The weather has turned wet and rainy on the coast.  The bad thing is that it is wet and rainy.  The good thing is that this turn of weather signals the seasons turning.  Warmer weather is on the horizon.  This is when I start getting itchy.  The maps come out. The saddlebag supplies are collected. Day trips are planned and longer trips are penciled on to the calendar. Normally I love my valley. Yet at times the mountains that surround me chaff and I start looking east to wider skies.  In 2010, I rode back to Manitoba and was amazed how many people told me that riding through the prairies was boring.  Not so.  From fields of sunflowers as far as the eye can see to patchwork quilts of bright yellow canola, blue bursts, and waves of wheat.  Then the company of red tail hawks gliding beside me, gophers popping up to see who is using their highway, or the antelope tentatively grazing in the fields.

It is 2012.  I am looking forward to finding the prairie horizons.