thing I do when I get a new Mac and/or do a fresh install of the OS on a Mac is do a clone (backup). What you'll need is an external hard drive at least as big as the amount of drive space your using on the internal drive in your computer. Then, install a free app called Carbon Copy Cloner, found here:
http://www.bombich.com/download.html
What I do next is install any software that needs to be activated, notably MS Office 2011 where a re-install has the potential to fail the activation process. You can install as much as you want at this point but I try to keep this backup pretty lean. That way when I restore this backup I don't have a lot of old versions of apps or other things I've quit using. If you like to set up your computer a certain way (don't we all?), this is good time to make those tweaks (icon sizes, fonts, that kind of stuff).
The beauty of this method, especially on the MBA, is that you don't have to go through the recovery drive method. If you need to re-install the OS you just boot from the external drive, run Carbon Copy Cloner, and restore to the internal drive. You just run the restore, go get a cup of coffee, come back and it's done. It's a lot quicker and you don't have to wait to download the OS again. Plus, you have your tweaks and apps already in place.
Just a suggestion.
