Popped Another Chain BAH

Today's Cut-Short Tracking

The mile-long dirt road goat-path from our house to the pavement is MUSH and SLOP from our big 11" snow-dump Wednesday night.  Jacque's cousin departed for Scottsdale this morning safe and sound, after gunning his big conversion van up the hump intersecting the road so he could make it over the ice patch there.  The paved roads are mostly dry and even the shoulders are not terribly nasty so I shoveled the snow out of the bike/trash trailer and took Tinkerbell for a ride to the Post Office.  First I had to rework the bike rack in the trailer so it would be more stable - our nasty road always throws things around something awful.

Things seemed to bode well for a decent ride, and I thought we might be able to squeeze in enough miles to achieve our minimalist number of 10-something miles but it was not to be.
In today's thrilling video, we see the still evident snow alongside the road as well as the sunny beautiful blue sky this late in the afternoon. We also hear an occasional deep "Clunk" which has been giving me trouble the last few rides:  The chain was jumping gears intermittently and I stupidly assumed it was just the derailleur needing better adjustment and I could ignore it.

At the end of the video I show the broken link in the chain.  If you look closely about 6 or 7 links from the upper right chain, you will see why I stopped riding and turned around, coasting luckily most of the way downhill back toward the gas-burner and trailer.  Thankfully I did not keep riding without taking a closer look at the chain.  As I was previously riding, I grumbled about the jumping gears, and noticed while watching my shadow on the pavement that there was a discontinuity in the chain appearing very close to each chain jump anomaly.
Thus my stop to see what it was, and it scared me.  The link is separated completely on one side and almost done for on the other.  Why it hadn't dumped me earlier is beyond explanation.  When I allowed the chain to get this bad on our tandem recumbent trike, it utterly destroyed the idler and derailleur and bent the rear axle hanger almost beyond repair when the offending chain link got caught in the derailleur while we were strongly cranking in Grandma Gear trying to make it up a low hill.  Thankfully it didn't self destruct on this ride this time.
SO, I am grounded as to riding the recumbent 2-wheeler until I get the chain replaced or fixed.   Since it requires 3 normal bike chains linked together to make enough chain for this bike, I plan to inspect it more closely to see if other links are badly worn.  If it appears this one is just the proverbial "Weak Link", I can replace only that pair of links and hopefully put a few hundred more miles on this chain.  Without having to be offline.  Worst case:  I can always ride the recumbent Terratrike Tandem Pro by myself if Jacque's not available to inspire me to ride until I get the greasy replacement job done on this 2-wheeler.
I just dug back through a couple years' worth of previous posts:  This chain is at LEAST 3 years old.  As many miles as I put on it, I cannot complain.  Almost.

Ride Started: 3:53 PM    Ride Ended:  4:34 PM
Beginning Battery Voltage:  13.7   Ending Voltage: 13.0  Lowest: 13.0
Lowest Temp  42 F      Highest Temp:  57 F 
Stats from the GPS:    Total Miles:  4:09
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  5.3 MPH                                  8.3 MPH                    25.0 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
  46 minutes                           29 minutes                 17  minutes