Subtle differences, and some funny stuff...

I just got back from a very short weekend in the Chesterton, Indiana area. I have noticed a few more differences between here (Overland Park, Kansas) and there...

1. Overland Park has no zoning. There are stores all over the place. Every other block has a gas station, grocery store, church, or strip mall. In Chesterton and Valparaiso, there are fairly well-defined residential areas and there are also fairly well-defined commercial and shopping areas. The two don't mix much, except in the downtown areas. It seems weird to have your shopping areas spread out all over the place, but that is how they have done it in Overland Park.

2. Aggressive drivers. Both areas have them, but they are easily five times more prevalent near the I-94 corridor. You can't travel from Chesterton to Valparaiso on the 49 bypass without being tailgated and getting the bright lights flashed at you, if you aren't doing 85 in the left lane. If you still wait too long to get out of the way, you will get passed on the right with inches to spare, and get the middle finger. In Overland Park, I can't remember the last time I was tailgated for not getting out of the left lane fast enough, and I have yet to get flipped off. Generally, people in Kansas will even slow down to let you merge. I never thought I would see that, honestly. I used to drive I-94 to work everday, where they only pedal that gets used is the gas pedal until everyone sits in the daily gridlock. Another thing, when someone wants to get past you, they are supposed to follow a little closer than you would like them to, that's how you signal that you want to get past. I don't call that aggressive driving. This "signaling" distance appears to be about 30 feet in Kansas and about three feet in the Chicago area.

3. Overland Park lacks the homey small-town appeal that Valparaiso and Chesterton have. They have nice stuff in Kansas, but it lacks the old-school charm that Chesterton and Valparaiso have perfected. The downtown area in Overland Park is quite crappy by comparison. Pretty, but crappy. Overland Park really has no old-school style, or perhaps it needs a little bit more hillbilly for me to really enjoy it. When all the little "Mom and Pop stores" looks like Target or Kohl's, and none of the floors squeak in the old buildings, it isn't nearly as fun for me. In fact, it's just kinda weird to walk into an old brick building and have the interior look as though it was built three years ago. -Maybe my expectations are a little off. Overland Park is not a small town, so perhaps I should stop trying to think of it as one. It's probably hard to be small-townish when your population is about 200,000.

4. I may have said this before, but I will say it again. There are a million clunkers and hoopdies driving around in Northwest Indiana. You will rarely see someone driving a bucket in this area. I saw a million buckets and POS cars in Indiana this past weekend. You would think that there would be a lot of crapwagons out here in podunk Kansas, but there just aren't very many.

For those who are unfamiliar with my car terms, here is a brief, funny glossary:

Hoopdie: Older automobile, named because it is riding on one (or more) of those tiny little "donut" spare tires that you are only supposed to drive on until you can get to a gas station. I have seen cars (two of them) riding on four donut spares that didn't even match. The donut spare is a also sometimes known as a "hoopdie wheel". There is another variant of the hoopdie, known as a "Ghetto-sled" which refers to a hoopdie automobile that is larger than average, usually a 1970's Oldsmobile or Buick.

Clunker: Car that is in such disrepair that it makes a ton of noise hobbling down the road. It is definitely dragging something, like a muffler or a bumper, or the undercarriage may be skimming the pavement due to a broken suspension. These are most common in the snow belt due to the wonderfully corrosive properties of the salt they use to keep the snow and ice off of the roads in winter.

POS: A little bit of a dirty term, it literally means piece of $hi7. Totally worthless automobile, should have gone to the scrap heap a long time ago but still moves under its own power on occasion. See also: Bucket, Crapwagon

Bucket: "Bucket" of bolts, may have duct tape holding it together or perhaps some fine vintage of bailing wire or clothes hangers. "Buckets" usually are also commonly missing parts off of the exterior of the vehicle and the interior. A missing radio coupled with a missing hubcap, and you are well on your way to bucketville. Add a little duct tape to cover a broken taillight, and you are indeed a bucket. See also: POS, Crapwagon

Crapwagon: My favorite type of road-going garbage barge, a crapwagon is the car that has had zero maintenance in its lifetime. It usually makes a lot of engine noise due to no oil changes and it blows blue smoke at every stoplight. Finer crapwagons may be found broken down along the freeway in any season. My personal favorite crapwagon is the "screaming crapwagon" so aptly named due to the howl that either the engine belts or the power steering pump is blasting out at full volume. Nothing like hearing the beautiful noise emitted by a screaming crapwagon while putting around town in the summer... Good times...

Feel free to add your observations in the comments area.

Lest anyone think I am a snob - you should see some of the crap that I have driven over the years. I write this post from experience. I used to drive a car that would backfire out the intake and shoot flames out the top of the carb. That was a sweet ride, yo. It sounded like this when I tried to accelerate: urp, urp-burp, urp, ka-blam, blam, BA-BLAM!! That was not the only "feature" of that car, it had quite a lot of "character" that I will save for another time.