03.09.07
Driven (Part One)
On his Comedy Central special, Dane Cook mused:
In the future, everything will be instant. [...] But the DMV will still take nine f[...]ing seconds. “Come on! I gotta be to work in three seconds!”
Surprisingly enough, the DMV was the least of my worries over the past 24 hours.
Now, I’ve actually been resisting getting my driver’s license changed over. I’ve not actually lived in New York state since 2002, setting aside a couple of temporary layovers. I came extremely close to getting everything changed over to an Ohio license in late 2005/early 2006, but as it turned out the car fell apart before I could get it inspected/re-registered. And, of course, the other car exploded six months after I got it. As I was waiting in line yesterday, I noticed that I had the same license I was issued when I turned 21. It actually wasn’t set to expire until 2009. However, the photo bore almost no resemblance to me at all.
The DMV office I went to, in Penn Hills, was relatively new– only a few years old. There was a button one would press to determine which line one would be in. Technically, it wasn’t even really a line. Once I pressed the button, a small printer spat out a slip of paper with a number (488) on it, and directed me to wait for the number to be called. There was a small waiting area with plenty of chairs, and seven small teller-station-like terminals. Three of those were staffed; each had a small LED sign with the next number. That’s important. I only had about a ten-minute wait; things progressed quickly and smoothly, and as I had everything in order well ahead of time, there was no trouble at all. I actually was complimented– seriously– for having my act together. Thus satisfied and with a much more flattering portrait on my card, I left, bearing a brand-new Pennsylvania driver’s license.
That’s when the trouble started. See, I started this whole thing yesterday afternoon, when I found out that the only time I could get insurance was a) when I was at the insurance office and b) RIGHT THEN, because they closed at 5 on Thursday and would for some reason not be open today. I rocketed from Penn Hills back to Forest Hills, about a 5-mile trip on the parkway; I had plenty of time when I got to the insurance office, which was good, because the lady there went through absolutely every possible scenario to try to get my bill down. Now, most of you know that the troubles I’ve had with cars have usually not been my fault except for one itty bitty little time back in Erie, when I, in my little Metro, accidentally rear-ended a huge-ass pimpmobile Lincoln. He didn’t have a scratch; my front end was wrecked, and the car came mere pennies away from being totaled. Well, as it turned out, my insurance company doesn’t count accidents that happened over three years ago (on a running cycle). And if I had been able to wait seven months before getting car insurance again, I could have had that little dustup overlooked. Lovely… in October I’ll have to go back and renegotiate that element of it.
Anyway, it was 5 by the time I got out of the insurance agency. I stopped at Taco Bell and wolfed down a couple of soft tacos (sadly, this was not the Taco Bell of Sleazy Sauce) on my way to the AAA at Monroeville (10 miles from Forest Hills). I’ve been a member of AAA since I locked myself out of my car way back in Coudersport, and I’ve kept up the membership because, as my dad so succinctly put it, I’m “incompetent”. I freely admit it. There is a reason I am a computer scientist and it is because I faint at the sight of motor oil. Now, that said, I’ve availed myself of the club’s non-emergency services more than once. The only way I made it to Baltimore and back is by the virtue of maps provided by them, and my trip to E3 was also booked through the service. In all of those cases my requests were expediently handled.
Well, not yesterday. I got in at about 5:20 or so and sat down, after having checked in and been given a number. Remember those little LED signs back at the DMV? Well, the AAA office has only one of those, and the number it says it is currently serving is divorced from reality by all known vectors. My number showed up right away, but I wasn’t called until 6:45; and that’s when the fun began. I had a form all filled out which claimed that my dad had purchased the car new and was giving it to me as a gift, thus preventing me from having to pay sales tax on the vehicle. This of course required proof that such tax had been paid to the appropriate state (in this case, New York); we had conscientiously provided a photocopy of the original bill of sale. Yeah, that wasn’t good enough for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the end I had to ‘buy’ the car from my father for one hundred fictitious dollars, which I then had to pay a very real seven percent sales tax on. That was, you guessed it, another form. Wait, it gets better!
On the form I had filled out for the gift, I also noted that I would need a tracing or notarized recording of the car’s VIN (vehicle identification number). The form stated that this would be taken at the time the car was registered. Yeah, AAA doesn’t do that. I was directed to go to the Mr Tire store just down the road, who would gladly charge me $5 to do it. I would have made the VIN tracing myself– and I even tried– but the VIN plate was jammed so far forward on the dashboard that it was impossible to even touch, let alone scrape a pencil over. The good news was that I got to Mr. Tire just before they were about to close. I then had to go back to the AAA and wait in line for another 45 minutes, before the whole process ended. I got my registration, a temporary title, and the license plate– and while I was in Hell, I decided to get an EZPass transponder as well in case a job requires me to cross over to the west side of town; otherwise, it’s useful for the Otakon trips and trips back home.
The license plate couldn’t go onto my car until the car was inspected. By now it was 8:30, and I was tired, cranky, and out of battery power on my Mac and my DS. I went home, vowing to get the inspection done early the next day…