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So when I first sent a kernel patch to the x86 subtree, I had to wait a lot. The patch (commit 273c112 in linux-2.6.git) was created in May and the first release (v2.6.27) was out in October. Then I discovered that critical bugfixes and security fixes are a different matter, getting such a patch in a release takes 1-2 weeks, depending on the priority of the patch.
Today I noticed that the newest git release (v1.6.0.5) comes with my patch which I just created 1.5 days ago. Yes. that's how does goes if people know you. :) OK, this is not a rule, a release may take more time, but it is really committed in ~2 days in most cases - if the patch itself is correct and you earned some credit already from the maintainer.