Champagne Is On Ice

Sat., Jan. 1, 2000

By Paul Turner srpaulturner@gmail.com

Four guys from Spokane were among the first people on the planet to see in the New Year.

They’ll also be among the last.

That’s because their location pretty much places them in every time zone.

You see, Ethan Rogers, Joe Gowdy, Bruce Bold and Garth Finley currently work at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station.

“We’re all having a great time down here,” said Rogers in an e-mail to The Slice from Antarctica.

He passed along the following info.

Rogers (Lewis and Clark ‘92) is a cargo handler. Gowdy (Shadle Park ‘98) does a variety of construction jobs. Bold (West Valley ‘92) is a sheet metal foreman. Finley (Springdale ‘93) is a carpenter.

According to Rogers, there are only 220 people at the science research station. So our area is pretty well represented down at the end of the Earth.

* There’s no escape: It was a few minutes after 6 a.m. the other day when the unmistakable sound of someone talking without saying anything filled the bus.

Yes, some guy was on a cell phone.

From the sound of it, the call was monumentally unimportant. Oh, well. At least it wasn’t the driver.

* Here’s a riddle: How long does it take a Christmas card to get from one North Side address to another?

Dan Stines knows the answer: 11 days.

He lives on North Maple. And a friend on East Cleveland sent him a correctly addressed card on Dec. 16.

That holiday greeting, mailed here in Spokane, was sent to Oslo, Minn.

It got mailed back to Spokane on Dec. 20. And the Stines family received it on Monday.

* Just for the record: The admonition to “Avoid jargon such as Y2K” appeared in The Slice on June 18, 1998. And a quick check of the computer archives indicates that the abbreviation then showed up in the Wake-Up Review nearly 700 times.

* The race is on: To come up with the first stupid catch-phrase of 2000. Here’s our locally-flavored offering.

“Spose so.”

* Here’s a tip: When calling The Slice and pretending to be some anonymous Joe Citizen all in love with a certain radio morning team or a particular TV station’s newscast, don’t try so hard to sound like a hick.

It just shows that, in addition to being a self-serving phony, you don’t understand Spokane in the least.

* Warm-up question: What neighborhood is most susceptible to chain-reaction dog-barking frenzies?

* Today’s Slice question: Who were the Inland Northwest’s 25 least intriguing people of 1999?

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