lawrence said:
Bought a new bike this year, have only 200 miles on it and I don't jump curbs. I wanted to go for a ride Sunday. I decided to spin my wheels to check for trueing before I left and one wheel was way out of true. I flipped the bike upside down on my bench and noticed that I had a broken spoke. Unfortunately all the bike shops were closed, fortunately I noticed it at home. If this happened on the road, I would not have been able to repair it because it was the rear spoke on the side of the cassette. Next day I bought 2 spokes, one for the repair and one extra, only .75 each! How often do spokes break? Is this something I should carry with me and tape to the frame pump and then carry the spoke wrench in my saddle bag? If this happened on the road, would I have done damage to the wheel if I had ridden it home? I carry some duct tape in my saddle bag in case a spoke breaks and I need to take it to another one so it doesn't flop and cause damage.
You should get your wheels retensioned, or do it yourself. Cheap machine-built wheels tend to get broken spokes because the spoke tension is not high enough, so the spoke heads flex on each revolution, causing metal fatigue. The spokes break after a certain amount of flexing. If the tension is high enough, then the spoke heads won't flex nearly as much. A well-built, properly tensioned and stress-relieved wheel should last for thousands of miles before a spoke break. Oftentimes the rim will wear out before a single spoke breaks. I know this difference may sound like an exaggeration, but it's true, and it's well documented here and elsewhere.
If you want to do it yourself, there's a lot of info out there about how to build a wheel properly. Otherwise, a shop can do it for you. However, since you've already experienced spoke breakage, the other spokes may already be near death, and you may experience more broken spokes.
Unfortunately, when they sell less-expensive bikes, they don't tell you that the whee's aren't built to last...