Copyright 2007 Lydia HinshawORMOND BEACH, FL -- I am officially a Floridian again. Prince Charming, however, had been delayed by a series of crashes.
Not the road kind, fortunately.
When we accepted bus-driving jobs in Alaska for the summer, we were required to swap our Florida commercial drivers licenses for Alaska ones.
I always felt like a fraud carrying an Alaska license, and I was more than ready to head to the DMV Tuesday morning, passport and Social Security card in hand, to trade the alien card for my old familiar one.
We headed to the DMV in Flagler Beach, 20 miles away, preferring to avoid the infamous waits at the branch closer to home. Little did we know that we would find ourselves in line behind half of Sao Paolo.
Yes, five Brazilians, visitors applying for temporary licenses. They were taking the written test in Spanish, their second language, and they'd brought along a young lady who could translate their first language, Portuguese, into English for the required questions from the examiners.
We waited in line for 40 minutes before some additional examiners arrived at work and we finally made it to the front of the line.
Everything went fine for me. When the Prince's turn came, however he hit a roadblock. A big computer in Texas keeps track of all commercial drivers licenses in the country, and it perversely crashed just after all my information had gone through.
The examiner kept trying for another half hour, with no luck. The five Brazilians were still jumping through linguistic and road-test hoops when we left. At the rate they were going, their temporary licenses would expire before they finished the application process.
Later in the afternoon, the Prince called the DMV to check on the status of the Texas computer.
He was told it was working fine, and he left immediately. By the time he got there, the thing had crashed again.
He is still stuck with an Alaska license. And the next time he heads to the DMV, I'm going to insist he take camping gear.
Not the road kind, fortunately.
When we accepted bus-driving jobs in Alaska for the summer, we were required to swap our Florida commercial drivers licenses for Alaska ones.
I always felt like a fraud carrying an Alaska license, and I was more than ready to head to the DMV Tuesday morning, passport and Social Security card in hand, to trade the alien card for my old familiar one.
We headed to the DMV in Flagler Beach, 20 miles away, preferring to avoid the infamous waits at the branch closer to home. Little did we know that we would find ourselves in line behind half of Sao Paolo.
Yes, five Brazilians, visitors applying for temporary licenses. They were taking the written test in Spanish, their second language, and they'd brought along a young lady who could translate their first language, Portuguese, into English for the required questions from the examiners.
We waited in line for 40 minutes before some additional examiners arrived at work and we finally made it to the front of the line.
Everything went fine for me. When the Prince's turn came, however he hit a roadblock. A big computer in Texas keeps track of all commercial drivers licenses in the country, and it perversely crashed just after all my information had gone through.
The examiner kept trying for another half hour, with no luck. The five Brazilians were still jumping through linguistic and road-test hoops when we left. At the rate they were going, their temporary licenses would expire before they finished the application process.
Later in the afternoon, the Prince called the DMV to check on the status of the Texas computer.
He was told it was working fine, and he left immediately. By the time he got there, the thing had crashed again.
He is still stuck with an Alaska license. And the next time he heads to the DMV, I'm going to insist he take camping gear.
1 comment:
Standing in line behind Brazilians must have been fun.
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