Tue 8/14, 821am, DMV office, 125th st/Lexington Ave, Harlem. BMFRTE T minus 62 hrs and counting...
I am ready. I have a giant envelope full of paperwork- everything I should need to get through the bureaucratic maze that is the DMV. Although it doesn't open for another 9 minutes, I am already about 50th in line. I'm impressed. It's the middle of the week, in the middle of the month, and still people are lined up way early. It's not like we're waiting for Springsteen tickets; this is the DMV. I resign myself to losing half a day to this task. No task at the 125th st DMV has ever taken less than half a day. I spent most of my 32nd birthday here, since that was the day my VA license expired, and it just took that long to change it over to NY.
At the crack of 830, the DMV opens its doors. We file in, and I prepare for a long wait. But, i am pleasantly surprised to be face to face with a DMV person by 910. Inconceivable! This is going to be a good day. I can feel it.
I explain that I am taking over a lease, and that I need to register the vehicle in my name. I lay out the billion different forms for her review. Included in this is the title, and the way it works is, James, the current possessor of the vehicle, has filled out a power of attorney form granting GMAC the right to sign the title on his behalf, and so someone at GMAC has signed his name on the title, which, since this is a lease, GMAC has always had in its possession. Our very attentive DMV agent notices that James' actual signature, on the power of attorney form, does not match his signature on the title. I explain that this is to be expected; he has never had the title since he leases the vehicle- the point of power of attorney is that GMAC can sign it for him.
Our fearless DMV agent then says that power of attorney grants GMAC the right to sign its own name in place of James', or James can sign the thing himself, but power of attorney does not grant GMAC the right to sign anyone else's name ever. Hence, my paperwork is not valid, and hence, I cannot register this vehicle and I will have to go away and come back with correct paperwork.
At this point, I try to give the real-life example of my mother, who has power of attorney for my dad, who is disabled, and who signs his name on relevant things. The DMV person doesn't give a shit about my little example, and neither one of us is a lawyer, and so I ask to speak to a supervisor. So she fills out a little form and sends me to the supervisor window.
I wait at the supervisor window for about 15 minutes, during which time the supervisor sees me standing there, and proceeds to ignore me while very obviously doing nothing. And I really mean nothing. If she'd been reading the New York Times at least it'd have been something. Finally she presumably senses that I'm not going to just go away, or she decides that I've paid a sufficiently high penalty in wait time to atone for the sin of requiring her to do her job, and so she comes to the window.
I explain the situation, she listens, and then she ignores all my paperwork and focuses on the form the DMV agent fills out, which explains what how that agent handled the situation. She then proceeds to summarize for me what the previous DMV agent said, and then tells me I have to leave. She does not even bother to look at any of my paperwork. Doesn't bother to assess the situation herself. She simply circles the wagons and tells me to go.
Since what we have here is a heavily asymmetric power distribution, which I'm on the short end of, I have no choice but to leave. My first thought is to call GMAC right away, but ha, they open at 830, and the office is in Colorado, where it's now only 740, so I can either wait in the DMV for nearly an hour twiddling my thumbs, or I can go try and do something useful with my life. So I head for the office.
At the crack of 830 CST, I call GMAC and explain what happened. Getting a new title, and collecting all the signatures again, is looking like a 2-4 week process. I explain that that's not going to work, since I have a flight TONIGHT to go get the thing, and I need to hook it up to a trailer on Thursday night so I can leave NYC. After some brainstorming, we come up with the following solution: we will go to Syracuse tonight, with the same paperwork, and go to the local DMV in the area and try to push it through there. The GMAC person assures me this may actually work.
I check this out with James, and he's fine with that- he'll let us stay over at his house tonight and take us to the DMV in the morning. If it works, we keep the car. If it doesn't, he keeps it until we can get the situation straightened out, and hey oh BTW, he's leaving Friday for England for 2 weeks to visit his son.
I am now reduced to prayer as a primary strategy for getting through the next 24 hrs. I cancel everything the next day before 3pm, since we will be leaving the Syracuse area no earlier than 930, and it's 4 hrs away from NYC. I teach all day, and Keiko and I head for the airport to fly to Syracuse.
The flight to Syracuse is short and sweet, and James picks us up. We go to his house, which is on a lake just outside the city of Cazenovia, and is really quite spacious and pretty, and we chat with him and his wife a bit before turning in. In the morning, we head out early so as to get to the Cazenovia DMV as close to the opening bell as possible.
