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...
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