Yesterday was a work-on-the-bikes day for me and my SO. We cleaned the chains and also shortened them some (they were too long for our bikes). Then we put his chain back on - and find that somehow the gear shifting (which was fine before) is all screwed up! Spent a while mucking with that, having no idea what caused it - didn't have much success at for a long time. It looked as though my SO was going to take the subway, which he didn't want to do at all. Then during some little jiggling procedure, which was carried out for diagnostic purposes mostly, things just snap into place! Again, we never figured out what we did to solve the problem.

Anyway, today he rode to work, and reports a fun ride and extremely smooth, clean shifting. Yay!