Driver’s saga: The futile quest for a Washington driver’s license - Part 1

Episode IV: A New License

A long time ago in a state 8 hours away, a driver’s license expired. The 21-year-old owner of the license hailed from the desert town of Nampa Idaho, a desolate land with poor public transportation. Inaccess to wheels meant certain death, both physically and socially. It was a time when people foraged their own food; UberEats hadn’t been invented yet, and the closest Walmart loomed a 5-minutes drive from the suburban tribes.

The fairly bearded lad from the license’s mugshot vowed to renew his credentials. With a yearning for adventure beyond the desert, the force of driving was strong within him. He wished to see the wonders of the open road. So, for the second time in his life, he inked a blood-oath contract with the DMV, the empire’s most pain-inducing agency.

The DMV sent two of its associates to test the lad. Normally, these technical tests were completed in childhood, but if the individual sucked at renewal paperwork, they had to be completed twice. It led to the awkward situation where a 15-year-old and a 21-year-old became peers; where, the only similarity between them was that both their grandmas dropped them off.

The first associate asked the lad to drive across town while being observed, and apart from point deductions for running a red light (twice) the lad passed. The second associate asked the lad to take a multiple-choice trivia test, which mostly related to abnormal road conditions, and again, the lad passed.

After a dragging two weeks of waiting and after meeting with its associates, the DMV summoned the lad and bestowed the coveted Idaho driver’s license. The lad, after paying his dues (fifty dollars and two hours of his soul), snatched the license and evolved from a lad into a lad-squared, aka, a licensed driver.

Episode V: The Subaru Strikes Back

For his senior year of college, the licensed driver bought a 2003 Subaru Outback with the money he’d saved from his summer internship. He paid the Craigslist seller in wads of $10 bills ($2,250 total) in a metal briefcase because he was feeling rich and it seemed like the cool thing to do. The same color as the Subaru itself, maybe a red flag in hindsight, the seller grinned and took the money without counting it. 

On the way from Nampa Idaho to Chapel Hill North Carolina, the car broke in Mitchell South Dakota. Faced with hieroglyphic error messages from the dashboard, the driver drifted into the quiet prairie town. It was an insignificant town, the kind without a meaningful Wikipedia page. The sun beat down on the driver while he frantically looked for a mechanic, his only hope.

Using the free Wi-Fi from a Taco Time - since the driver burnt through his funds on the Subaru itself and lacked money to pay for a real phone plan, the kind of plan where you pay with a prepaid minutes card from Walmart, also the kind of plan which monitors your 300 minutes a month - anyways, with the Taco Time Wi-Fi, the driver found the town’s only mechanic. 

The mechanic, after a preliminary review of the car, squawked expensive gibberish at the driver which he couldn’t fact check, because what the heck is spark plug, crankshaft, or [insert unknown car anatomy here]? No one knows. So reluctantly, the driver handed over his cash and prayed the problem would be fixed. The mechanic reassured him that it would, but, sometime tomorrow, because it was 4:00 PM, and they were closing.

The town folk slowly wandered back to their dwellings for the self-imposed South Dakota curfew. The Jack Rabbits didn’t kick off until the fall, and the state hibernated until then. The driver remained alone. This proved problematic since the Subaru, with a twin mattress in the back, now locked in the mechanic shop, served as his lodging for the journey. Luckily though, the driver still had his phone a friend lifeline. He called his mom and she generously paid for a hotel for the night.

In the morning, the driver paid for unknown services, reclaimed the car, and skedaddled out of town. At the end of his first journey, on the far side of the country, the driver finished his senior year of college. He applied for jobs and nailed an interview for a bigwig actuarial job in Seattle. All the while, the Subaru slinked steadily in background, free from apparent troubles. All was right in the world and things were good. To celebrate the successful completion of four years of living at the library, the driver drew a line across the country and planned for a three-week’s road trip. A second cross-country road trip.

