This is the one and only good thing I have to say about the Bow/eau-tie: he really made the DMV better. When I got my license, you had to wait hours in line, even if you got there at the ass-crack of dawn.

It goes to show, everyone has his/her/its strengths.

Go to the DMV in deep deep deep SE on Penn Ave and the service is even better. For serious. That place has forever been good to me.

Are you kidding me? I had to go 4 times and spend 350 bucks to get everything taken care of. But I did go to Penn Ave DMV in anacostia, I'm sure it shaved off about 15 minutes. But I did sit and wait and watch the DMV lady file her nails for 10 minutes instead of calling me number...

I've held five different licenses and three different registrations. I appreciate Maryland for many reasons, but the bureaucratic morass of the Free State puts them all to shame. Virginia used to be the easiest, pre-9/11 (flash a water bill, walk up to the counter, smile, pick up your license.) But that was also before I lived in Northern Virginia, where there's one DMV for every 500,000 people (who all manage, somehow, to show up at the Four Mile Run branch on the same Saturday morning.)

That Four Mile Run office is unbelievably bad. How can you have insufficient parking at a DMV office? I've spent fifty minutes circling that parking lot.

No idea. I always parallel-park in the neighborhood on the other side of the crick and walk across. Then I go inside and squat in the corner with all the other DMV refugees, and I feel like I'm in the Grapes of Wrath, except with more grouchy yuppies and Salvadorans.

Took me 20 minutes to get my shiny new VA license. Easy Peasy.

".. and Maryland force you to spend money for inspections every one or two years ... at an independent shop that may or may not require an appointment"

Did you mean Massachusetts here? We don't have annual inspections in the way you describe. We do have the emissions testing, but that's not at an independent shop. You drive up, you drive out.

Nope, I got inspected at an independent shop in Maryland. It may have been because my car at the time was too old for onboard diagnostics.

I got my 1990 Camry (similar to your 1987 one) emissions tested at the state facility up in Westminster. They had to hook a hose to the tailpipe and run my car on a treadmill, but even a '70's clunker can be tested with that method.

However, this was completely separate from the mechanical inspection it had to pass before I could swap the Texas plates for the Maryland ones. The emissions testing came AFTER I had the new plates.

Mechnical only has to be done when the car is first licensed in Maryland or when the title changes hands. Emissions has to be done every other year, no matter what. I was about to have to take my 2001 Volvo in for an emissions test, but then I shipped it off to Germany.

Oh, and you get one *good* visit with the Maryland MVA. Title change from Texas to Maryland, end of month, with much offical typing: 15 minutes, total.

Driver's license swap, mid-month, Saturday in Glen Burnie, with a little paper-glancing: 3 hours.

Now I just have to deal with the friendly, anal-retentive Germans in the US Army POV (personally-owned vehicle) registration office. It could be worse; they could be northern Germans instead of relatively-easy-going Bavarians.