Upon arrival at the DMV, I am shocked to see no lines. None. There are a couple of old ladies behind a single counter, and one of them is helping someone. I walk right up, explain my situation, and she goes through my paperwork in about 5 minutes. She seems to have no problem with it, accepts my check for the sales tax (it's a transfer of equity, so the state of NY isn't going to pass up an opportunity to extract some revenue here), and we have a nice chat about the Marine Corps, since her son and my brother are both in Iraq with the Marines. Then she gives me plates, and I'm done. Total transaction time: 20 minutes, of which 4-5 was talking about our foreign/military policy, or lack thereof.
I am in love with the Cazenovia DMV.
For all you readers in NYC, I recommend that you go to this DMV. Although it's 4 hrs away from the city, the amount of time you may save using it may actually make the trip a good deal.
So Keiko, James, and I go out to the car and he gives me keys and a screwdriver to replace the plates. By 930 we are on our way. Of course, the state of NY requires that I get the thing inspected, so I stop to do that because it'll be easier here than in NYC, and in a couple of days I'll be out of the state, and then I'm screwed. That turns out to take a while, which means that I'm forced to do 85 mph all the way back to NYC, which gets me in at 256pm, with a lesson scheduled to start at 3. And we haven't eaten.
With no time to scour the back streets for a free parking space, I park my car on the street and fill the meter. Now I'm going to have to come out here every 2 hours to avoid getting a ticket. No problem though- I'm focused. Ain't no metermaid getting me today.
That vow lasts a total of 2 hrs and 2 minutes. At that point, I realize that the meter has expired, run downstairs and across 2nd ave, and find that I already have a ticket. No joke- the metermaid got me precisely 3 minutes after the time had expired. That's a $65 ticket. I take the ticket off the windshield, put more coins in the meter, and then head back to my office.
And so, after another several hours of tutoring and running back and forth filling the meter, the day ends. The biggest cost of today is not the ticket, but rather that I have tutoring lessons scheduled up until 9pm Thursday night, with our departure scheduled for 1030pm. This morning was my one gap of unallocated time, in which i had planned to do the bulk of the packing. Now I have full days scheduled from here on out, and I have virtually nothing ready to go. But I reassure Keiko, who has pointed this out, that I'm on top of the situation. I will be ready...
Friday, November 16, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
BMFRTE: Prologue, Part 1
T minus 3 days, and counting...
It is Monday, 8/14. Fresh from surviving a weekend of eating, shooting, and falling, I am ready to commence preparing for the big move. The Best MutherFucking Road Trip Ever (BMFRTE) is scheduled to begin at 10pm on Thursday night. I am excited. Soon I will be on my way back to the Promised Land- California.
Of course, given that I've been working 14 hours a day, and spending time with Keiko seeing the sights of NYC that I haven't seen in the 4 years I've lived here, and going out of town basically every weekend since Memorial Day, I haven't done much to actually prepare for a cross-country move. For instance, almost nothing is packed. My mom visited a few weeks ago, when _literally_ nothing was packed, and was kind enough to pack most of my dishes. Aside from that, the only things in boxes are the things that have lived in boxes in the back of my closet for the last 4 years, since I lived in Richmond, which was the last time I had space to put anything anywhere.
But, while I hadn't done much to physically prepare for the cross-country move, I had done a lot to mentally prepare. For instance, I had come up with one and a half brilliant plans. The brilliant half-plan (not too be confused with a half-brilliant plan) was my half of the overall plan for the BMFRTE. Ed had contributed the other half of the plan. We concocted the plan for the BMFRTE at Molly Pitcher's, on 2nd ave and 85th, over several margaritas (me) and Guinesses (Ed).
We started by assuming we had two weeks to get across the country. Then, figuring we had a whole country's worth of nature, museums, attractions, and people to see, it quickly became obvious that the BMFRTE should be organized around the one thing all those things have in common: baseball. After all, baseball is played (properly) in nature (outdoors on grass), is a most wonderful attraction, has its own museum, and, we could invite everyone we wanted to see along the way to a baseball game in their city.
And so, the BMFRTE was born. After several drinks, and poring over baseball schedules, and deciding to include more nature, and a wedding Ed had to go to, we came up with the following plan:
Thu 8/17: leave NYC
Fri 8/18: Acadia National Park
Sat 8/19: Wedding of Ed's friend. Gus catches up on 2 months of missed sleep.