On the way from Chapel Hill North Carolina to Nampa Idaho, the car broke in Kingsman Arizona. The driver repeated the steps learned from South Dakota. He found the town’s only mechanic (this time using the McDonald’s Wi-Fi) and delivered the clunking car to the potential savior. The mechanic delivered unfortunate news: the brakes of the car had worn through. Replacement parts came in three days for a hefty premium; otherwise, the driver could try to finish the remaining 1,000 miles without the aid of breaks. Since he was no Jedi master yet, the driver opted to wait for the parts.

As a recent college graduate, a synonym for broke and in-debt, the driver couldn’t afford the cost of replacement breaks. However, his credit card could, so he put the bill on Wells Fargo’s tab. Originally, the driver thought about selling the Subaru and buying a plane ticket home, but figured the market value on a non-breaking car wouldn’t be enough, even for Spirit Airlines. 

So, waiting for the replacement parts to arrive, the driver camped out in a Walmart parking lot for two nights. His travel budget allowed for a hotel the third night, where, he finally showered for the first time in 10 days. In the meantime, the driver explored the entire town - both the library and the Panda Express. At the library, the driver drilled through practice problems for his upcoming actuarial test, and at the Panda Express, the driver enjoyed a much needed change-up to his normal pb&j diet. In the evenings, the driver went to the movies and watched every movie released in May 2019: Detective Pikachu, Aladdin, and John Wick 3 - a five star movie if you sum all the stars from the three movies together.

After the brake parts finally arrived and after the mechanic performed his automobile wizardry, the driver continued with this vacation. He cut San Francisco out of the itinerary due to the budget hiccup, and instead headed north on a quicker route home. Traveling through Nevada, a state of mostly sage brush, dirt, and gamblers, for what seemed to be an eternity, the driver finally broke through to Oregon and then Idaho. Home.

To cover the travel repair debts, in an ironic solution to an unfortunate problem, the driver sold the Subaru and repaid Wells Fargo. Without wheels of his own, he petitioned his dad and sister to drop him off in Seattle for his bigwig job. Along with his existing possessions, a mattress with no bedframe and a tv without a mount, they helped furnish his apartment with a shopping trip to Goodwill.

The Subaru had lasted less than a year, but had provided enough fond memories to christen it as his favorite car brand. Even with it’s occasional breakdowns, the Subaru Outback is one of the few cars with the mpg and trunk space to adventure across the country. The driver - now with no car, so better classified as a worker - set off to earn some bacon.

Episode VI - Return of the Transportation

New to the city, the worker charted out the route to bacon. The grocery store was a 12-minutes walk away. Along with the food source, the worker memorized other important locations: the library, a 9-minutes walk, and the movies, a 29-minutes walk. The worker printed a poster size board of his neighborhood, pinning all the routes with highlighted walking times. 

Lugging heavy groceries, which consisted of mostly hot dogs, top ramin, and breakfast foods, the worker built strong shoulder muscles, or at least that’s what he told himself. In spite of the daily dose of Vitamin D, the worker grew tired of the constant, required walks. The lack of transportation proved inconvenient. For the two weeks before his job started, the worker explored the city on foot - as was required by not having a car. 

But then, a light at the end of the tunnel, on his first day of work, his company gave him something called an ORCA Card. The magical wand allowed the worker to summon busses, link rails, and water taxis - oh my! The travel time to the movies now shrunk to just 15 minutes. Incredible. Balance had been restored to the force: even without a car the worker was able to transport just fine. 

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This concludes the first part of my story of getting a Washington driver’s license. The story hardly relates to getting the license, but I think it’s unimportant background information worth telling. Stay tuned for the prequal of the story, which, still about driving, relates even less to the story of me getting my Washington driver’s license, but is needed to fit the Star Wars theme.

In other news, I’ve been writing a lot less because of other life events, mainly: studying for actuarial exams, traveling to visit family, and reading on the weekends. Recently, I finished Seabiscuit. An incredibly inspiring story filled with dynamic verbs and pictorial nouns. The story itself was good, but I’m more blown away by Laura Hillbrand’s writing style. Five stars.