The Slice: It was a very good year

What was the best summer of your life?

Maybe you know the answer. But if you need to mull it before pinpointing a certain year, perhaps the first thing you might want to do is determine what ingredients would make one particular summer stand out.

What would be on your list? Surviving Vietnam? Having your heart broken and then magically healed? A childhood summer when every day seemed to burst through a screen door at a full sprint and then go on forever?

Of course, when we look back on our own greatest hits, it’s natural to remember special moments and not necessarily the entire season framed by Memorial Day and Labor Day.

You know, fishing with your grandfather. Or the station wagon trip to Disneyland. Or that summer job that taught you some unexpected life lessons. Or a first kiss. Or the summer when your daughter was born.

The glimpses of the past go on and on … Wiffle ball games that lasted past dark, dances, your big brother’s hot rod, cookouts, fireworks, skateboards, milkshakes, drive-in movies, songs you’ll always remember, eye-opening conversations on boats, summers with your dad in another state, running on the beach and scenes enough to fill a season of “The Wonder Years.”

But if you can’t really pick a certain year, that’s OK.

Choosing one absolutely best summer isn’t always easy. Besides, maybe it will turn out to be 2017.

Slice answers: The question was, what one word best describes your zip line experience?

“Is ‘cable burn’ one word or two?” wondered Lorri Stonehocker.

She was doing a zip line trip on Maui and got twisted around a bit on her descent. So she reached up to try to correct her position by grasping the cable. You aren’t supposed to do that.

Still, she said she had a great time.

“Yee-hah!” said Kirsten Fehlig, who did a zip line run out at the Mica Moon facility at Liberty Lake a couple of years ago to celebrate her 75th birthday.

And Bob Isitt said his one word would be “emasculating.”

He and his wife rode zip lines up at Whistler, B.C., and she somewhat outperformed him. “A return trip is in the offing to earn back my man card.”

Today’s Slice question (complete this sentence): Next month’s solstice notwithstanding, it’s officially summer in the Spokane area when ….

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