After the whole passport fiasco it should come as no surprise for folks to learn that I’m not really big on bureaucracy. I understand that some of it’s necessary, but with the nature of the beast being that it makes you want to rip your hair out (or somebody else’s, honestly) leads me to prefer as little of it as possible. That alone makes my last few days in the States (and the fact that we’re in Italy, which apparently has perfected annoying bureaucracy) that much funnier in a “I may have to be medicated at some point” kind of way.
A short history of my Nissan Titan. A few weeks before we found out that we would be going to Italy, we were pretty thoroughly convinced that the opportunity had passed us by and as such we plowed through a long list of things we had put on hold that were getting kinda time sensitive. One of those things was a Nissan Titan that I was trying to sell for my brother who is a Chaplain in the Army and spending a few months in Afghanistan (thanks, bro!). Honestly, I really wanted the truck (and I was having a little trouble selling it anyway) and since we were pretty sure we weren’t going out of country ourselves we did the paperwork, traded in our older truck and bought it from my brother. Loved. This. Truck. Had there been any way to keep it I would have, but alas it was not to be. Interesting plot point is that its previous registration and title was in Tennessee. Spoiler alert, this becomes very important later.
Of course, discovering that we actually were going out of the States meant that I had to sell it, but we had to wait a little while because, well, we kinda had to drive places like work and stuff (who knew, right?). So as the week before we left was upon us we finally got to where we could sell at least one of them and then sell the other a few days later when we could get along with just one car. Of the two we chose the Torrent because we needed the truck for a few things to get the house ready. To make this as simple as possible we decided to take both of them to Carmax and sell them off, not a problem. We took them both there to get an offer just to be sure we could handle it financially and sold the Torrent back to them (we had gotten it from there a couple of years before). So, fast forward a few days and we have 60 some odd hours to go before checking our luggage and having our bodies scanned (more good times) I take the truck in to get it re-checked and sell it. All goes well, I get the same offer as before, I walk up to the business counter and after a few minutes I discover that Houston has a problem. Or rather, I have one, a BIG one as a matter of fact. They started asking me questions like, “have you recently moved?”…..Um….no, I’m about to. “Are you sure?” Well, I have been skipping out on my time at lumocity.com and ginkgo biloba pills, let me double check. NOPE! I didn’t forget that I changed residences in the last four weeks. I did buy the truck a couple of months ago, but the paperwork should all be done now. See, here’s my registration and proof that I’m paying on the loan. Yeah, none of that matters apparently, the title for the truck has been sitting in some bureaucratic purgatory for two months and is in some status where I can’t actually sell the truck (I have to add a note here that every time I’ve tried to even type the word “bureaucracy” I have to have spellcheck fix it. I. Hate. This. Word. But I’m not bitter). Anyway, so what is the remedy I ask? Not sure, they say, you should check with your bank. Fantastic! They close in 10 minutes. In one word “traffic”, I didn’t make it. Moving on.
The next morning (the day before we leave) I was sitting outside our bank branch waiting for the clock to tick past 9 hoping that this was going to just be a quick fix but pretty sure that the odds were somewhere between 1 and the headline “Genius Billionaire David Basham…” being printed. When I walked in the doors I managed to meet with the same lady that setup the loan for the truck so she knew the back story and took a look for me. Turns out that it’s not the bank holding things up, the truck title never left Tennessee. They didn’t have it, thus, they couldn’t release it. So, do you know what that means? Yep, a trip to the DMV! For a least a split second I entertained the idea of going home and simply saying “we’re not going…”. Ok, not really, but come on?! The DMV? They hold the key to getting this done before tomorrow? It’s like having Dr. Kevorkian being scheduled for your life saving surgery (I did, however, begin checking the news for my being declared a billionaire). Fine, on to Leeds Ave. where I can get a number, sit, and contemplate the meaning of life just because I have the time (even though I really, really don’t).
Apparently now they use algebra in where you are in line, there’s a confidence boost for you. As my number was called and I explained my situation (you know, about this leaving the country thing) and after a few clicks and a half ream of paper printed later they explain to me that Tennessee apparently doesn’t use the same system as South Carolina for titles so they have to do it manually and it just hasn’t been done yet. Two weeks I get, even a month I’d understand, but TWO MONTHS? I could have walked it there and back by now myself. Apparently some of my frustration started to seep through (with that sentence I secured the understatement of the year award, go me) and as I re-explained how I was going to be on a different continent come the next afternoon one of the managers overheard me and stopped for a second. Sadly, I can’t remember this guys name to save my life. He asked for my phone number and said he would take a look into it with another one of these he had. I honestly didn’t expect to hear from him. I left the DMV, and dropped off my stuff at Comcast to cancel my internet access and as I was leaving I get a call. “Hey, because it was there so long they were happy to rush it through, should be available to sell tomorrow.” Am I being punked? Where’s the camera? I thanked the guy as best I could and tried not to say “I love you, man” as I ended the call.
Of course, this was no guarantee. Carmax was saying it could take a week so we spent all evening figuring out what we would do if we couldn’t sell it before we left. The really crappy part here is that Carmax doesn’t open until 10 AM, our flight leaves at 4:45 PM. The DMV opens an hour earlier than this, but the wait time that morning to find out the title status made it not worth going. So, after getting to Carmax a tad early and waiting for the business office to open we handed the documents to a young woman and asked her to check for us. It dawned on me about halfway through all the clicks and logins she had to do that we just dumped a LOT of pressure on this woman. After explaining everything we stood there looking at her as if she was going to decide whether we won the lottery or not. Ok, you can stop holding your breath, sure enough it was where we could sell it. Forty-five minutes later we walked out with a check and headed back to the house to get our stuff and go to the airport to check in a little early, and then celebrated our last few hours at Buffalo Wild Wings enjoying boneless wings and sweet tea they aren’t going to be serving in Italy. Oh, and the moral to this story is, you know that thing people say about titles not being important? Not universally true.
