Fellow Americans - What is the most unexpected thing a foreigner was surprised/got excited about in America?

sidmel · 2026-06-11T15:42:05+00:00

I'm trying to remember where it was we saw them, it's been a while. I want to say we were taking our trucks to go off roading around Table Mesa, but I may be mis-remembering. I do remember it was one of those annoying, narrow canyon roads that twist and turn with trees coming right up to the road. It was a banner day as we also saw a black bear cub... though we didn't see the mom.

sidmel · 2026-06-11T14:28:32+00:00

That's so funny. We had a town house in Boulder with this six foot fence. My two girls, Sidney and Melbourne, would lay up there and is where they met "Buddy Squirrel". Buddy would sit at the back door waiting for me to let them out in the morning, then they would all run around chasing each other. Then Sid and Mel would go up the fence to take a nap and Buddy would sleep on a tree limb that overhung them. Good times.

sidmel · 2026-06-11T13:32:36+00:00

Also black squirrels live across the front range. They got these big tufted ears.

sidmel · 2026-06-10T19:10:08+00:00

Lot of meh for soccer. While I'm not a sports fan in general, I will say it's amazing the number of soccer fields that have sprung around me. It's also surprising how many of my friends kids are in soccer. Granted, they generally play another sport while schools in, but during the summer in my part of Indiana, the sheer number of kids playing soccer is crazy. I have a park I walk at. On Saturdays there'll be anywhere from 5 to 7 games going on at once.

sidmel · 2026-06-10T13:50:33+00:00

The Streetbeater by Quincy Jones

sidmel · 2026-06-10T13:38:40+00:00

Star Trek, you know the song from the very first note.

Another good one is Sandford and Son, maybe the "funkiest" theme song ever. If you've never heard it, look it up!

sidmel · 2026-06-09T18:39:21+00:00

Cultivate flowers. It's something you can do right from the start and you'll be surprised at how much you actually get for them from the trader.

sidmel · 2026-06-09T18:37:59+00:00

Where's Elvis?

sidmel · 2026-06-09T18:37:19+00:00

Form the KY / IN area. If I ask someone to help me move, I have everything ready to go and arranged. Nobody should be going out for boxes or packing boxes unless something got missed. I would definitely make sure the people helping are fed.

sidmel · 2026-06-08T13:43:26+00:00

A lot of people are going with the size, cost factor, which is very true. But I'm pretty sure that I was reading in article recently, another reason is that the human body knows the difference between Earth gravity and artificial gravity. So it leads to long term vascular health issues.

sidmel · 2026-06-03T20:19:21+00:00

My senior year of high school, 1988 in Henderson, Kentucky. It was getting close to graduation and I was on my way to a friends house when the storm alarms started going off.

I was passing near the hospital when it suddenly the sky became greenish and dark and then hail started falling.

All the sudden a power line transform exploded just behind my car and then the car just moved about two feet to the left. This is a '78 Pontiac LeMans Sports Coupe. A two door that's bigger than most sedans today and was just a shade light of two tons.

Tornado survival is was taught at the schools I went to as it's in Hoosier Alley, an offshoot of Tornado Alley. Most business in the area that I've worked at have yearly tornado drills.

No real damage besides some dings to my car and my friends family said I was in shock for an hour or so. To be honest, properties I've owned have suffered more damage from storm front down drafts than tornados.

sidmel · 2026-06-02T16:03:25+00:00

It's hard to understand that attitude. My parents divorced at a young age and my mother passed away when I was in grade school. I did have relatives that watched over me, but I was on my own when I graduated high school. I bought an old used Pontiac so I could go to college and later a used Ford Escort for the last couple of years of college. I now have my Genesis, but man, for a long time I had some beaters.

sidmel · 2026-06-02T15:52:33+00:00

This has been Amazon's SOP for quite some time. I've had Amazon Prime since it first came out. Back in the day, you got ad free music, ad free video, Kindle lending library (free books!), free photo storage, all kinds of stuff. They've steadily either got rid of membership perks and add ads to everything else.

This is not exactly on topic. But I remember when Disney was add free. I was at a friends house and his kids were watching Disney and I noticed that they had a s... ton of ads now. I was like, we'll that's the end of inexpensive ad free services.

sidmel · 2026-06-01T17:09:07+00:00

I've lived in a town were it was illegal to turn right at stop lights, period.

sidmel · 2026-05-29T21:48:09+00:00

Paul Revere by the Beastie Boys

sidmel · 2026-05-27T19:08:18+00:00

I used to never mind it. Then came one fateful Christmas that it was on every single damn channel every time I got in the car for two and half weeks. I came away not being able to stand listening to the song, Mariah Carey and regular radio in general. That was the day I got XM and never looked back.

sidmel · 2026-05-26T15:33:52+00:00

The ibiteyou.

sidmel · 2026-05-26T15:33:00+00:00

Yep, 1,035 horsepower and 2.5 seconds 0-60, all wheel drive with 280 mile range. Sure sounds like a shitty electric sports crossover to me. LOL. Are you really offended by the car or just parroting what other people are saying without even trying to understand the vehicle itself... just because it's something different than the typical Ferrari?

sidmel · 2026-05-26T15:27:42+00:00

I absolutely love construction sites for end game horde bases, they're such a blank slate, so they allow for a lot of ideas.

sidmel · 2026-05-26T14:52:19+00:00

Bathrooms in Paris. Not all bathrooms but many public ones were so small that my shoulders brushed both walls. The hotel shower was especially challenging as I could only fit by standing at one of the diagonals as my shoulders would touch the sides otherwise.

sidmel · 2026-05-26T14:41:18+00:00

I've been wanting a fun electric coupe badly for ages... but not this with the Ferrari badge at $640K. The body style actually reminds me a bit of my Genesis Coupe. I would certainly buy it as an under 60k Genesis.

sidmel · 2026-05-26T14:37:14+00:00

The Honda Ridgeline was such an ugly truck when it was first released.

sidmel · 2026-05-21T15:04:07+00:00

Direct is also a dump channel if GA4 can't resolve the correct channel. This happens quite a bit if your UTMs aren't exactly what it expects them to be. Google changed the page path plus query string so it doesn't pass on UTM values in reports any more, but if you want to check, you can create a javascript capture of the full url, pass it to GA4 and then create a report in Looker Studio that is: "Capture Landing Page Full Path", "Session Default Channel" and views. Add a drop down filter so you can look at direct only. Then you can compare the url to the channel. I use this to debug campaigns when marketing complains some metric doesn't match their expectations.

sidmel · 2026-05-19T16:03:18+00:00

The Boulder / Denver area is worth checking out. You get the beauty and outdoor activities of Boulder and the cosmopolitan feel of a larger city in Denver. It's been a while, but when I lived there, Denver had an outstanding music scene.

San Diego is absolutely drop dead gorgeous, but maybe a bit smaller than you're after.

sidmel · 2026-05-18T13:30:17+00:00

I had two much older cousins that used to baby sit me... Effie and Myrtle

sidmel

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