All praise Sheldon.

Spent the night reading up on wheels starting with the cyclist's bible, the Book of Sheldon. Working in the comfort of the farm workshop I set to work stripping the bike down, cleaning it up and rebuilding the wheel. Rim, hub and spokes looked pretty good to me, so it was mostly a matter of retensioning and hand truing the wheel slowly: very, very slowly. Without a tension meter and little hand's on experience pinging spokes to find the F#, I've got the wheel pretty darn straight and spokes pretty darn taut.

Sheldon says to "stress the spokes" after you've finished, then retrue and retension. So I hit them with a rubber mallet, levered them with the handle end of a spanner and finally jumped up and down on the rim with my booted feet; retruing and retensioning as I went. That should do it.

So Turtle is reborn yet again, all clean and shiny - ready to do the Road's work. Hallelujah!

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I'll know if it was a good enough job in a week's time, when I get to Norseman. If I break down I can always beg a lift back into Hyden with a passing ute, dump the bike at the farm and take the wheels back to Perth for a professional rebuild. If she holds true and steady, then I keep riding.

Now I'm going to relax and play tourist for a day or so; plan to head off on Monday.