One piece of knowledge that I’ve picked up, though I can’t verify that it’s true, is that once you break a spoke you’re likely to break more. You might think that’s obvious- if you were doing something that broke one spoke, you’re probably still doing that thing. Actually, as I understand it the remaining spokes have to take up the work of the missing spoke, and get more stressed out, shortening their remaining life. If you’ve seen fatigue curves, it makes a lot of sense.
Since I don’t have time to have my wheel rebuilt, or feel like spending the money for that, or to get a stronger wheel, it looks like I will have to be just a little easier on it if I don’t want to be fixing spokes all the time for the rest of this trip.
With that in mind, I set out to move some pounds onto my front fork (and off the back). Here’s a picture of the general idea-
I picked up some hose clamps, utility cord, and shelving brackets, and my wonderful hostel host was willing to let me have a couple of laundry detergent buckets. They even have lids!
I will try to get a good picture of the full compliment of plastic box panniers tomorrow. Also on the agenda tomorrow, biking to Centralia.
Side note- tonight another touring cyclist arrived at the hostel, and he’d seen one of my posts about this trip on Reddit.com. Small world!