Laconia, I think it was. I've been to towns and small cities where people are walking all over the place, but only the ones where the streets were not originally designed for cars- like Portsmouth, Exeter, and downtown Boston. And they still manage to have crazy traffic situations 'cause you still have to drive there in order to get out and walk around!

How you guys stay slim is beyond me...!

If by that you mean, we're all getting really fat, lol...or so they say but they also say we have a warped idea of what thin means.

It might be partially a safety thing, yeah. People are so paranoid that they're afraid to expose themselves even when they shouldn't need to worry about that-it's probably the reason behind the Giant SUV/Military Vehicle craze of the last ten years too. "If I'm not getting out of my car if I can help it, it might as well be as big as a house". And when they see some schmuck walking down the side of that road outside town that doesn't even have sidewalks, they're thinking "somoene so poor and friendless that they don't even have a car must definitely be up to something".