Some Observations of the Behaviour of American People.

We have noted a few things about the behaviour of the American Folk during our travels. These are complete sweeping generalisations of course,  and are intended to be taken in the fluffy light-hearted spirit in which they are meant.

1. Americans recreate. This is a lesser known verb associated with the action of partaking in recreation. They recreate, and they recreate hard. With vim and vigour. Due to their woefully poor annual leave allowance, they recreate mainly in short sharp spurts at weekends. They drive hundreds of miles, with wagons, trailers, tents, kids, dogs, bikes, boats and kayaks. They CAMP. This involves arriving late, setting up epic sites, often with strings of fairy lights, floor matting, seating for 30. They get up early, cram in multiple daily activities and then stay up late around a campfire. (See no. 2) Then they de-camp and drive home again. It’s exhausting to watch. But also dangerous to get in the way.
2. Americans do not mumble. They are taught at an early age to project their voices. They can confuse the volume of voice needed for normal communication with those people with whom you are sitting around a campfire/ in a diner/ in a shop, with that volume used for attracting attention from a search party when they have been lost in the woods for 2 days. We have coined the phrase ‘lost in the woods voice’ to describe the decibel level of these conversations.
3. Americans are incredibly courteous drivers. As previously mentioned, they pull out wide to pass you even if you are in a designated cycle lane. They will stop on a main road to let you cross in the complete absence of a designated crossing. There will be much waving and gesturing at 4 way stop signs to let us go first, even if it is not really our turn. They don’t really tailgate, or seem to get inpatient at not being able to overtake.
4. Americans cannot be ‘quipped’ at. Throw-away humorous comments hit them and slide off. Often they don’t even hear them because they are not expecting an off-the-cuff witticism, other times they just look bemused. Sometimes I think they don’t understand our accent. You can see the grey matter trying to process the words…Is that English? (Yes, the original version, thank you) They are literal people. Our sarcasm and irony is not welcome here. Shame, as that is the back-stop of our communication technique.
5. Americans often do not make eye contact with you as you walk past. Some of this, I think, is because they are busy and distracted with the ‘recreating’ thing. Some of it is the ‘stranger-danger’ thing. Who knows which weirdos are armed and which are bumbling, sarcastic, overly friendly British-Kiwi tourists.
6. Americans have a serious addition to white crystallised substances: namely salt and sugar. Everything is either incredibly sweet, or overly salty. Bread is more like cake. Baked beans are so sugary they should be served as a dessert. On slices of toasted cake.
7. Americans don’t walk anywhere that they can drive. Even the hiking, running, cycling type of Americans with very functional legs and normal BMIs will jump in the car to go to the restaurant around the corner. They have a distinct demarkation between walking (or hiking) as a recreational activity, and walking as a (silly) form of transport. We have seen families load up into a car to drive the 0.2 miles to a trailhead car park in order to do a 5 mile hike. Our readiness to walk or cycle places that have perfectly good road access and car parking is another thing that bemuses the Americans about us.

Those are my thoughts. Apologies to my American friends!