Sun 8/20: Boston. Baseball game 1: Red Sox vs. Angels
Mon 8/21: Cooperstown. Baseball Hall of Fame
Tue 8/22: Chicago. BB game 2: White Sox vs.
Wed 8/23: StL. BB game 3: Cardinals vs. Marlins. Perfect, since Ed, being from Miami, is a Marlins fan
Thu 8/24: fly to Las Vegas. Rent a car and drive into southern Utah
Fri 8/25: Zion National Park
Sat 8/26: Bryce National Park
Sun 8/27: Salt Lake City. Drop off rental car and fly to Dallas. Rent another car. BB game 4: Rangers vs.
Mon 8/28: New Orleans.
Tue 8/29: Houston. BB Game 5: Astros vs. Cardinals.
Wed 8/30: drop off rental. Fly back to StL. Drive to Kansas City. BB Game 6: Royals vs.
Thu 9/1: drive to Denver. Rockies are out of town, so substitute football game 1: Broncos vs. Cardinals.
Fri 9/2: Drive to vegas. Stop at Arches National Park. In Vegas, win back cost of trip.
Sat 9/3: Phoenix. BB game 7: Diamondbacks vs.
Sun 9/4: San Diego. BB game 8: Padres vs. Dodgers.
Mon 9/5: LA. BB game 9: Angels vs. A's.
Tue 9/6: drive up PCH to Half Moon Bay. Drop Ed off at San Jose airport for red-eye back to NYC.
So that was the plan: 9 baseball games, 1 football game, 4 National parks, 1 museum, and seeing friends all along the way. That's a great road trip. In fact, it's the Best MutherFucking Road Trip Ever. Now, having carefully crafted a brilliant plan to get me/us across the country, I eventually realized I also needed a strategy to get everything I own across the country too. And that's where the second brilliant plan came in...
I looked at a lot of different options for getting my stuff to CA. The first one I looked at was renting a UHaul truck. I looked at this option even though I had had significant issues with UHaul in the past. For instance, when I was moving to Santa Monica in '96, I rented a UHaul from a place on Lincoln and Olympic, right at the entrance to the 10 freeway. It is literally right at the entrance. Since I was living in LA on $19,500 a year, with student loans and a competitive ballroom dance hobby that was expensive, I didn't have a lot of money and since it was a short, brief move (because of the aforementioned I also didn't have a lot of stuff), I decided to save some money and not get the insurance on the truck. I only needed it for a few hours.
Well, I rented the truck, got into it, turned it on, and turned out of the driveway and onto the entrance ramp. At this point, I have traveled a grand total of ten feet from the UHaul place, at a peak speed of 5 miles an hour, and haven't hit anything, including any and all curbs in the area. Which is why I was a little mystified by the passenger side mirror suddenly sliding right out of its frame and onto the pavement, where it shattered into microscopic-sized pieces.
Naturally, I went straight back into the UHaul place, and went back to the person who had just helped me, and explained what happened. Surely if turning out of their driveway at 5 mph caused the mirror to fall out, the thing had been defective from the start, and therefore I shouldn't be held accountable. A perfectly cogent argument, I thought. But neither this person nor her manager were sympathetic. Without the insurance, I was responsible. Period.
So I did my move, gave the truck back a couple hours later, and got charged an extra $350 to replace the mirror. It still rankles.
But, UHaul doesn't have a lot of competition for exactly what they do, so I investigated. The were willing to rent me a truck for only 11 days, and that was going to cost $1950 before any insurance or gas or anything. I needed the truck for 19 days. So, I tried another option- tractor trailer rental. You can rent space in a tractor trailer. That was a flat $1500 fee. Thing is, I live in Manhattan, and the company wouldn't send its truck there. I'd have to rent a van, load my stuff into it, drive it to Long Island, unload it from the van, load it into the tractor trailer, and then, fly to CA to meet it on the other side, since it only takes 3 days to go cross-country. Next I looked into just UPS ground shipping my stuff, but I have a couple thousand books, plus a lot of dishware, and by the time it was all added up it was definitely coming close to the $1500 mark, though it was still at that point the cheapest option.
At this point, I had a revelation. I don't have a car, and I'll need one the instant I set foot in CA, so why not get a car here, one big enough to tow a trailer. Then I could simply rent a trailer from UHaul, avoid some of the rentals that I would otherwise need on the BMFRTE, and at the end I would have a car to get around in once I was in CA. Brilliant!
