For just the right surface, polygonal wheels are the way to go!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-dkHHKj72...s1600/mn01.jpg

I have considered airless tyres. I just can't convince myself that they will work well.

The problem is that I remember the ones from the 70's and 80's. To be fair, I never gave them a test ride back then, they failed the cursory inspection test.

I keep hearing they have improved, the trouble with my believing is that each rendition says they are better "this time."

As far as the Hydraulic brakes, I have been hearing great things for a while and have been considering switching. This gave me the impetus to actually go ahead and do it. So far they have only gotten one commute of test riding. I rode my trike in to the office today.

I didn't express my point well. I'm not advocating airless tires. I think there is no hope of them being any good, ever. I'm saying that a failure doesn't mean you're using the wrong thing. Everything fails. Cable breakage is rare, but I've seen it, and it doesn't surprise me. Switching to hydraulic brakes will make you vulnerable to a different kind of failure, though I don't know what that is. Everything has various so-called failure modes. An upgrade is not necessarily the appropriate response to a failure. You mention impetus, and that does make sense. If you have a reason to switch to hydraulic, other than this cable breakage, sure, this is as good a time as any. My inclination is to replace the cable and be sure you do it right. And who knows, maybe you got a rare defective cable.

..Or Pay attention to how the use is causing wear and tear and replace thongs, before they Break..

Ground inspections, General Aviation, it's something that will save your life,

and those of others , on the ground, where you will crash.

personally i am too old to wear thongs.

I'm not arguing that you don't have the experience, you obviously see more broken bikes than most of us... have you ever seen a broken tooth on a rear cassette? This was on my commuter, which I don't ride that hard. Or this one time my rear derailleur decided to get stuck in my spokes for no reason whatsoever resulting in a busted spoke AND derailleur hanger. Weird **** happens, I guess. Maybe the more normal stuff like snapped cables people just fix on their own?

Not only broken teeth but 2 cogs with about half the cog missing on the same cassette. I don't know the circumstances of how they were broken, just the result. Again, however, it's a rare event.

This is actually a fairly common event. We see it often and you should consider yourself lucky that it was only one spoke. I've seen wheels with 6 to 8 spokes broken and derailer hangers so broken that they even damaged the frame as well as the sacrificial hanger.

There is even a likely reason for it to happen. Either the bike was set up with the limit screws set incorrectly or the limit screws have been messed with by the rider. I see misadjusted limit screws all the time because someone's shifting is suffering so they grab a screw driver and start "adjusting". Many an aspiring Odysseus has been broken on the rocks of Anthemusa while listening to the Sirens' song of the limit screws.

The co-op where I volunteer is set up for people to come fix problems on their own. We have "Fix your bike" hours several times per week. If someone has a problem with a bicycles...and even a few non-bicycles...we have seen it. Snapped cables, especially in the middle of the cable run are just not something we see that often.

Yeah, I had a thong break once, it was NOT pretty

Leaning the bike on the drive side can bend a derailleur hanger slightly. Doing it repeatedly bends it further. In time, it becomes easy to shift into the spokes, even though the limit screw was set up right in the first place. It's also possible to bang your derailleur as you roll your bike through a self-closing door. And you won't think about these incidents, because you ride the bike, and it works normally until you reach for your lowest gear. That's why bent derailleur hangers and the resulting damage is pretty common. I'd love for the industry to invent something less vulnerable, but I haven't come up with any ideas myself. Actually, there is one. Some low end (department store) bikes had a separate guard surrounding the derailleur. It was ugly but effective.