[Closed] USA (well part of) - What a weird place....?

😯

Oh yeah mapping is a bit of a chore.. we're used to one set of definitive maps, but there lots of companies produce lots of maps for lots of different purposes, and very few are 'topo' maps ie with countours. As far as I can tell mostly you do your riding from a route guide in a book, a schematic map and trail markers.

if you think its the same language try bumming a fag .or ask them if kids take their own rubbers to school . when i was working at a summercamp there i told the kids to get their costumes ready to go swimming and they all wanted to dress up as cowboys .they are very optimistic and open but after a while you start longing for a bit of irony or sarcy -ness.

So the point of the story make sure the map has contours and when they say there is a bit of a storm coming and they live by the coast well.....nothing more to be said!

Sounds like an interesting story, but surely the moral of the story...

So the point of the story make sure you don't go camping in a storm when an attractive blonde pothead with 2 big puppies has told you she'll pick you up after attending to some business....

I'm in Delaware currently (second smallest state, Mid-Atlantic, just below Pennsylvania)

It's a small college town, but is a great place. People are friendly, generally slim and healthy, travelled and educated. I end up having a conversation with just about everyone I speak to in the supermarket. There is a lot of employment here, Dupont, Gore, Bank of America. The roads are far friendlier than Edinburgh ever was - I think I've had 2 'incidents' in 9 months on the road, a horse trailer came far too close during a long overtake, and someone yelled 'Asshole' through a window. I'd get that every day in Edinburgh.

Food is excellent, lots of great seafood - crabs from the Chesapeake Bay etc. Portions are moderate - the only time I've been shocked was when ordering a half plate of nachos which were too much for me to eat - and I can eat.

Beer - pretty good. Local brewery in Delaware produces some great bottled beers. Drinking laws are pretty severe here. They'll ID you if you look under 40, alcohol is only available in the liquor store. You can't drink outside.

Restricted riding - yes that is a pain in the backside. However, I'm lucky; I have ~100 miles of singletrack in the woods within a 5 mile road ride. Night riding can be done but only with special permission.

What do I miss? Haggis, back bacon, sausages, hills, manual cars, fast twisty roads.

Oh yeah, carding. I remember getting asked for ID and thinking "good god, I've been drinking for ten years..." heh.

I lived in a small college town in Washington (and I mean Washington, not that D.C. place) for a couple of years and loved it. Outdoor lifestyle was the norm, food was good and people were friendly.

Would move back there tomorrow if I could get a decent job.

I've been all over the place . . .

On thing I would say is, don't expect them to fawn over you because your English, it won't really happen!

But the stuff and people you see over there are just ace/weird.

Last year we went to South Beach . . .

Me and the missus were walking down the street and there were a couple of afro caribbean transexuals sitting on a corner, (the missus is of Afro Caribbean descent), . . . one of them piped up in their best camp accent, . . . "She gone an got herself a white boy" . . . . !

In New York the missus was accused of hating Black men "She hates the black man" cus she was with me too, . . . arhhh God Bless America!

Lot of hang ups still evident, . . . but at least they ain't afraid to express what they're thinking!

. . . and what other place would you see a 20 something with a baseball cap on backwards, with his arm out the window of a pimped up Rolls Royce playing some rap music!

It's got it's faults, but that is part of the excitement!

"On thing I would say is, don't expect them to fawn over you because your English, it won't really happen!"

being scottish in bakersfield works though - despite my best efforts for it not too - thankfully a colleague was with me to take care 😀

spent a couple months in houston and a month in bakersfield, california

houston i could live without

i quite like bakersfield and surrounding because of open space , and national parks all round ! - and far enough away from LA 😀

don't expect them to fawn over you because your English, it won't really happen!

That's absolutely regional. In touristy areas you're right. Off the beaten track in the back of beyond it's practically celebrity status.

Off the beaten track in the back of beyond it's practically celebrity status

+1

I'm another one who married an American. I've generally had great experiences over there. Although most of the family and friends are on the coastal bit of Washington state up to Vancouver, she has family over near the Idaho border in rural areas too. The vast majority of people I've met have been friendly, even to the level of a petrol station attendant buying me a coffee at 4am because I looked too tired to drive without a pick-me-up (didn't work, petrol station coffee is awful). Of course there are some odd ones but for every moron who wants to ruin your day there's a counterbalance. So basically just like the UK really.

The food in the US is good if you don't just stumble from IHOP to taco bell to dennys etc. I've had some fantastic meals in all kinds of places from "fancy" restaurants to small diners and cafes. As for beer, well this is the selection in a supermarket in Spokane, a small provincial city in eastern Washington, where they have a better selection of British beer than some shops here (there's more out of shot too).

[img] [/img]

Obviously it has its downsides and although I love visiting (and after 12 years of regular visits it seems like home from home), I wouldn't want to live there. The massive amounts of driving people who live in less urban areas do, the costly health insurance and the general political situation all are a turn off. That said, if the right job came along, I'd certainly not be put off.

I spent six months in Phoenix, AZ.

Overall enjoyed the experience, but as others have highlighted they could teach the French a thing or two about bureaucratic, petty, rules - which is quite an accomplishment.

Eating out is cheap if you just order from the starters menu, which is equivalent in size to a UK portion. Got frustrated at being asked for ID EVERYWHERE I went if I wanted a drink, even if you look about 80 you'll still be asked.

The police carry big guns and aren't afraid to use them.

Love this thread.

It should be automatically linked to every "Americans are all evil morons and the country is sh1te" comments from the Usual Suspects on here...

mapping is a bit of a chore

which is a bit of a global thing. Very few countries have anything close to OS.

I miss the range and quality of fast food in the US. If you just want to pop in somewhere say on the way home from something you get a good choice and it's ok. In the UK it's Burger King at a service station or pub lottery, and that's not exactly fast either.

... or food, half the time.

mmmmm I'm another one with the transatlantic other half but she made the move this way. Yes there are differences but you soon get used to them. Some places I could happliy live (Austin, Durango, Baltimore was ok) but other places such as Orlando are not my ideal place to live. Some nice village type places outside of that mind you.
Will I live there? Probably at some point. Where? I have no idea.
I have seen the a big white convertible cadillac with the driver wearing a stetson and the car had moosive longhorns on the bonnet, Boss Hogg stylee and I don't think he was being ironic with it 😉

I went to Colorado earlier this year. In the main, I was struck by the excellent customer service and generally polite & hospitable nature of everyone we met.

Plenty of pros, a couple of cons: 1) a few places didn't recognise British passports let alone driving licences when buying booze 2) lavatory design.

No matter where we went (restaurants, clubs, airports...) all of the cubicles/stalls had a massive gap at the bottom and in the door so you get a cracking view (sorry) of a chap dropping the kids off at the pool. I think it's a good indicator of how much mutual trust there is that they still want to be able to see all that.

Encountered a huge range of characters, including a nutty Dick Cheney fan and a woman taxi-driver who was concerned about the proposed cuts to the World Service. Completely disingenuous to suggest that all are insular-minded.

Different yes, but I can't wait to go back.

Totally agree about the petty rules of the land of the free: when living in San Diego I got ticked off for crossing the road, sorry, jaywalking. I'm 30 years old, I can cross a road with no traffic. Obviously I didn't say that or I would have been tasered. And the restrictions on use of the great outdoors are something else. But, despite reservations about America, I love Americans, particularly so for the response of my two flatmates from Georgia when I told them I was an atheist: "Whaaaat! You worship Satan?!"
Me: erm no.

My experience is that the USA beats the crap out of the UK:

I have family in southern california, between LA & San Diego. visit every year. It's bloody fantastic ! I could easily live there (if it wasn't so warm)

People there are really friendly, helpful, a whole lot slimmer and mostly better sense of humour than average brits. The salad/fruit section in their local supermarket is about 2 acres - nearly as big as the beers one.

Oh, and the biking is ace. There's loads of bikers on the roads and I can be on a proper mountain track in half a mile from the door, or the local singletrack hillside within 200 yards. If I want to go to the beach it's about a 10 mile ride/drive (and I have to pass some "famous" biking trails to get there). The local riders are waaay more friendly than in the UK - pretty much insist that you ride with them, or want to tip you off about their best trails. I've even been offered a set of lights and a night ride shuttle trip with a bunch of lads within 10 minutes of meeting them (and the same offer from a shop once as well).

thinking about it, yeh, it's weird alright

My experience is that the USA beats the crap out of the UK:

Hehe, can't beat a good sweeping statement eh? 🙂

My experience is that the USA beats the crap out of the UK:

You're generalising based on experience of one place, similar to those who complain based on the same limited experience.

I've been to NY, didn't like it much. The NW of the country is nice though - did some nice boarding at Mt Baker, and Oregon is lovely (never made it to Portland but I've heard it's very liberal and bike friendly).

Hehe, can't beat a good sweeping statement eh?

You're generalising based on experience of one place, similar to those who complain based on the same limited experience

I have family in southern california, between LA & San Diego. visit every year. It's bloody fantastic ! I could easily live there (if it wasn't so warm)

And yet ... the folk there voted for Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

People are indeed slim and beautiful in California. Some might say it's because they are shallow and obsessed with surface beauty... Not that I'm saying that mind, just "throwing that idea into the air" as Americans might say 🙂

Last time I went to Richmond I was struck by how slim and attractive everyone was 🙂

[i]cubicles/stalls had a massive gap at the bottom and in the door so you get a cracking view (sorry) of a chap dropping the kids off at the pool.[/i]

Some places have no doors, or indeed cubicles.

And yet ... the folk there voted for Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Last time I went to Richmond I was struck by how slim and attractive everyone was

You've got to remember that the US is the size of Europe: we don't think that someone who's been to a dozen European countries is insular but we laugh at Yanks who've never left the East Coast tho they've been in many states from subtropical Florida to Maine.
Travel is different there.
Some aspects are bad, some good. I sometimes enjoy my visits, sometimes not.

I used to work for a large US-based IT company. We had massive 'kick-off' meetings - 17000 people in Vegas for a week! I was surprised to find that despite the language issues, I felt much closer to my European colleagues than the Americans. Not that the Americans were bad, just very different, so someone from the UK has more in common with an Italian or a Spaniard than an American.
30 years ago, I spent a while travelling from Boston to LA via Memphis, Nashville, Canada, Iowa, Chicago and San Francisco using a combination of Greyhound buses and hitch-hiking. Since then I've visited Texas and Washington on business. Some of the deep south places are frightening, but overall people are friendly and helpful. Decent coffee is unobtainable anywhere more than 10 miles from the sea.

Don't get me wrong now, I have spent reasonable amount of time in a small Mid-Western town as well as travelled to other places, and there's a lot to like about America and Americans.

That's true of most places too though. Different things of course, but there you go.

We could live in the US if we wanted, but we don't. A few things concern me about living there -

1) The work culture. In a professional position you are a bit of a slave. Everyone I hear about who works in IT does very little else apart from work. See the movie 'Office Space' for more details. The cost of property in parts of the country means you have to suck this crap up too.

2) The trail access situation. If you live in certain areas, you are quids in. Otherwise - forget MTBing. In Northern Wisconsin there's thousands of square miles of forest, which is great. Most of it's dead flat, but whatever. In the town where Mrs Grips is from, there's a few spots 20 miles away with a handful of regulated trails and a tiny scrap of land nearby with no bike stickers all over the place.

3) The healthcare thing. Even if you have insurance through your job it only covers you for so much. Having a kid for example is often not covered, so you have to shell out for the medical bills. AND on top of that they more or less force you to have the full medical procedure with doctors, operating theatres and the whole nine yards. Why? Tempting to think it's just so that they can make money out of you.

4) Consumerism. If you think it's bad here, it's way worse there. Everywhere you go you are being hassled to buy buy buy spend spend spend own own own ALL the time. And people do mostly. They don't travel or go and do stuff they just buy shite. So then people invent shite to sell them. Toaster oven anyone? Muffin baking machine? Any opportunity to make some item to SELL you is jumped upon and bled to death in a frenzy of marketing.

Ok so I'm going overboard there, but it's still a bit off-putting. Everyone seems to work in retail, but where the geoff does all the money come from in the first place? I dunno.

5) Schools would concern me a bit too. Apparently everyone hates High School. Why? It's a highly charged mix of insane academic and social pressure where everyone seems to be antagonising everyone else. Ever wonder why there are so many films either devoted to or referring to it? Would scare me to have to put one of my kids through it. And university - dear me. It costs a ton, so the rich kids have a ball and breeze through, whereas the poor ones have to work like slaves on their uni work AND spend the rest of their waking hours flipping burgers or some such drudge. Half the time it costs too much to stay away so they have no choice but to go to their local college instead of the prestigious uni that does the course they really want. And you have to slave away to fund courses that are totally irrelevant to what you want to do in the name of a well rounded education. In the name of profit more like... And it takes four, five, six years because you have to spend most of your time working.

6) In most of the country you drive everywhere, you don't walk anywhere. You have nowhere to walk to. Every time you leave the house you get into a car. This bugs me. Ok so out East it's not quite that bad.

You've got to remember that the US is the size of Europe

Nothing like as diverse though.

so someone from the UK has more in common with an Italian or a Spaniard than an American

Italians don't even have much in common with Italians. I certainly have more of a shared culture and view with Northern Europeans - but not so much with the Med nations.

Agreed TT.

stopped at maccydees off the beaten track in some dust blown hole in Utah off one of the interstates. The girl behind the counter had difficulty with my accent. Her: 'where you from?' Me: 'Scotland', Her: 'Your english is good'... To be fair though I was probably the first Aberdonian she'd ever spoken to. Other than Moab the food I had in UT was gash.

Loved the bits of Colorado I saw though. Wish I could say the same of UT. I'd love to spend a longer time in CO (and also see California, I've a real 70's hippy streak in me, that and I wanna see half dome before I shuttle orf...).

If you read through this thread & ignore the BS written by some you will get a pretty good idea of what the US is like. It's too big, too vast, too varied to stereotype. Trying to classify the US under one simple banner is as Blackadder once said "pointless.." You only have to read the wildly varying descriptions & the differing geographical locations mentioned to realise that. It rather reminds me of another place not so far away.

As for the biking being nothing but buff trails? Well I don't mind that 😉 & trust me there's more than enough rocky sh!t to keep anybody happy..

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

Obviously the USA is a big place, and there are places I hate as much as anyone from the UK could.

I spent a week at Fort William a couple of years ago. No one from Scotland has any right to complain about our food. Yes, I had the haggis. OTOH, single-malt scotch whisky beats Kentucky bourbon all hollow.

American beer used to be terrible, and mass produced beer (Coors, Budweiser, etc.) still is, but now there is a brewery in my town that caters to the MTB crowd, and another four or five small breweries within a few miles. As a previous post noted, you can buy beers imported from all over the world also.

I can choose from a dozen ethnic cuisines if I care to dine out. French, Italian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and any number of specialty restaurants whose menus defy categorization. I have never seen any place advertise that they serve authentic English food, with the possible exception of prime rib with trimmings.

I don't drive to a MTB ride. I get on my bike at my house and hit dirt in minutes. Living just north of San Francisco, I ride in an area perhaps fifteen miles square and I don't get bored with the trails, but our space is limited compared to other areas. The entire Rocky Mountain part of the country is a vast expanse of mountain biking. If a UK mountain biker can't have fun there, give it up.

I rode with an English rider this weekend. He was here on business with one day to ride in California, and it was his dream to ride "Repack." He had contacted one of my friends online (on retrobike.co.uk), and my friend directed him to me as a local guide.

There is a reason why I use the handle I do. Former MTB champion Jacquie Phelan and I took him on the same ride Joe Breeze and I took Rob Penn on for his BBC programme, [url= http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdFikise66I ]"It's All About the Bike."[/url] I think our guest left with a positive impression of Americans. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word he said.

I have family in the Bay area of SF and up in the hills above SF (Sonora?), I can't believe I've never been. I've travelled all over the world, always wanted to go to the USA, but never happened.

Yay, Jaquie Phelan! Haven't heard that name for a while. Does she still wear pearls and do WOMBATS?

[b]Some[/b] people are indeed slim and beautiful in California.

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[url= http://sonic.net/~ckelly/Seekay/mtbwelcome.htm ][b]2retro4u[/b][/url]
Marin County, Cali

Yay, Jaquie Phelan! Haven't heard that name for a while. Does she still wear pearls and do WOMBATS?

In honor of our English guest, we dialed up your sort of weather, a bit rainy and cold. Jacquie went with the tweed jacket.

If you want to catch her act, and boy does she have an act, she says she's going to the SSWC in Ireland.

[IMG] [/IMG]

Some really interesting observations on this thread, so cheers for the input.

I did heavily qualify my OP with the point that it is a big place with lots of variables. I've always fancied the idea of the north, Rockies, Pacific NW - well anywhere west of the Rockies. That still holds true.

I liked lots of what I saw in NC. Loved the amount of green. Didn't have any problems with Americans, just found lots of aspects of their lifestyle puzzling, frustrating, and sometimes quite worrying!!!

As for the biking being nothing but buff trails? Well I don't mind that & trust me there's more than enough rocky sh!t to keep anybody happy

Yeah not in Wisconsin though, unfortunately 🙂

And that's another issue with subtle implications, I reckon. If you are somewhere, it's generally a really really long way to somewhere else different.

Tried to edit my previous post, but frustrated by phone interface and timed out....

Anyway, molgrips' previous points are pretty spot on based on my limited, localised, expereince.

Our hosts were pretty comfortable about the healthcare setup. Good job / career and good insurance etc. But they were less comfortable when I asked what happens after they retire and are likely to need more, rather than less, healthcare provision...

Also, on the education system - pledging allegiance to the flag - everyday???? What the hell is that all about??? I don't mind understated, dogged patriotism, but that amounts to child indoctrination, which I find very worrying. Combined with the previously discused disdain for the questioning of any sort of authority and you start to get close to the sort of outlook I've read about in books on early 1930s Germany.... 🙁

Like I said above, my more negative observations are focused on their system / collective outlook and not on an individual level. As others have posted, I felt very much more of a European when in the States - and of course, that is what I am - but we tend to regard ourselves as somewhere spanning the gap (geographically, commercially and culturally) between Europe and the US. Not so sure about this. I think the UK has moved a long way further towards our European neighbours over the last 20-30 years than we realise.