MidAtlantic

Good one!! I recall on one of my early trips exactly this when with an American associate. It was further to walk to the car than it was just to walk to the next shop
If this is the test then I will never be assimilated.

It took me about 10 years before I always went to the correct side of the car as the driver.

Pulaski

There are very few parts of the US where "cycling" and any form of the word "safe" (including "safer"), can be used in a sentence about riding on any road, other than perhaps a neighborhood/ subdivision road.

That said, riding towards traffic, which I do see occasionally, is idiotic, verging on suicidal, as it reduces the motorists' reaction time to less than the to time drive to their road surface horizon. That's not to say that riding with the flow of traffic on any of the rural roads around where I live isn't also idiotic verging on suicidal.

BristolUK

Strange name for underpants.

How so? (serious question)

kimilseung

I too have found myself buying a lot of Carhartt's clothing. Although I don't buy any jeans anymore. And more recently clothing by Kuhl, despite its rather off putting name. They are American, and a cross over between outdoors functional clothing and hard wearing work wear like Carhartts.

spouse of scouse

Something to do with bald eagles and lions, I suspect.

BristolUK

That's a hell of a size difference. Not to mention four legs, not two.

robin1234

My wife keeps very sensibly pointing out, it’s not the difference between shops and products in England vs. America I’m coming up against. It’s the difference between dirt poor, rural, hard scrabble America (where we live) and normal big-city England - Norwich in this case, but I assume London or Bristol or Manchester would be the same.

I mean, in New York, the only places to buy clothes within a hundred miles of where we live is Tractor Supply or the local hardware store. I don’t hunt, and camouflage clothing looks stupid. Fortunately, Carhartt jeans are really well made and comfortable. And my main credit card is LL Bean, so I always have hundreds of dollars of Bean Bucks that need spending.

No doubt big cities in America have shops like Next and Primark and M&S, but I never shop in big cities or malls in the US, so I never see any of those slim fit fashion jeans etc.

BristolUK

Ah gotcha. Apart from Zellers before it closed and a shop in Montreal before moving to New Brunswick I think everything I've bought since 2005 (apart from M&S briefs) has come from Walmart or Giant Tiger. I still wear some things I brought with me in 2004 and a couple of things still in the original packaging

Walmart I'd say was like ASDA (for obvious reasons and they both sell George label) except that the former does at least have different fits and Giant Tiger (despite it also selling food and household stuff) I used to say was equivalent to Primark but about 10 years ago the quality was considerably increased.

robin1234

I used to love Giant Tiger. We had a branch nearby, but they closed down all their US stores a few years ago.

Pulaski

I have reached a very similar place to you, wardrobe-wise, but for very different reasons. I can't recall the last time I walked into a shop and bought clothing, it was probably socks in M&S on a trip to the UK 6-8 years ago, but for a shirt, pullover or any sort of jeans or trousers, it would have been more than 30 years ago. ..... Around that time, years before I had internet access, or met Mrs P, Lands' End launched a catalog in the UK, and I soon noticed that they sold long fittings for both shirts/ pullovers, and for jeans, far longer fittings than anything that shops sold in the UK, and for the first time since my early teens I could buy shirts "off the peg" with sleeves that came down to my wrists, and stayed tucked in to my waistband (I actually had some tailor-made shirts on order when I first found Lands' End dress shirts in a long fitting).

After a few years Lands'End cut back their range in the UK, and I went looking, still pre-internet, for their US catalog, which had vastly more choices than had ever been offered directly in the UK. So for several years I was placing orders in the US, for delivery in the UK, and usually paying import duty, which from my perspective was worth it because the alternative was either buying clothes that didn't fit, or paying for tailor made clothing, which would have cost even more, and for things like polo shirts and other knitted fabrics wouldn't even be an option. Along the way I also found LL Bean, and eventually Cabela's (though their clothing range is less, and has declined further in recent years). So anyway, almost all my clothes come from one of those US retailers, these days ordered on line and delivered in the US. But back to the original point, my wardrobe was almost entirely American clothing (at least supplied from America) long before I ever set for in America for the first time, or met Mrs P.

scrubbedexpat142

Becoming more noisy?

zzrmark

Justifying to myself in fairly short time why I need two trucks (pick ups)...the 4x4 Nissan Frontier complements the 2WD Tundra perfectly.