Native Trophy

Ironic. The fifty journalists at the press conference for The 2013 Gildan New Mexico Bowl didn’t say a word about the four-point spread for Saturday’s game, or anything about Washington State and Colorado State’s tendencies to cover the spread … as we sat in a meeting room at a beautiful new casino.  A casino with Wi-Fi throughout the meeting areas and lobby, I might add.

By the way … the front desk clerk this morning at my hotel was chatty and said she worked at a casino for a while. Alway inquisitive, I asked if she had lots of trouble with cheaters and card counters and stuff. She said, “Yes … we had lots of people from Texas.” I digress …

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Tomorrow is the big day – a press conference marking the beginning of PingWi-Fi bowl season, the “most bestest” time of the year. This year we start early, with the first of all the bowls – The Gildan New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque on Saturday (Dec. 21). Toward the end of December, we will also hit the Heart of Dallas Bowl, The Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl and possibly one or two more as we work out the details.

You may recall (and we will not let you forget) that the PingWi-Fi team was the very first to tweet an entire bowl game from a press box, with our play by play from Fort Worth’s Armed Forces Bowl a few years back … We will be, of course, checking the Wi-Fi hotspots in all these stadiums … and pumping out the social media from the press boxes … shooting from the sidelines …  live action (to borrow a phrase).

But … the business at hand … The Gildan New Mexico Bowl will feature The Pac-12’s Washington State Cougars against the Colorado State Rams from the Mountain West Conference.

This is our first visit to The New Mexico Bowl, but with good reason. It is The Washington State Cougars first bowl appearance since 2003, and the first bowl game in several years for the craftiest coach in football. No one … and we mean no one does more with less than Mike Leach.

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Always on the road, the cell phone has become my alarm clock. And on those rare mornings when I actually sleep until the alarm sounds, I grab the phone to shut it off and go straight into e-mails and Facebook updates. Usually, it is a great, positive way to start the day, albeit horizontal.

This morning I read sweet messages from two old friends. They liked something I posted on FB about me attempting to master my mom’s recipe for a family tradition — homemade date loaf candy. For Susan and Deborah Sue … there is more to the story … thus, a “Blog About Nothing.”

Mom’s gone this Christmas, but long before she quit dancing she had already turned over the cooking duties for holidays. And luckily, someone took over the date loaf gig. For several years, we had an SC … a substitute confectioner who carried on the sugary good tradition. But now we only have an XC … ex-confectioner. Sadly, no one seems to have the recipe in question.

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Today the hotspot of choice is the world headquarters of PingWi-Fi.com, since some of our other favorite Wi-Fi watering holes are locked up tight due to the ice storm throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

By the way … the roads are really bad — not terrible — but really bad.  IF the weathercasters and newscasters would convince people to slow down and avoid tailgating and spinning out … it would be fairly decent.  Instead everyone is on the road freaking out.

Oh well … it is football weather — best watched from the Ping Hotspot anyway.  First up, sheer Bedlam.  We expect to see The Oklahoma State Cowboys get some revenge for all the years they have been “owned” by the Oklahoma Sooners.

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Ha.  It’s about time.  Inflight Wi-Fi is all over the news and it is the subject of more and more airline ads.  Glad they finally got on board, wholeheartedly.  We’ve been evangelizing since, what, 2003?  Regardless, good times!  Nothing better than getting some work done on the computer at 30,000 feet and doing the important things – updating status, liking your friend’s breakfast photo, and tweeting to the unreading masses.

If you have not been keeping up, here’s a good piece from the Aussie press:

Business Insider

But beware, it is said that with fewer restrictions and improved quality of Wi-Fi on the airline of your choice, surely more advertising is on its way.  Can you say “captive audience?”

So … we celebrate the maturation of inflight Wi-Fi and we look back on some high fallutin, Wi-Fi tootin our own horn blogs here:

Wi-Fly Blogs

You are free to blog around the cabin.

Know what I sayin?

“I totally lucked into this deal … staying in a new barn/house on 1700 acres butted up against a national forest in Montana … in The Big Hole area. The only thing between this place and the mountains is a few hundred head of Angus. I rode a four-wheeler all morning, right up to the lip of Twin Lakes and some other trails where there were 6-8 inches of snow on the ground … what could be more pristine and perfect? … I had the national forest to myself and was enjoying my lunch out of my backpack, shooting a few photos and selfies … sitting at a picnic table, when I’ll be darned … Sasquatch stole my beef jerky!”

