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The Slice: If the people-to-cake ratio is off, it’s time to call it a day

Paul Turner, Spokesman-Review columnist. (The Spokesman-Review)

Here’s your chance to win the first coveted reporter’s notebook of 2015.

(For those of you just joining us, that’s what passes for a contest prize here at The Slice.)

Anyway, here’s the deal. I used to sit near a guy who would head out of the office as he announced, “I’ll be home, cooking.”

He was the food editor, so that might actually have been true.

And for the last few years, my desk was near a gentleman who would get up and declare that he was off to do yoga. I’m sure that he was.

But here is your challenge: Come up with an all-purpose line one could utter when exiting the workplace in the middle of the day.

You know, something that would pre-empt questions.

Good luck.

Best moment of 2014: “Finally making it up the Post Street hill on my bike,” wrote Cheryle Fisher. “But even better than that, having help from an angel.”

Here’s her story of riding up that challenging stretch on the North Side.

“I’m 66 years old, but my head thinks I’m still 20. I ride home from a volunteer job and tried all summer to make it up that hill, but always had to quit halfway up because I was sucking up so much oxygen I was afraid the rest of the people in Spokane might asphyxiate.

“One day I was making the attempt again, knowing that I wasn’t going to make it, as usual, when I heard someone behind me say ‘You can do it!’

“As he rode past, I saw that it was a ‘biker dude’ as I call them — those twentysomething guys in Spandex shorts with racing jerseys. Real bikers, not old grandmas like me.

“It was just the encouragement I needed. I had to make it now because I had to do it for him. He believed in me.

“He went past, turned off a side street and didn’t even go all the way to the top of that hill. If he had, I would have gotten off my bike and kissed him.

“As it was, I was so excited that I cried all the way home. And that was the best moment of 2014 for me.”

Today’s Slice question: How many times do your ears pop when driving up Mount Spokane?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. “This year I hit Double Nickels,” wrote Gordon Hensley. “Senior discounts here I come!”

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