If you have lived in other large states such as California, New York, Texas, etc. and had cause to visit their Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)  offices you likely appreciate that a visit to the DMV was more of an “adventure” than an errand.  It has been many years since I last visited a DMV location in California; yet, my last trip there still remains burned in my memory.  Not that it was an anomaly from other California DMV experiences – it wasn’t.

Almost always you found yourself waiting in lines for hours only to get to the front of the line and learn that you had been in the wrong line all along.  When you finally did get to the front of the right line you were typically dealing with an employee whose patience had expired about ten customers ago.  Of course there were aggravating factors that made the adventure even more thrill-filled – like going through all the above and realizing that you didn’t have all the right documents you needed or that you needed a signature or an odometer reading that you didn’t have (go ahead, go back to square one – it was like a never ending game of Candyland where you kept sliding backwards).  I remember standing in line at the DMV for over three hours once when I was pregnant and I darn near wet my pants rather than relinquish my place in line (there are no line place savers in California – at least no unpaid ones).  That was the California DMV I knew.  If you had to visit the DMV you knew to take a half-day off work; you likewise knew that you’d be telling the story of your experience at the DMV the following day to your work colleagues as it was very eventful – in a bad way.  As I said before – visiting the California DMV was always an adventure.

Such is not the case in North Dakota.  I visited the DMV today and even with a few folks in front of me in line I was in and out in ten minutes – TEN MINUTES!  How beautiful is that?  I might add that the staff there is always nice and exceedingly helpful as well.  This is how life should be…the DMV should be an errand like the half dozen others you run in any given day.

Friends and colleagues from other states often ask me why I stay in North Dakota.  I have a whole list of reasons that I offer in response to this question, but today I made a mental note to add the DMV as an “errand” (as opposed to an adventure) to the list.  There are some things that even six months of winter can’t detract from…and this is one of them. 😉

Day six hundred and fifty-eight of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C