calherewecome

Time had come to head down to the CA DMV in San Pedro to get the plates on the Jeep changed over and get driver’s licenses.

They have a person who is kind of a traffic director. He or she checks your paperwork and sends you to the appropriate counter. MA DMV does the same thing. He is a kind of triage person.

I thought that I had my paperwork in order. Oh I was so wrong. So I had the insurance paperwork, the MA title, the application for CA Title and Reg. Pretty good but not all that was needed.

I had set up an appointment over the weekend on the DMV web site. If I didn’t have the appt, it would have taken a lot longer.

So lets take the license part first. We needed to fill out an application. Did we have passports with us? Marriage certificate? Nope. Luckily I knew where they were stashed. Just having used the passports to go to Ireland. So we needed to go home and pick up the passports.

Then the registration. We found out we needed to get a “Smog Check” done. Of course there are several smog check stations in the neighborhood. $55 for the pleasure.

So back to the DMV. We had to get into the “Verification” line. This is where a DMV clerk comes out to your car and verifies that the serial numbers match the application.

Back to the triage person. He gives us a ticket number for the next available teller. We start working through the paperwork. Licenses first. Do the eye test. Thumb on the thumb print reader. Swipe your credit card. Kaching! Paula goes off to get her picture taken and do the written test.

Finish up my driver’s license. Then the registration. Swipe the card again twice. $31 for the license and $199 for the registration. Kaching, Kaching.

Off to the booth that does pictures. Takes my picture. Gives me the form to take the test and gives me my plates and sticker. We both passed. Paula spent five minutes reading the test. I spent even less.

Last thing to do was change the plates. Five years of rust. Actually they didn’t give much resistance. And we get the real license in a couple of weeks. Now I have to figure out what to do with the MA plates.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:San Pedro, CA

This entry was posted on September 17, 2012 at 10:03 pm and is filed under California, Moving, Travel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: California, Moving, PASSPORT