Mere Means

Yesterday AV and I took a car trip. We like car trips, and I'm still convinced that our ability to spend very long periods of time together in a moving vehicle - pleasantly, no less - is part of the reason why we get along so well. Today we were gone 10 hours. We made our way down to Penitente Canyon, which is roughly 20 miles southwest of Saguache (itself about 50 miles south of Buena Vista) nestled at the foothills of the San Juan mountains.* We also saw a tornado on the way. I'm not kidding, and anyone who reads this blog who (a) is married to me or (b) is related to me and lived with me during my childhood knows that I am absolutely, deathly afraid of tornadoes. It was very far away, and we stopped to tape it. So now we have video of a tornado.

Anyway, on our way home, we took highway 24 through Leadville. Leadville was where we concluded one of the scariest, most tense drives of our married life about three years ago**, so once we happened upon Twin Lakes it was har-de-har-har all the way into Leadville. We were starving, and so we pulled into a small little cafe on Leadville's main drag. As we walked into the cafe (which had maybe ten tables in all), we seated ourselves and began to wait. It was almost 10 minutes until our server stopped at our table. She took our order, and we waited another fifteen minutes for root beers that never came. We asked her to cancel our order - something we never do. She then proceeded to get huffy with us, and we left the restaurant.

I was a server in college, incidentally at the highest-grossing Chili's in the region, and until I became a teacher my nightmares almost always were about waitressing. Lost tickets, forgotten drinks, people sitting at tables for long periods of time drinkless - all these things I have done, and all of them I had nightmares about until I started teaching. I can certainly understand busy restaurants and servers "in the weeds" (or, dans la merde in a more sophisticated French setting), a place I found myself many nights in the period I was slinging fajitas - in one case, quite literally - at customers.

Because of my experiences serving (and one Sunday afternoon in which I waited on a very demanding table of eight to no tip), I often appeal to the plight of servers and those working in retail (another college job) to explain the point of Kant's second line of the Categorical Imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of any other, always at the same time as an end and never simply as means." If a server sweats blood for you (or minimally provides reasonable service and allows you to enjoy your meal), you give her a tip in recognition of her efforts. Kant's requirement is that we respect the goals, projects, and rationality of our fellows, because we have the same expectation for ourselves.

Now, the question I'm left with this afternoon is whether on this principle we were justified in leaving the restaurant as we did. My first thought is that we were justified in leaving, since servers are just as capable of treating customers as mere means, and so we have a Kantian justification for giving good service. But just because we don't get the service we expect, does that justify us in not leaving a tip? Is this overly retributive? Do I need a new example for my students?

Clearly, I've thought too much about this. Did you know that the word "tip" was initially an acronym for "to insure promptness"?

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*Our drive south on Hwy 285, especially through the San Luis Valley (spectacular views of the Sangre de Cristo mountains) is easily among the most beautiful drives I've ever taken in Colorado. Other spectacular drives include: Hwy 285 over Kenosha Pass into Deckers and Jefferson (if you've done it, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about); Independence Pass in the late summer/early fall at night - scary, but like another planet; Anywhere in Grand County; Hwy 7 south from Long's Peak through Allenspark, especially on a rainy July or August day.

**Some friends were married in Marble, CO at the foot of the Maroon Bells. As we were driving through Aspen, we were low on gas and as we drove by a gas station, we erroneously assumed that there would be another gas station before we got on the pass. Turns out that the gas station we passed was the last one until Leadville. As we made our way up Independence Pass, the gas light came on. We white-knuckled it to the top of the pass and drove as much of the way down in neutral as was possible. As we rolled into Twin Lakes, we discovered the gas station to be closed and so on to Leadville we pushed. We barely made it, and important lessons learned: stop for gas at the gas station you see, because it might be the last one for many miles.

After the New Year...

We've returned from a great visit in New York. Getting out of there last night was pretty ugly, since much of the city and Westchester were fogged in. We were delayed two hours and rolled into home around 1:30 last night.

AV and I dropped into NYC on Saturday. We spent about 30 minutes wandering around Midtown (jam-packed, btw) looking for our favorite noodle house. We looked on 46th Street, 47th Street, 48th Street (all between fifth and seventh avenues) and finally found it on 49th street between Fifth and Sixth avenue. We were starving by the time we arrived.

There were a few things on the docket for Saturday. One was to go to MoMA, but--as usual--it was jammed. We didn't stay, and we're still wondering if we will ever find a day when it is pleasant to go and see the insides of the museum. Something to think about. Another thing we wanted to do was to go to Chelsea and check out the Jonas Mekas installation at Maya Stendhal. We should have gotten the hint when walking by Pace Wildenstein (22nd street between 11th and 10th avenues) the doors were locked. Too bad, because a new exhibition by Robert Irwin was inside. There was a sign on the door at Maya Stendhal that said "we're closed until January 3." This information was helpfully not included on their websites. We ended up walking from Chelsea over to the East Village for a stop at Downtown Music Gallery. AV found some good stuff.

We ate dinner at the Chinatown Brasserie (308 Laffayette / at Great Jones Street), which was fantastic. We ate off the dim sum menu and had pork and crabmeat soup dumplings, crispy spring rolls with barbequed duck, pork buns (sweet barbecued pork in a boiled dough), fish skin dumplings, shrimp and Chinese chive dumplings, and tempura shrimp and chilies--kind of a shrimp chile relleno. We also had some interesting drinks there--AV had a bourbon drink with a ginger syrup and lime, I had a cranberry daquiri (cranberry juice with dark rum, crushed mint and lime). They were also good and went well with the dinner.

The Stone was a madhouse. We waited in line to get in to the 8:00 show for about an hour. There was a real jerk behind us, spewing about all of his knowledge of the Zorn catalogue and making digs at mainstream music. He was a total jerk and he talked the whole time. There were so many people that the fire marshall showed up. The show went on, but there were children crying, drunk and high college kids (they were partaking a few spots in line ahead of us) who shared with the group that they really had to go to the bathroom, and people behind us who kept standing up and leaning into the backs of our heads. Not your typical crowd, but it's good to see that so many people came out to pay the rent. I think that might be the last time we venture into the city so close to New Year's Eve.

New Year's Eve was spent at home with the family and good friends of the family who have spent the last 30-some New Year's Eve (only missing twice) with the Vartabedian clan. We played games, ate good food, and rang in the new year in the den with Dick Clark.

Aside from the madness in the city, it was a very refreshing vacation. It was especially nice to get away from the snow. I did not do any reading, other than Michael Pollan (which has started to make me crazy in some unproductive ways), and I knitted quite a bit. A good way to usher in 2007 and kick 2006 to the curb.