The Slice: Negotiating with the car culture

Here’s my question.

Could one bold bicycle rider, through relentlessly proper and considerate conduct and robustly cheerful sharing of the road, single-handedly convert Spokane’s bike-haters from their state of perpetual peevishness to one of eventual acceptance?

Let’s move on.

Just wondering: What animal’s dining style do you emulate when devouring a chocolate bunny? (You may include among your choices dinosaurs and mechanical movie sharks.)

Your move: James Stripes estimates he has taught more than 1,000 people in our area to play chess.

The underemployed college instructor has been working with school kids for years.

“I started coaching chess as a parent volunteer when my youngest son was in third grade,” he said.

Here’s some advice he gave in a 2007 S-R story.

What’s the key to being a good chess player?

Practice, of course. But Stripes offers other advice: Learn how to lose.

“The kids who pitch a fit when they lose aren’t going to stick with it, because you will lose,” he said.

“The best players in the world lose.”

Mixed marriages: When they met, Patsy Wood lived in Washington. Her husband-to-be lived in Idaho.

After they married, he moved to Washington. That went all right, except he subsequently got called for jury duty three times in 10 years. Meantime, Patsy got no such calls to serve. None.

So he wrote to the court, noting that. And just last month, Patsy got summoned to jury duty.

“He is no longer as irritated with Whitman County.”

Darin Z. Krogh, Spokane born and raised, also weighed in. “How do mixed marriages work out? My wife (northern Idaho) insists on eating at restaurants that have the ketchup bottles on the tables before we walk in the front door.”

Clarification re: Bing Crosby possibly riding his bike on your street: “I have a childhood friend living in Billings, Montana (we are in our early 80s and friends for over 70 years),” wrote Donna Robinson. “She tells of her dad growing up on East Sinto and though Bing was older than her dad, Jim, Bing would come over and borrow Jim’s bike. So Bing might not have been riding HIS own bike.”

Noted.

Today’s Slice question: If you were offered a lot of money to endorse a product you do not use and don’t really admire, what would you do?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Agree or disagree: In 2016, you can watch hours of TV without spending any time on junk.