stgeorge:
Again, since I'm going over wifi, I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to replace all the serial monitor stuff with console read stuff and give that a try.
I don't think you mentioned that you were trying to use the Serial Monitor over WiFi, or if you did, I missed it. Yes, if you are using a strictly WiFi connection, you MUST use the Console class. The Serial class works ONLY over the USB serial connection. The Console class works ONLY over a network connection (WiFi or Ethernet.) The fact that we were talking about the Serial class made me assume we were talking about USB.
...see if I can figure out how to replace the serial monitor coding with console coding,
Serial and Console both derive from the same Stream class, so they have the same interface and work much the same way. Switching your sketch over is easy: first, you need to add #include <Console.h> at the beginning of your sketch. Then, change your Serial.begin() statement to Console.begin() with no arguments, and make sure it is s called after Bridge.begin() is called. Finally, change every occurrence of Serial in your sketch to Console. All of the print(), println() and other functions are the same and will not need any changes.