Hello. First of all, I'm not a hardcore cyclist like a lot of people on here probably are, so forgive me if I sound stupid. If you don't want to know the story of my stupidity just skip to the next paragraph. Otherwise here it is: I have a road bike that I bought while I was living in Germany. The other day I was cleaning it up before a ride and in the process I rendered it unridable. While I was cleaning the chain I saw that one of the links (the master link?) could be "broken" to remove the chain. So, I took the chain off, unaware that the two halves of the master link could become completely detached from the rest of the chain. At one point during the cleaning process, the two halves of the master link somehow got lost in the grass (I'll never clean my bike near grass again). I looked and looked for the two halves and found neither. So now I'm stuck with a bike with no chain. The chain is narrower than the one on my mountain bike and I'm afraid I won't be able to find a replacement master link because I bought the bike in Germany.

My question is, where can I find a replacement master link, or do I have to buy a new chain (I hope not)? I have found similar master links on eBay but I'm not sure they're the correct size. On my chain there are markings on the rest of the links that say "SRAM" (the type of chain?), another marking says "PC38" (no idea what that is) and on the back of the links it says "04" (again, no idea). The following is the URL of an eBay auction for a master link that is similar to the one I lost.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SRAM-8-Speed-Cha...ayphotohosting

I hate having a bike that I can't ride because of such a tiny missing part, and I hate that I lost the master link in such a careless way. Any and all help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading.