4. No One Walks Anywhere And Everyone Is Fat
Oh brother that's going to stir up some raised eyebrows from my buddies here. It's not like I'm a svelt man of dainty slenderness so the hypocrisy level is reading pretty high, but it's sadly true and heart disease is the number one killer in the USA. Diabetes ads are everywhere with their spokesman Wilford Brimley, the doc who went mad in John Carpenter's "The Thing", hocking all sorts of "diabeetus" drugs during every TV ad break. Aside from the ridiculously massive portions that restaurants hand out the bigger problem is people don't walk. They don't walk from their car to the various stores in a mall for example. I've seen people park at one store then drive to the store literally next door - three parking spots away. Walking is alien to Americans. I'm not talking about working out like doing a few laps around a park or jogging or biking to improve their health - that happens here as it does anywhere. I'm talking about just walking half a mile to the pub or to a mate's house. People drive three hundred yards to work and it's bizarre. I've been stopped by the police because I was walking in town and someone called 911 because "someone is walking past my house". Clothing sizes here are massive - 5x shirts and size 16 boots are commonplace. Each supermarket has electric scooters, not for the disabled so much but for the, well, fat folk. I've seen escalators in fitness centres and travelators like you get at airports leading into casinos. Americans can't even be bothered to walk into a casino, choosing instead to float by like royalty. It's a shame that this country is such a car-centric one. Perhaps if pubs were more prolific then they'd be a bit more activity going on in the shape of a pub crawl or two. But there's a reason they aren't...