Vs. the DMV

I have never thought I would find so much joy in a functioning turn signal.

I brought my 200,000 mile Nissan Altima to the big city to live on Capitol Hill, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the world. Several temporary parking passes and several more parking tickets later, I am battling the system to keep my car on the streets. This is the story of some lessons I learned along the way.

My first attempt at parking legality was to get a 6 month parking pass. To get a pass, I need to own the car. Now, I bought the car from my father, fair and square. But who thought we needed to transfer the papers? We share two of three names. Besides, he needed to use my car while I was in Europe! Not so, said the (ahem) nice lady in the DMV.

The SW DC DMV was the only one open on a Saturday. I think people had been waiting there since last Saturday. The line seemed to snake as far as Union Station. Fortunately, there was a gate-keeper. Every DMV needs a gate-keeper. There are so many ridiculous rules to owning and keeping a car, that there should be someone you speak to before standing in line to make sure you are not waiting on a lost cause. The SW DC gatekeeper had glared over her glasses as if every soul waiting in line was a shivering display of pathetic incompetence. She was part castle-guard, part bouncer, part lunch-lady. Her glasses hung by a thread at the end of her nose, and she glared at every person with piercing, pitiless eyes that said, "don't try it, I've heard every damn excuse there is." I tried it anyway. I didn't own the car, my father did. She pointed that out to me. No dice, no parking pass.

I wanted to remain a Florida resident, as my housing was temporary and DC doesn't have a Representative in the government (so say all the license plates that I envy). That dream died when I found out my Florida car insurance doesn't work in Washington. They really should tell people these things. I think they were hoping I would crash so they didn't have to pay for it. I had reasons to be thankful - I had driven for over 6 months in the VA and DC area on insurance that would not have cut it. I bought some new, DC-approved insurance online on the recommendation of a colleague. Of course, I got another parking ticket while my car waited on me. I couldn't be a Florida resident anymore, however. I needed a DC driver's license, representative or not.

So I bit the dust and bought several trees worth of papers that proved that I am me and I live in DC to the DMV. I came away with my new DC drivers license. I even like my picture. Of course, the guy typing in my name was a trainee who kept messing up basic facts like my gender. This should have been a cue to read my license carefully before I left the building. My name was misspelled, I realized days letter. DC is a place where missing work brings you enough guilt as it is. It felt to guilty to miss work for this for more time on this. I sighed and decided I would change the license when I could register my car. Hopefully this will be before we elect our next president.

License in head, I was ready to make my next step towards legitimate parking: the inspection. I woke up early on a dark winter's morning so I could be in and out before work started. I got there to a line of cars also going into be inspected. I was reminded of a heard of cows outside of a Chicago slaughter-house. We were herded into four lines, and my car, being older than a '96, moved into a special line for AARP autos. My paint-job reveals my car's age from miles away, but that's another story. I was nervous about an old car passing inspection, but my colleague assured me that considering some of the clunkers on the road in this town, my car would make the cut. I drove into the tunnel where the moment of truth would take place. The wise-guy mechanic kid motion to me to get out of the car. "How many people you hit this year?" he asks. "None so far!" I was surprisingly friendly for that early in the morning. "You ran through the stop sign. You could have hurt somebody. Next time you come here, stop." There was a stop-sign on the left side, above the line of vision of anyone not driving a Hummer. I could have protested, but I had already ticked off the guy who I hoped would give my car a clean bill of health. I think you know the rest of this story.

As it turns out, all I needed was a new gas cap and a tail-light. Easy enough. Oh, and I needed to get rid of the tint on my car. That really turned my cheese. I had a feeling that part would be over-priced. In Florida, you need a dark tint to keep from killing your passengers in the middle of August. In DC, evidently, anyone with a tint darker than 30% is a suspected drug-dealer or terrorist (or part of an official motorcade. Or a diplomat). In the meantime, I had a light bulb to change

Leave it to me to mess this one up. The moment after I had changed the light bulb, my tail-blinker went out. I had another light bulb, but aparently the blinkers need their own special light. While trying to jam the wrong light bulb into the blinker, I broke the socket. Now, Discount Auto-Parts doesn't carry new sockets for Nissans. To save my car, I needed to go to the dealer. In the meantime, every time I used my left turn signal (which still worked in the front), it blinked at a fast and panicky speed, reminding me every time that it was broken. By this time, I was driving to work every day to avoid parking tickets. (I would prefer to take the Metro and help stop Global Warming)

Of course, the close dealer didn't have the part. The only one in town who did were way out in the wilderness of suburban Virginia. I guiltily left work early to make it their before it closed. The young man behind the counter was sleepy. They didn't have the part afterall, but they could give it to me tomorrow. No problem. I like driving on 395 in traffic with a bad turn-signal.

I returned the next day to what must have been the dealer alpha-male patrolling the counter. He was manly. He had long silver hair, an silver fu-man chu, grizzled silver stubble, and silver hair trying to escape out from his shirt collar and sleeves. If he anything leather, he would have bit it in half. I was wearing a shiny red shirt, a perfectly matching tie and trendy, square glasses. My face was humiliatingly smooth. At least I wasn't carrying a latte. Fortunately, I did actually know what I needed (after several attempts). I desperately did not want him to see my clumsy ignorance of auto-parts. He grunted as he gave me the part, which I accepted gratefully. Oh by the way, do you know a place where I could get the tinting removed? "Ask the boys outside," he said, pointing to a room full of Nissan salesmen, with smooth faces, bright eyes and crescent moon smiles. So I asked them, and they were refreshingly honest. It would cost me about $200. "Go to the home depot, get yourself a heat-gun and a scraper, take it off yourself. Be careful, the heat gun ain't no hair drier. It'll burn your skin." I decided to follow his advice.

Going into Home Depot made me feel more manly. There is something primal about being in a store full of metal designed to cut things. At an impulse, I bought a cutting plier for my guitar screens. I wanted to yalp like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. I also bought the scraper and the heat gun, which is cool, but needed an extension chord. This plan would have worked perfectly, except my building does not have an external electrical outlet. Oh well.

Oh, and I found out that I could not take off my old socket by myself. The manly impulses dwindled at my failure to conquer the machine. Had I really been with William Wallace, I would have been the first guy to eat it after taking an English arrow to the face. Our Human Resource Director/Accountant/Office Handy-man managed to fix it for me. He's a good man. I got a fitted bulb for my tail-light just this evening. It was blinking correctly, and I was using my turn signal just for the fun of it. Joy of joys. I'll pass that inspection test for sure.

Driving home, it took me forever to find a parking place. There are too many cars in this area. I wish the city would do something about it.