Half way from advice, half way to dealer
Some time ago I'm sure one of my friends on Livejournal posted a piece on why people who sell cars are called DEALERS. Well I took time out yesterday afternoon to go to Freewheeling Bikes on 24th, where I'd been told they had a great wheel builder, took the Rolf in and asked them to respoke it completely.
After an explanation of why it probably wasn't worth it, a horror story about a Rolf Wheel that had disintegrated while in storage in the shop, the front desk guy said he would go talk to the "service manager". Shortly afterwards he came back out wth another two reasons why the wheel wasn't worth rebuilding. He just happened to have, right above his head, a pair of similar Bontrager wheels that were new and going at a discount, $650 for the set, with tyres. The problem is they had silver spokes and black rims and he wasn't prepared to swap them with wheels on bikes in the shop that had black spokes and rims. Sale lost.
We agreed they'd fix the one broken spoke, it will do as a spare wheel, but I'm definitely in the market, I just don't want the hassle of buying from a bike wheel dealer. ebay here I come...