Arizona Citizens Again

Since we sold the house in June and Georgia moved to Yuma, we needed to make Arizona our permanent home and residence. This meant sending address notifications, getting Arizona driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations. The last two required both of us to visit the local Motor Vehicle Department or Arizona MVD. It is usually called the Department of Motor Vehicles in other states. It must be the Spanish influence here.

The MVD opened at 8AM. We fully expected to be there for several hours as we drove up and were welcomed by at least 40 people already in line waiting for the opening. After gathering all of the information from both vehicles, we stood in line with everyone else – dreading the time that this was going to take.

While standing in line, Randy made an observation that the MVD was one of the few places in town with bicycle racks. We guess that if you do not have a license for whatever reason, you can still ride your bike to the MVD and get it. 

Soon the doors opened and the line started moving at almost a fast trot. As we got to the front of the line, a MVD employee asked what we needed to do (get new drivers licenses and vehicle registrations). We were assigned two different numbers as one of us would need to get the license and do the registration. Georgia got the short straw on that one and got the duty of getting the registration for both vehicles along with her driver’s license. In a short time, our numbers were announced and were flashing over two MVD stations. We then departed to our separate stations.

Randy was quickly through with his part of just getting his third Arizona license. The only problem was showing his citizenship papers which Georgia had. He was able to use his photo id from his banking card. After this was all done, Georgia came over with his passport and other documentation. Oregon was much tougher from what the local papers told us. We were lucky. We were also registered to vote at the same time.

After Randy’s mug shot was taken, the license was mounted and Randy was able to leave. It had only taken 20 minutes! Let’s hear it for the Arizona DMV!

The next step was installing the new license plates. For Georgia it was a matter of taking the old plates off and installing the new one on the back of the car.

Randy was in for a bit more “fun” since he has a backup camera mounted on the license plate. He had to take the license plate and camera off completely, drill an additional hole for the camera  in the new license plate,  remount it, and then rewire it. Fortunately it all worked. We are now officially Arizona citizens again.