Originally Posted by
Velo Dog
It's not that hard to learn to replace a spoke or to adjust tension on those near a broken spoke to give you a better chance of riding home. I started riding again in the '80s on a mountain bike (after a 10-year post college layoff), and it was a point of pride to be able to fix anything that went wrong on a real MB ride, a day trip of 20-50 miles, not a jaunt down the MUT. We carried spares and tools, and i've replaced many spokes by the side of the trail. I still can't BUILD a wheel, but I can troubleshoot one pretty successfully.
If you weigh more than 175 or so, I think you're likely to have trouble with low-spoke count wheels, so repair is a useful skill to master. I go about 240, and I don't mess with anything less than 32 spokes, 36 for most of my riding.
Back in the day, as the youngsters like to say, I had a couple of friends who would pack a spare spoke or two inside their road bike handlebars for just such occasions. Remove the bar end plug and pull out the spoke. Any slight bend that remained in it would straighten out when it was tensioned.