#dmv hell

Context:

My grandfather is quite wealthy, but rarely imparts that money onto others. That's fine, he's an abusive person, and the upside of receiving said money is not worth the emotional toll. However, he's quite old, and trying to give away his things before he dies. So he decided to give me his non-working 1993 Corvette to me.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted the car. I've wanted a project car for a long time, but having one is also kinda a burden. I also had to move five months from the time he sent it to me, so I had to get it working by then.

I'll make a post some time about what it took to fix it, but for the sake of time, I'll just say it was expensive and time consuming.

When he sent me the car, he neglected to send the title. So I had to beg his wife to go to the DMV to get a new one made and to send it to me. By the time it got to me, it was only a month til I had to move.

So I finally go to the DMV. But I can't get the title transferred because it's an out of state title. So it needs a vin inspection. The car was working by this point, but was illegal to drive.

I got on the phone with the insurance company, got it temporarily insured, went BACK to the DMV, and got a travel permit.

By this time, I had to drive the car to my parents where I was moving, so I used the travel permit for that.

About a week later, I made another pilgrimage to the DMV. I had the title, the car with me, and insurance info. I had everything I needed.

Finally the clerk looked at the title, and furrowed her brow.

"It appears Robert sold the car from himself ... To ... Himself."

"what?"

"Yes, I'm sorry, I can't register this car, you'll need to have him sign a new bill of sale."

Turns out, I need him to sign another document, then have him mail it to me, because it has to be the same physical document. No DocuSign at the DMV I guess.

I was, however, able to complete a vin inspection while the car was on the premises. That's $7 I won't get back.

So I called my aunt, who lives near him (ish), and begged her to help me out. She's awesome, so she obliged. She printed out the bill of sale, and had him sign it the next time she was in town with him.

I got the news, and was ecstatic.

And then, two days later, she texts me a photo. "You think this will still work?"

Shit. Fuck. She spilled tea in her bag and it got all over my precious document. I want to be able to legally drive my car, and the world does not.

"It's fine" I said. "Send that one and we'll see."

End of context. Back to today:

I got to the DMV at 12:50, and picked up a ticket. X940. It took about 30 minutes to get to the front, and I was nervous. I clenched the freshly filled out, tea ridden bill of sale, title, and proof of vin inspection in a manila folder.

When I was called, I handed her the title and said that I'd like to register the car in the state of Oregon. She furrowed her brow in a way I recognized.

"yeah, I know he sold the car to himself. That's why I've brought the bill of sale."

"Oh great!" She chirped. "Is the vehicle with you today?"

"No, but I have a proof of vin inspection right here!"

She took it, and without another word, began processing payment, and handed me new plates.

There you have it. $250, and four trips to the DMV later, I became the biggest Bureaucratic badass in the building.

"The land of the DMV is a place where rainbows smile and sing songs of peace and harmony, where ponies fly with giant wings and blow about the winds of sweet perfume, and where you can go to soothe your troubled heart by drinking from a lake of godly ambrosia." - Noe Juan Aver

Thankfully Forks came to the rescue and offered to drive me back over and then drop me back at home on her way to work. Back at the DMV I got stuck with a stone cold dumb dumb who could not handle my name change. Like her mind was blown that I wanted to change my name from my last name to Forks-Southernish (obvs not really but y'all know I'm not giving out that detail on Tumblr). Could not deal. I had to explain it three times. Surely these people have seen hyphenated names before, yes? And then there was a whole ordeal with punctuation because the state of Illinois cannot do things like apostrophes or hyphens on IDs and she got all worked up about that too. I'm lucky that I ended up with a name that even somewhat resembles my new name on my license.