Originally Posted by
rpenmanparker
Some wheels are more durable than others, but no wheels are forever. If you ride wheels until they fail, then all your wheels will strand you sometime or another. Just decide what compromise of weight, durability and cost you are comfortable with and go for it.
All wheels will eventually fail ie break a spoke or have it go through the rim but a bike should still be ridable with a broken spoke. I've ridden a 32 spoke wheel with a broken spoke and all I had to do was open the brake. With a 20 spoke aksium it was not able to be ridden even with adjustments and a spoke wrench. That is unacceptable to me. My friend had a Ksyrium hub fail at only 4k miles and leave him stranded (close to home fortunately). I'll stick with 32 spoke wheels.