Helene and I (for those of you who don't know-my fiance who's a doctor by day, girl geek by night, whom I met when I saw her using a Tablet PC in the lobby of the W in San Francisco late last year) took a quick weekend getaway to Santa Barbara to see our friend Doug Margerum (Wine Cask and Margerum Wine Company owner, operator, all around great guy) and David Corey (winemaking superstar). We went up for a few reasons, one of which was to see David and his wife Becky's new six week old son, Fletcher. While we dined @ Doug's new Los Olivos bistro, Intermezzo while the Wine Cask - Los Olivos gets built out Friday night, Saturday was a blast as we wine tasted with Doug Saturday afternoon (what was this tasting number three at his winery in 8 months, plus two or three dinners in San Diego and the Santa Barbara Futures event where my check book got much lighter once again) before heading over to Bryan Babcock's winery west of Bulleton, for the debut of his new Terrior Series of wines.
On the train ride back from Santa Barbara I connected my Verizon Broadband Access EvDO card and lived on 1xRTT before getting into the higher speeds of EvDO once we hit the L.A. County line. I got the feeling of being Joi Ito on Singapore Air of Jeff Pulver waiting for Jet Blue.
While I prefer WiFi when I'm stationary (at a coffee house, inside a winery or in my hotel room--we had Wayport a.k.a. Waypig for free in the hotel which was painfully slow-(Note to Wayport VP pal Dan Lowden to follow by e-mail) this EvDO thing has its use. While we likely could have driven back in about four and a half hours or so (traffic jams not withstanding) the civilized manner of surfing side by side with Helene (she was using my Sprint card) while not having to think about traffic sure is a great way to go up to Sideways land without any hassles and still stay connected.