Viewing the Portland Pilots

The first time I moved abroad was in 1987, long before the internet and social media.  I lived in the Italian city of Mantova.  We had no U.S. media, except the international versions of the USA Today and Herald Tribune newspapers.  If I wanted to know who won a particular basketball game on Sunday, it wouldn't make the Monday edition of the paper, so I would go to the train station on Tuesday around lunchtime after the morning train from Milan would arrive with the daily periodicals, so that I could buy the Tuesday version of one of the U.S papers so I could figure out what had happened in the world over the weekend.  That is, unless there was a train strike or a printers strike, then I might just not ever find out who won any of the games as there was no other source of this kind of news. Nothing. Occasionally, I could pick up Armed Services radio, broadcast from the Aviano airbase about 80 miles away if I stood in the kitchen of my apartment and held the radio antenna with one hand, but the reception was so poor, that it was seldom a viable option.  And that was it.  

Fast forward to today in Kyrgyzstan.  I was flipping the dial through my Russian and Asian television stations at my apartment when I found this.

It was my alma mater, the University of Portland Pilots playing the team from my hometown, the Gonzaga Bulldogs; the game was being shown live on Viasat, Russian sports satellite channel.  It is during these kinds of moments when you realize how the world has changed in 30 years.

But then again, if you look at the score on the screen you'll see that my school, Portland, is getting crushed by Gonzaga.  I believe it's the 26th loss for Portland in its last 27 games against the evil Bulldogs.  Perhaps there are some things that actually never do change.