Today I inspected my wife's rim on her Commuter bike. After several years of hard use, the rims was almost worn through! Is this common or out of the ordinary?

I just replaced the rear rim on my spouse's commuter after a few years of use. Front rim is still OK. From what I've read and experienced, the amount of abuse that a rim takes can be really situation dependent, as in, how much muck do you ride through? My spouse was riding a fair amount in bad weather, through construction areas where there's always mud and grit. And I'll admit that part of the problem may have been not keeping her V brakes in good adjustment. I've committed to checking the brakes on all of the bikes in the house, more frequently.

Fortunately I found a rim with exactly the same profile, and so was able to install it without buying new spokes.

Rims are a wear item when part of the braking system.

Completely normal, it usually takes a while but lots of descending, bad weather, lots of city riding all can accelerate this. Keeping the rims and pads clean helps extend the life of your rims as well but ultimately rims are a consumable part on a bike with rim brakes, it just takes a long time to wear them out!

Send my congratulations... a lot of people never ride a bike enough to wear out a rim.

What's the problem?