Skiing sucks! But small-town USA is good

It is official. I suck as a skiier. Not just a bad golfer anymore but also a bungling skiier to add to the list of sports that I suck at. I am depressed. A picture of Blue Mountain and the slope I had to ski down.
It might be the first time that I am skiing but surely no one could be more inept at this sport than me. It took me two days to even learn how to snow plough down a realtively gentle slope and I fall down more often than I can count. Little kids can ski better than me. My colleagues were already learning how to turn on slopes when I was still struggling to control my downhill speed. Damn depressing and down. Why can't I be good at something?

The only bright side to the trip was the food and the chance to see small-town USA. USA is not just bright lights of Manhattan, New York. In fact, most are just small towns filled with people living very simple lives like waitresses in a small diners. Imagine, a small town which consists of less than 100 people and just 5 public places; a school, a diner, a general store, a gun store (yeah, guns) and a church. Now imagine again that you are among the 100 people and grow up in this small town in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. CAN YOU IMAGINE? What do they do for leisure and on weekends (e.g. shoot ferets?) or for that matter, for a living?

Driving through silent, snow-covered forests. I kept imagining vampires jumping out from the trees and barring their fangs. Or a deer bolting from the bushes.

Lonely snowman guarding the junction. I think he was melting. Either that, or passer-bys kept licking it.

(Help, I am melting!)

Snow-covered cemetry in the town.

Typical small-town USA diner in the middle of snow-covered nowhere.

But the food. OMG, it was seriously good. And the portion was . . . gargantuan (yay, that word again). This 12 oz prime beef that I ordered was amazing. The fat around the beef was truly delectable. As you know, I do like my pork or beef fat.

Take a look at the half-rack of mouth-watering ribs that my friend ordered. HALF-RACK. For US$15. Can you imagine what a full rack would look like? They might as well as serve the whole pig.

And to round it off, I had three glasses of whisky for just US$10 in a tavern near my hotel. Oh, and the jukebox at the tavern amazing. I am actually not sure whether there are jukeboxes in Singapore pubs anymore. The jukebox was internet-linked so you could play any songs you like, past and present. It is so good that you can even find the Killers' new song "Human". My friend played some song from Jason Mrez. So, if you have one dollar and can choose one song, what will you choose? I deliberated for a minute and chose "Don't Cry" from Guns and Roses.

With food so good, portions that generous and alochol so cheap, no wonder many Americans in small-town USA have weight or alocohol issues.