this is a truely amazing thread, I've compiled a list of all my favorite pieces of advice from this thread and it's pushing 3 pages. Here's my tip though:
If you bend your poles, WAIT TILL YOU GET HOME to bend them back! If you try to bend them back while they're still freezing cold, you will have a much higher chance of snapping them, so wait for your poles to warm up to room temp by keeping them in your house before bending them back, and then use two vices (my tuning vice works great for me) and your bodyweight to GRADUALLY bend them back into shape using repeated applications of small force, not one big push. Here's to less broken poles!