Only about 50% of our riding is on roads. My wife and I have been on rides where we had to carry our bikes across beaver dams. I came face to face with a LARGE Black Bear once. We have hybrid bikes for when we want to ride to a trails and we also have FS MTBs when we want to haul the bikes to rougher terrain. We don't even own "road bikes", but there are plenty that go by the house.

Lots of sticks kicked up into the spokes & other hazards. I live in the St Lawrence Valley in New York State. the 'Blue Line (Adirondack Park) is about 15 miles from me. It makes for convenient riding. Up the gradual slopes in the morning when you're fresh then down hill in the afternoon on the way home.

I figure if someone like yourself would be pleased to just get a spoke replaced, they would be even more pleased to get a repair that looks like new and matches the rest of the spokes. Kind of "going the extra mile" to provide service. I'm retired and if I can get enough business I would probably get into wheel building and get a better spoke threader.

I learned wheel building by lacing wheels for my motorcycles. The 1st time I laced a wheel was because I had a (Suzuki) motorcycle shop tell me that the chrome shop had given me the wrong spokes back because the bends had 2 different lengths from the bend to the head of the spoke where they went through the flange. ('73 HD Sportster front wheel) I told him they were like that because 1 spoke laid over top of the other. (they all laced from the outside of the flange) He told me it would be impossible to lace the spokes that way. I went home, sat on my living room floor and laced & re-laced that wheel until I got it right. I took the wheel back in the next day and had him true it up. Eventually I started truing my own too.