— Wi-Fi Guy, as posted on Facebook

Facebook status: sometimes they’re the whole story and sometimes they’re just the lead.

This time … there is so much more to say.  I mean … Montana = Big Sky and it is the home of The Big Hole … a big time had by all. So beautiful and free … and the history:

“At the time Lewis & Clark “discovered” the Big Hole River watershed, it was a buffer zone between several rival Native American tribes including the Nez Percé, Shoshone, Coast Salish, and Blackfeet. Lewis & Clark considered navigating up the Big Hole River, but chose the slower-flowing Beaverhead River instead. Trappers from both the Hudson’s Bay Company, the North West Company and the American Fur Company exploited the region from about 1810 to the 1840s. Miners and homesteaders settled the area between 1864 and the early 1900s.

In 1877 the U.S. troops under John Gibbon fought the Nez Percé Indians along the Big Hole River, during the Nez Perce War in the Battle of the Big Hole. The site of the battle along the North fork of the Big Hole is preserved as the Big Hole National Battlefield.”

– Wikipedia

Big Hole Valley

I am saving the battlefield for another blog.  We will live to ping that another day.  For this blog, it was about fun and photography.  It so deserves a big ol’ wordy effort.  Although anything I write about this place will fall short.

Big Hole Battle

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I’ve had my good eye on Bad Ass Coffee and another shop since I arrived in Dillon a couple of months back.  At first glance, I thought B@ had closed down, because it is not the only business in a small office building.  And, it is not the business you see from the main street as you drive by.  Even though the flop-eared donkey signs are all over the building — it looks like an insurance company has taken over and left the jackasses on the walls and roof to add personality.

Early on in my unsuccessful stalking of this Jackass haunt, I drove through the drive-thru and stopped at the window.  It was pitch black inside … I just knew they had gone out of business.

Only recently did I learn that The Arse  has been open for business this entire time.  They just have a small window of opportunity in their schedule, IMHO.

J.C., Dezi

Well … timing is everything and somehow I can never catch them open … probably because I work from 6 to 6 … well, at least I am on a jobsite during those ours.  Most of Dillon seems to be out working on the same schedule.

Hey Bad Ass!  Please, add some evening hours.  Surely the Montana Western college crowd will support you … I mean you do have Wi-Fi.

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There is something about a college town. There’s the Saturday football craziness, there is the cultural awareness and the arts … and there is an appreciation for whatever is trending. For me, it’s Wi-Fi that is trending, so when I headed to Missoula, Mont. — home of uMont, The University of Montana I expected plenty.

Before the college town became a college town, it was once called Hellgate Trading Post, founded in 1860.  I like what you’ve done with the place, and the new “Missou” suits you.

Driving into town, the college vibe surrounded my truck like a cloud. Several hundred feet up on the mountain to my left was the college logo … with a complementary stadium in its shadow. It was a bright, clear, crisp morning at the end of summer. Things had cooled off slightly, and there was a noticeable breeze. Football weather was just around the corning … I breathed it in, as I drove through the peaceful, quiet neighborhoods. It was beautiful, but to my surprise I didn’t find that many businesses right around the campus, so I broadened the Pingsearch a little further from academia.

Heading west to Reserve Street I found the fertile retail ground … ripe for blogging.

First up, a really interesting building caught my eye and I whipped the Ford into the parking lot of a building that looked like a cafe which someone had added on to … adding a grain silo. I ordered up a sandwich on their home-baked bread and checked out all of the photos of combines harvesting grain … lots of them. “Be still my beating farmboy heart.”

This deli/bakery/coffee cafe is Wheat Montana … and it had a bumper crop of Wi-Fi …

Wheat Montana

(Since that first visit, I have also checked out the first location of Wheat Montana, on I-90 toward Bozeman … and it truly is a cafe/bakery attached to a grain storage facility and a flour mill. But most impressive – the cinamon rolls about as big around as my face … a perfect fit.)

Wheat Montana — Amber waves of Wi-Fi and good things fresh from the family farm to this new favorite hotspot – 6 pings.

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