Attendant On Duty

I continued on US 20 making my way to Oregon. Western Idaho is completely barren I was going to make a change in routes to go explore the more beautiful northern Idaho, but unfortunately time/money and my eagerness to make it to Oregon would persuade me out of it. I had it set in my mind that I would make it to Eugene Oregon, another hostel lie there, and a very surprise meeting with a lost brethren.

Western Idaho blends in with eastern Oregon in that you can’t tell them apart. The back end of the Cascades creates a barren plateau full of nothing. This stretch of land is even barren gas stations.

No sooner then I entered Oregon, I spotted my first hitchhiker. I had come over 2500 mile and I was spotting not, just one hitchhiker, but several in the next 100 or so miles I traveled through Oregon. I was tempted to pick one up, but I just wasn’t comfortable with the characters I saw.

I finally made a stop in Bend Oregon to gas up, which led to an interesting revelation. When I went to get out of my car in order to do the whole stretch and refuel routine, I was bombarded by three gas station attendants, one of which instructed me to stay in my vehicle. What the hell was going on? One jumped in front of my windshield and began spraying it down, wile the other came to my window and asked me what grade of gasoline I wanted. I looked around to see if there was a full service sign somewhere that I had missed. So I told the attendant that I didn’t want full service. He told me “It is unlawful for someone other then a professional gas-attendant to pump gas in whole state of Oregon!” What the hell kind of law is that? So I complied, and reluctantly tipped the attendant a buck on my $35 fill up. I was tempted to say, “peep the plates buddy, I’m from Illinois we pump our own gas there!” But this did raise the question what is the proper tip for a gas station attendant that pumps your gas? Do you tip 15% of the sale or is a buck good enough?