Never been stranded but have been close a couple of times.
- In 1992, I was riding a solo camping tour along the Mississippi. About 50 miles into day 3 and more than 200 miles from home, I was getting ready for a big climb out of the the river valley so I dropped down to the small ring. But something went wrong and the chain got wrapped around the freewheel the wrong way and I skidded to a halt. It was a mess and I knew I was in deep sh*t. The rear derailer cage was hyper-extended and bent in toward the wheel and so was the derailer hanger, probably about 30 degrees. The first thing I did was take a piss in the ditch. Then I got out my chain tool to take apart the chain so I could untangle it all. I took the rear derailer off and managed to get the cage back into the correct position but it had a lot of side-to-side play. I then got out a 10" adjustable wrench (I wasn't going to bring it at first - it's not big enough for a threaded headset so what would I even use it for?) and I was able to bend the derailer hanger back with that (thankfully, I was riding steel). Probably had a couple of times of threading the derailer back in to check alignment and taking it back out to bend the hanger back some more. I put everything back together and was able to finish the tour. The indexed shifting was a bit sloppy but it worked.
- In 2003 I was riding a 200K brevet (intending to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris). I got to the control at 100K and after getting my card stamped and getting some food and drink, I walked out of the convenience store to find that my rear tire was flat. No problem, I had some spare tubes. But it was when I took the rear wheel out to change the tube that I noticed that the rear axle was broken. The quick release skewer was holding everything together so no bearings flew out or anything. The axle was not broken starting the ride so it must have broken sometime during the first 100K, probably on the railroad tracks we went over about 30 miles eariler. I figured since that I had probably ridden quite a bit with a broken axle, I could probably limp in to the finish on it. So I told the brevet organizer (who was also riding) about it, changed the tube, put the wheel back in making sure to spin the two halves of the axle until it seemed like they were correctly aligned, and started back toward the finish (it was an out-and-back course). I took it pretty slow, especially on any railroad tracks, but managed to finish within the time limit.