OMFG, DMV!

Warning: If you're looking for a quick, clear recap of events, you won't find it here. If you like wading through the intricacies of large bureaucracies, this is the post for you!

What a twisted day it has been.

We decided we'd take our chances and get licenses/partial licenses today. The plan was for me to get my Class C, and for Steve to get his Non-Commercial Class A permit (while temporarily keeping his Texas Class C in the meantime).

We figured the Laguna Hills DMV office would be our best bet. See, Laguna Hills, besides being the office closest to us, is a tiny, quaint suburb. That office is bad enough, so we couldn't even imagine how awful a bigger office would be. That's why we were surprised when each time we checked the approximate wait times online, the Santa Ana office had waits of less than half an hour. Santa Ana is Orange County's largest city, the county seat, and the kind of place you don't go to if you don't have to. But after lunch the wait times were 17 minutes, so off we went.

We filled out our forms and checked the box for "new license." Sure, our old licenses weren't due to expire for years, but we had gotten other licenses out of state in the meantime. We couldn't reinstate our old vehicle registrations, so it didn't even occur to us to apply for a replacement of our old licenses. In fact, it seems downright dishonest and would probably be considered illegal.

So when I was called up to the window and the guy asked if I'd ever had a license in California, I said that we were coming from Texas, but that yes, I used to have a California license. I gave him my old number. He pulled it up, had me do the thumb-print thingy, asked me for my $31 and said my license would arrive in 2-3 weeks.

"I don't have to take a written test?" I asked--both relieved and a little disappointed.

"Nope, your old license is still valid, so we'll just send you a replacement of the old one."

Ooooookay....

That seemed too good to be true, so I went and checked with someone else who said that since my old license wasn't expired, that's how they do it. What's weird is that they didn't take my Texas license, hole-punch it, or even look at it.

Steve, on the other hand, had a little more trouble.

First they had no idea what test to give him, because, as we have learned, people at the DMV often don't actually know what they're doing.

They finally found it and I waited with the kids in the "waiting area" (a long dark hallway) while he took it.

When I noticed him standing at the window again, I headed over to see how it went. He had a pained expression on his face, which I interpreted to mean that he failed the test. Turns out he passed (100 percent!) but there was a problem. Because he, too, had checked the "new license" rather than "replacement license" box, the clerk had created a new record for him. Only they're not supposed to do that, because everyone is only supposed to have one file.

So they got other employees and at least one supervisor involved. First they tried blaming Steve for checking the "wrong" box, but he explained his line of thinking. (If we have to start over again with the vehicles, why not the license?) Plus he had told the woman at the window that he had had a California license as recently as two months ago, but she must not have understood.

They were all a little baffled that Steve didn't pop up in the system anyway, when she entered his information, but for whatever reason he hadn't.

By this point the kids were going nuts, so I took them out to the truck for what I thought would be a quick wait.

An hour later Steve texted me that they were calling Sacramento to see if they could locate their asses.

Elias had to go to the bathroom so I went back in, only to learn that they were insisting that Steve needed to take the Commercial Class A test, which made no sense at all, especially given that numerous DMV documents clearly state what a Non-Commercial Class A is for (fifth wheels over 15,000 lbs).

A guy insisted on going out to look at the truck to see if we had air brakes. What??? Steve played along, and it was finally determined that, oh yeah, you need the Non-Commercial A.

Then it turned out that part of the problem was that in California, Steve had had a Restricted Class B Firefighter license, and the system, for whatever reason, couldn't add a Non-Commercial Class A to the Class B.

The other problem was that in Texas, Steve had just gotten a Class C since he doesn't really need the Class B, since he doesn't drive fire trucks anymore.

So Steve explained that if it was the Class B holding things up, he was willing to forgo that.

I said that the most important thing to us would be to walk out with his Texas Class C still in place, and his California Non-Commercial Class A permit.

Then I had to take the kids back to the truck, so I missed the rest of the dealings, but heard about it from Steve.

They wound up reinstating his Class B license. They also hole-punched his Texas license (making it invalid), and told him that he couldn't get his Non-Commercial Class A permit until his permanent license (as opposed to the paper temporary) arrived in the mail in 2-3 weeks. So that means that even though Steve passed the written test (with a 100 percent), which should have allowed him to get his permit, he didn't. And we also can't legally tow the trailer in California since he no longer has a valid Texas license.

So we walked out as official Californians again, but probably worse off than we were at the beginning of the day.

I'm not at all confident that any of the stuff they did was correct, nor that it won't come back to bite us in some way later.

In the meantime, it's a good thing we decided not to go on a trip over Thanksgiving because there's a good chance we still won't be able to pull Homer by then.

To think that if we had skipped the whole Texas thing we'd probably be done with this process by now...