[_b8r0]

When I was last in the US (in 99) I was told I was brave for walking to the mall. It was only a few miles, for some reason this concept of walking was somewhat weird to the locals. To be fair, I was in Jacksonville NC, but I found it odd that they found it odd.

[tptacek]

Jacksonville is on the small end of midsized towns in the US, and most cities in this size bracket are not at all walkable. Your couple-mile walk to the mall is obviously totally reasonable once in awhile, but it would be hard to manage day-to-day life in a midsize US city without a car, and the car is integrated into daily life.

The same is true of most suburbs around major cities.

[khuey]

In some places in America sidewalks and crosswalks are virtually non-existent, so they may have been concerned for your safety. Walking a few miles (especially in hot, humid places like NC) is a bit unusual here though.

[lambda]

Yeah, I'm American (from New England) and I've gotten that. I was on my way to a small town in Pennsylvania, and my car broke down part way. It was late, so I had it towed to a garage and found a hotel for the night. In the morning, I decided to walk to the garage (it was a couple of miles). The guys at the garage looked at me like I had two heads for walking that far.

[specialist]

There are many, many Americas.

City folk like to walk. The others not so much. Suburbanites DRIVE to the gym.

We had some visitors from another office, took them to lunch, made it to the crosswalk (200ft), they asked "How far away is this place? We should have just driven."