“No one told me there’d be days like these … Most peculiar, mama.” – John Lennon

After the most recent trip to Strawberry Fields in Central Park I saw that a Facebook friend posted that it was Worldwide Beatles Day. What a coinkydink … rather … “most peculiar.” I really hadn’t even planned to go to Strawberry Fields and didn’t know about the Beatles event, but that is how I roll … or prefer to.

My travel philosophy on the blog is to plan little and see much … and occasionally stumble upon some nice surprises.

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Texas has many lakes.  But Texas has one real lake.  You see, all of the lakes in Texas, barring one, are man made.

The one real lake, Caddo Lake, is described in native legends as a miracle of the earth opening up and taking on water with help from the creator.  The rest of the lakes are the result of some well-placed dirt and concrete to hold back the natural flow of various rivers headed ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Oklahoma:)

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Happy Memorial Day! Thank you to all who have served and especially for those brave souls and their loved ones who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

With all due respect for the holiday, PingWi-Fi.com is open for business and blogging …

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Interesting. Tragic. Arriving in New York the day that a maniac crashed his car through a crowd of innocent people in Times Square.  OH to have been a Texan with a legal gun near that car to have taken the guy out before he killed an innocent girl on vacation in this great city.  Through terrible tragedies like this, I think someday, people will realize that it is not the weapon of choice that takes innocent lives, it is an evil or malfunctioning human.

The interesting thing is that President Donald Trumps trip to Saudi Arabia and now to Israel has garnered a few positive words from the “news” organizations — even in New York.  Shrewd move to bolster support from our great, storied ally Israel although the previous president chose to snub that country and its descendants here in the United States.

Well played Mr. President!

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Happy Mother’s Day! I thought about posting a portrait of my mom, alone in the frame, beaming, sporting new contact lenses … but chose this photo instead, despite her glasses so indicative of the time. This was her element — surrounded by her family. She was a city girl that moved to the farm. She was a twin girl, raised by her aunts, and then somehow she brought up four wild boys with a precious little girl (for somewhat of a break).

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When my family moved to Fort Worth, it was pretty much sight unseen. No worries, right?  Having already lived in one cowtown and one cowpoke town, what could be different about an even bigger cowtown?  That was my limited, outsider’s impression of Fort Worth — The Stockyards, Billy Bob’s, cutting horse competitions, stock shows and cowboy culture.

Ha … I was so comfortable in this errant assessment … that yes, the family moved to Fort Worth with our belongings in a horse trailer.  (Hey … we cleaned it out.)

Culture shock. Our first apartment was in Fort Worth’s “Cultural District” and if I had a cowchip, I could have flung it and hit any of several amazing world-class museums. We were in “tall cotton” as they say.  Before that, I had no clue about the other side of Fort Worth — the grand old oil/gas/cattle empires … the families who invested generous portions of their mega-wealth back into the community … the arts.

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When you get on a plane, you are instructed that in the event of a mid-air incident you should place the oxygen mask over the face of children and infants first, and then take care of yourself, right?

Well, wrong of course!  You must help yourself to help others. I thought that was an original analogy for the immigration issue the first time I used it a few years ago, but I have seen a few others using it as well to explain why we must take care of The United States first.  IF we don’t remain viable, then the rest of the world will suffer … tremendously.

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The Modern

I am not ready to claim PingWi-Fi is some sort of talisman … but, like one of my coaches used to say, “I ain’t superstitious, but I ain’t gonna take any chances.”

Ha! Did your coach say that too?

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Day one of Fort Worth’s Fortress Festival threatened to be a wash, but the clouds held as storms rocked further east around Canton, Texas.

As I parked the bike at Will Rogers, the thump thump thump of a heavy bass line was shaking the parking lot.  As I dismounted and walked through or rather around the gauntlet of closed access gates, closer to the stage, I could hear entertainers over the speaker system chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot.”

This obviously was not the show for me.  I walked on looking for music and not redundant politics.

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On the eve of Fort Worth’s inaugural Fortress Festival, the Triumph Thunderbird cruiser was parked in front of a large, redbricked-warehouse-of-a-structure, next to a food trailer. Inside and in the garden behind there was one old, long-haired blogger and a bunch of Fort Worth hipster elite for a invitation-only gettogether with one of the deejays from Run The Jewels spinning the table.

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