So I went onto leasetrader.com and eventually found a guy with a GMC Envoy that looked in good condition and had plenty of miles left on the lease. Over a three week period, many documents were FedEx'd around in a triangle between Colorado, where GMC leasing is, Cazenovia, NY, where the guy was, and NYC, where I was. Keiko and I drove out to Cazenovia one weekend to evaluate the car, and the guy, since I wanted to make sure I was dealing with someone trustworthy. But that went well, and all was progressing according to plan. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I would go to the DMV to register the vehicle in my name, then in the evening Keiko and I would fly to Syracuse, where the guy would pick us up, take us to his house, and turn over the vehicle.
In final preparation for this event, I went online and made a reservation for a 5x8 UHaul trailer, which would comfortably fit behind a GMC Envoy. Although there were no trailers at the UHaul location on Manhattan, presumably because it would be a pain to drive it around on Manhattan streets, there was one scheduled for me in White Plains. This I was assured of when I called to verify that my reservation had gone through. And so, after yet another crazy workday, I went to bed confident that tomorrow, when I showed up at 830am at the 125th st DMV in Harlem, the final pieces of my brilliant plan would fall into place.
It is Monday, 8/14. Fresh from surviving a weekend of eating, shooting, and falling, I am ready to commence preparing for the big move. The Best MutherFucking Road Trip Ever (BMFRTE) is scheduled to begin at 10pm on Thursday night. I am excited. Soon I will be on my way back to the Promised Land- California.
Of course, given that I've been working 14 hours a day, and spending time with Keiko seeing the sights of NYC that I haven't seen in the 4 years I've lived here, and going out of town basically every weekend since Memorial Day, I haven't done much to actually prepare for a cross-country move. For instance, almost nothing is packed. My mom visited a few weeks ago, when _literally_ nothing was packed, and was kind enough to pack most of my dishes. Aside from that, the only things in boxes are the things that have lived in boxes in the back of my closet for the last 4 years, since I lived in Richmond, which was the last time I had space to put anything anywhere.
But, while I hadn't done much to physically prepare for the cross-country move, I had done a lot to mentally prepare. For instance, I had come up with one and a half brilliant plans. The brilliant half-plan (not too be confused with a half-brilliant plan) was my half of the overall plan for the BMFRTE. Ed had contributed the other half of the plan. We concocted the plan for the BMFRTE at Molly Pitcher's, on 2nd ave and 85th, over several margaritas (me) and Guinesses (Ed).
We started by assuming we had two weeks to get across the country. Then, figuring we had a whole country's worth of nature, museums, attractions, and people to see, it quickly became obvious that the BMFRTE should be organized around the one thing all those things have in common: baseball. After all, baseball is played (properly) in nature (outdoors on grass), is a most wonderful attraction, has its own museum, and, we could invite everyone we wanted to see along the way to a baseball game in their city.
And so, the BMFRTE was born. After several drinks, and poring over baseball schedules, and deciding to include more nature, and a wedding Ed had to go to, we came up with the following plan:
Thu 8/17: leave NYC
Fri 8/18: Acadia National Park
Sat 8/19: Wedding of Ed's friend. Gus catches up on 2 months of missed sleep.
Sun 8/20: Boston. Baseball game 1: Red Sox vs. Angels
Mon 8/21: Cooperstown. Baseball Hall of Fame
Tue 8/22: Chicago. BB game 2: White Sox vs.
Wed 8/23: StL. BB game 3: Cardinals vs. Marlins. Perfect, since Ed, being from Miami, is a Marlins fan
Thu 8/24: fly to Las Vegas. Rent a car and drive into southern Utah
Fri 8/25: Zion National Park
Sat 8/26: Bryce National Park
Sun 8/27: Salt Lake City. Drop off rental car and fly to Dallas. Rent another car. BB game 4: Rangers vs.
Mon 8/28: New Orleans.
Tue 8/29: Houston. BB Game 5: Astros vs. Cardinals.
Wed 8/30: drop off rental. Fly back to StL. Drive to Kansas City. BB Game 6: Royals vs.
Thu 9/1: drive to Denver. Rockies are out of town, so substitute football game 1: Broncos vs. Cardinals.
Fri 9/2: Drive to vegas. Stop at Arches National Park. In Vegas, win back cost of trip.
Sat 9/3: Phoenix. BB game 7: Diamondbacks vs.
