My stepdad lived in the Far East for years, mostly Japan, though before that he was on Guam as well. So when we ended up moving to Georgia (involuntarily, but a job is a job!) he had, among other things, a Guam license. No problem, right? I think it said Guam USA right there ON the damn thing. I know their plates do, but we didn’t have one of those.
The clerk at the county DMV refuses to believe that Guam isn’t a foreign country. It took a good half an hour of arguing with her and her supervisor to convince them that no, it was not a foreign license and he did NOT need to take a behind-the-wheel test!
Then, back in 1994, there was Mr. Fishface at the Santa Monica DMV who failed me on my first try at the driver’s test – correctly, I screwed up big time – but the second time failed me for no apparent reason, except maybe that he didn’t like me. We went to a different office, a woman tested me, I passed.
And Mom has a long horror story about taking nine hours to get two cars registered in Maryland. Egad.
I lost my driver’s licence once and needed to obtain a replacement. In California, you can call your local DMV and make an appointment, so you don’t have to wait in those awful lines. Trouble was, every time I called the phone line was busy. And I called many, many times. Finally, I drove down to the DMV office. Went up to the information desk and made an appointment (took about 5 minutes) to come back in a couple of days to get my new licence. Phones, who needs em?
What the hell kind of a law is that? Pickups with open beds are banned from some roads, but if you stick a camper shell on one then it’s OK? My head’s hurting from trying to grasp the rationale behind that…
Parkways are supposed to be for “passenger cars” only, not for commercial vehicles. Keeps out the riff-raff, and lets them build lower overpasses. It is nice to be on a parkway and not have to worry about semis and big panel trucks and such. The rule, which has since been changed, was an attempt to separate commercial pickups from residential pickups. Actually, you were supposed to install seats or something in the bed to qualify, but they never asked about that. They gave up the goat on pickups a few years back and changed the rules.
A guy I know had a vending machine business, and used a van to deliver product. If he followed the law strictly, the van would have been registered as commercial, and would have been kept off the parkways. Instead, he bought a van with side windows (this seemed to be a requirement), and registered it as a normal personal vehicle, so the delivery guy could travel on the parkways. If he had a plain sided van, with commercial plates, he would have had to stay on the surface streets, or other expressways.
People, please, if you are new to Illinois, you must learn the rules. BRIBES. Our secretary of state has already been indicted on taking, um, “contributions” to facilitate licensing, registerations, etc. and our governor is under pressure to resign for, um, associating with people convicted or under indictment for taking said contributions. When he was secretary of state.
Illinois politicians will bend over backward to get your needs met, you just need to understand how the system works. I own my own state rep! He’s cute and sits in the corner quietly as long as I feed his need for campaign funding.
This is also a bit of a hijack but can you imagine if these nimrods ran the health care system?
“No this stool sample has not been notarized. You need to get a new specimen jar from room 4C then go to the second floor and have your form stamped. Then proceed to the fifth floor to wait for an official observer. Then…” kind of like a bit from Monty Pythons Meaning of life.