One cable channel I gained at the turn of New Year is called "Eurosport". It seems to be covering almost every major pro cycling event. In all my years of cycling, I've never been able to watch a broadcast of an actual pro cycling event. At most, if lucky I've been able to catch July weekend, half-hour round-ups of the past week of the Tour de France on network TV.

My feelings are divided about this new access to what pro cycling looks like. I've been cycling for about 15 years, and I'm in my twilight. I don't have the drive I had before or any goals that I want to accomplish. I just go on rides and do what I'm able to do. When I was younger, this access to cycling might have been highly inspirational, I shouldn't wonder.

But even now, it's inspirational in its way. I mentioned earlier that I've recently gotten back on my bike and went immediately to 30 mile rides without easing up to that from shorter, easier rides. And I immediately included rudimentary hills, and when you go up, you have to come down.

On the downhills, I noticed an unusual confidence that I usually have to develop into. I attribute all of this to watching these pro cycling events. You watch the pros do it, and then you get on your bike and you go for it to the best of your abilities and limits. You've dealt with fear and doubt vicariously by watching it done on TV.

However, you watch pro cycling and you can be inspired, but you also witness the cost, i.e., crashes. You can never discount hitting the deck, and in fact you should probably expect it to happen at some point. I hit the deck yesterday. Fortunately, it was pretty minor.

It was a low-speed slip of the front tire as I was riding off a bridge onto a ramp to a riverside bikeway, and there was some goo that had been applied at the connecting point for some reason and it was slippery in those conditions and I went over. Not a mistake, not my fault, but one of those unforeseeable factors that, in fact, you should expect to happen at some point.

The immediate noticeable damage was a scraped and bloodied knee. My shoulder also impacted the ground, but there was no breaking of skin. I was already towards the end of the ride, so I decided to abandon and head home, stopping off at a pharmacy to buy necessary first aid I knew I didn't have at home.

My attitude about it was: I've been inspired to ride by watching pro events, I can't be discouraged by downturns that are expected by riding inspired by watching pro events.

However, I didn't look forward to the pain involved with the injury and tending and dressing it. Somewhere along the line, I've become a wimp about pain.

Which is ironic since I used to be a cutter. Pain wasn't an issue when I sliced through my skin, but in the past few years pain has become something to fear and avoid. Suddenly blood arouses fear of infection. Infection?! When the fuck did I start being concerned about infection?!!

But it happened, I hit the deck and had an open wound. I had to deal with it. And actually, my experience as a cutter had to kick in. It's gonna hurt, fucking deal with it. And that's what I did. I got involved in the pain, prepared to embrace the pain. And it's not that bad.

(Ah, it all comes back to me. It was a meditation. Pain, to a certain extent, is just a sensation. It's basically a judgment to dislike it or call it bad or be averse to it. When pain occurs, it's automatic to think "don't want", but it's possible to mentally examine the pain and the negative reaction to it. The pain is a natural consequence of injury, but the reaction can be controlled).

I was exaggerating to myself the extent of the injury, bemoaning the pain of an open wound and the time it would take to heal. I've been babying the wound.

If this happened when I was younger, I would have just ignored it and let it clot over and scrape off the hardened scabs (I used to love to do that) and let it heal by itself. I would have considered this just a scratch.

You wouldn't see me walking down the street with a gleaming white bandage, a dressed wound which makes it look worse than it is. You'd see the raw open wound or the ugly maroon evidence of a recent scrape, and it wouldn't look like anything. What the fuck happened to me?