Sun 9/4: San Diego. BB game 8: Padres vs. Dodgers.
Mon 9/5: LA. BB game 9: Angels vs. A's.
Tue 9/6: drive up PCH to Half Moon Bay. Drop Ed off at San Jose airport for red-eye back to NYC.
So that was the plan: 9 baseball games, 1 football game, 4 National parks, 1 museum, and seeing friends all along the way. That's a great road trip. In fact, it's the Best MutherFucking Road Trip Ever. Now, having carefully crafted a brilliant plan to get me/us across the country, I eventually realized I also needed a strategy to get everything I own across the country too. And that's where the second brilliant plan came in...
I looked at a lot of different options for getting my stuff to CA. The first one I looked at was renting a UHaul truck. I looked at this option even though I had had significant issues with UHaul in the past. For instance, when I was moving to Santa Monica in '96, I rented a UHaul from a place on Lincoln and Olympic, right at the entrance to the 10 freeway. It is literally right at the entrance. Since I was living in LA on $19,500 a year, with student loans and a competitive ballroom dance hobby that was expensive, I didn't have a lot of money and since it was a short, brief move (because of the aforementioned I also didn't have a lot of stuff), I decided to save some money and not get the insurance on the truck. I only needed it for a few hours.
Well, I rented the truck, got into it, turned it on, and turned out of the driveway and onto the entrance ramp. At this point, I have traveled a grand total of ten feet from the UHaul place, at a peak speed of 5 miles an hour, and haven't hit anything, including any and all curbs in the area. Which is why I was a little mystified by the passenger side mirror suddenly sliding right out of its frame and onto the pavement, where it shattered into microscopic-sized pieces.
Naturally, I went straight back into the UHaul place, and went back to the person who had just helped me, and explained what happened. Surely if turning out of their driveway at 5 mph caused the mirror to fall out, the thing had been defective from the start, and therefore I shouldn't be held accountable. A perfectly cogent argument, I thought. But neither this person nor her manager were sympathetic. Without the insurance, I was responsible. Period.
So I did my move, gave the truck back a couple hours later, and got charged an extra $350 to replace the mirror. It still rankles.
But, UHaul doesn't have a lot of competition for exactly what they do, so I investigated. The were willing to rent me a truck for only 11 days, and that was going to cost $1950 before any insurance or gas or anything. I needed the truck for 19 days. So, I tried another option- tractor trailer rental. You can rent space in a tractor trailer. That was a flat $1500 fee. Thing is, I live in Manhattan, and the company wouldn't send its truck there. I'd have to rent a van, load my stuff into it, drive it to Long Island, unload it from the van, load it into the tractor trailer, and then, fly to CA to meet it on the other side, since it only takes 3 days to go cross-country. Next I looked into just UPS ground shipping my stuff, but I have a couple thousand books, plus a lot of dishware, and by the time it was all added up it was definitely coming close to the $1500 mark, though it was still at that point the cheapest option.
At this point, I had a revelation. I don't have a car, and I'll need one the instant I set foot in CA, so why not get a car here, one big enough to tow a trailer. Then I could simply rent a trailer from UHaul, avoid some of the rentals that I would otherwise need on the BMFRTE, and at the end I would have a car to get around in once I was in CA. Brilliant!
So I went onto leasetrader.com and eventually found a guy with a GMC Envoy that looked in good condition and had plenty of miles left on the lease. Over a three week period, many documents were FedEx'd around in a triangle between Colorado, where GMC leasing is, Cazenovia, NY, where the guy was, and NYC, where I was. Keiko and I drove out to Cazenovia one weekend to evaluate the car, and the guy, since I wanted to make sure I was dealing with someone trustworthy. But that went well, and all was progressing according to plan. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I would go to the DMV to register the vehicle in my name, then in the evening Keiko and I would fly to Syracuse, where the guy would pick us up, take us to his house, and turn over the vehicle.
In final preparation for this event, I went online and made a reservation for a 5x8 UHaul trailer, which would comfortably fit behind a GMC Envoy. Although there were no trailers at the UHaul location on Manhattan, presumably because it would be a pain to drive it around on Manhattan streets, there was one scheduled for me in White Plains. This I was assured of when I called to verify that my reservation had gone through. And so, after yet another crazy workday, I went to bed confident that tomorrow, when I showed up at 830am at the 125th st DMV in Harlem, the final pieces of my brilliant plan would fall into place.
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