For those of you who may have never experienced driving an automobile in the north eastern part of the United States, may this post serve as a stern warning. To those of you familiar with the process, you may skip to the next post as you probably will not find anything inherantly wrong with what I am about to say.

First of all ... GRRR! Hubby has to go to NYC Saturday for a competition so he needs current plates on his car. I will not go into detail as to how far expired they are, suffice it to say he has needed them since our youngest was 2. The problem was in Missouri, they would not pass the car for emissions since the 'service engine" light was on - even though it had been in the shop and nothing was wrong. No emissions = no tags. So, in the state of PA one must FIRST have a current PA drivers license in order to get a license plate. Sounds easy enough. Well, yesterday I called and had our insurance company email me the new PA proof of insurance so that I could get all of my required paperwork in line last night and be able to go to the licensing place today. Ha ha ha. My mistakes in this adventure are three fold.

First fold... Mapquest directions. What was I thinking? I know Mapquest is well intentioned, but they are not up for the challenge of driving in PA. Silly Mapquest people ASSUME that if a road has a name and you are driving on a road by that name, you are on the right road. Nope.

Second fold... not leaving at 5am to arrive at the licensure department in time to camp out at the front door for their 9am opening time.

Third fold... presuming that mid day, mid week most people would be at work and the lines would be minimal. Oh how wrong could I have been?

So, aside from it taking 2 hours to find the location Mapquest promised would take 30 minutes (oh, and the $3 in tolls it cost me to drive 15 miles each direction - since there was only one exit 13 miles from where I entered the turnpike and realized mapquest had led me astray.).. the trip was not THAT irritating. The problem was that twice on the directions a road was listed with a name but there was no road sign informing me that this was in fact THE road. How am I to know DeKalb Pike is the same as the generic "King of Prussia Mall" exit?? How? Hmm?? Do the PA DOT people assume we are all psychics?

When I arrived at the location (2 hours, 5 U-turns and 30 miles out of my way later... but who is counting?)... I the line was literally 10 yards out of the door single file. With 4 kids in tow... no way am I insane enough to try to make THAT work. So unfortunately, it was a wasted day. No license, no tags... nothing to show for it.

I did however take some time this afternoon to clean out the car... that was nice. Its UFO free now in the event of an accident!

Im going to go take the kids to the YMCA to get some wiggles out!! WHEW!!