Stick it to the Van

This is all about a mundane work task that I was first assigned in March of 2003. I'm going to do my best to bring the funny, and make it seem much more exciting then it really is. We call this the John Woo Principle.

It all started with a traffic ticket...

There's a van in Columbia. The facility uses it for usual facility-related things - delivering the mail, moving equipment, road trips to Taco Bell - you know, normal, unassuming van activities (vactivities?) It's old, too. We got it in an acquisition of a company in 1994, whereupon the theoretical ownership of said van become SAIC's. The van quietly did its job for years (with the occasional transmission failure, nobody's perfect.) as SAIC mailroom and maintenance people used it to do their daily tasks. Fast forward...

...OJ's innocent?!?...no keep going...John Elway is retiring?!?...not far enough...the Spice Girls are WHERE on the charts?!?...ok, time for hyper-forward...ZOOM.

It's now the spring of 2003, and I get word that the aforementioned van has been pulled over (coincidentally, in a Taco Bell parking lot) for having an expired registration. Seems simple enough of a solution: pay the fine, get the van registered, head to Happy Hour. Little did I know...This van is cursed. We're talking major league hex here. Imagine the Bambino mating with Mrs.O'Leary's cow echelon of curses (On second thought, don't imagine that. I don't want the FCC to shut me down.) What started as a simple traffic violation turned into a headache of massive proportions (Like having to listen to Ashlee Simpson on repeat for 4 days straight.) (Ow.) When I went to get the vehicle registered, sure enough, it had expired about one month prior. Ok, no problem, when you are registering a car, bring a credit car and the title, and shazam! You've got registration!

Wait a minute, where's the title?

Granted, I work in McLean, and the van is in Columbia, but a simple proof of ownership should not be hard to produce. And the best way to find something you probably once had is to retrace your steps.

***Keep in mind here that we don't need this van anymore. We bought a brand new van two months before, and that all I want to do at the end of the day is donate it to a local church or charity for the purposes of a write-off. But apparently, charities like fully licensed vehicles as donations, as well as a title to have once they come into ownership. So regardless of what is about to transpire in the following parahraphs, it is all with the sole intent of getting rid of Old Hexy.***

Let's see, prior re-registrations first. You got to figure that if the registration had been renewed in the past, then the title surfaced at these critical moments. And yeah, no. I have no record of paying for the registration renewals for either of the last two years. Apparently the cursed van has some sort of rich benefactor van friend that in the past has paid for its expenses. But it sure isn't me. (What do I know? I was at W&M at this point in history.)

Digging further, it appears that we bought the van out of a lease with First National Bank in July, 1997. (I was a junior in high school.) Which means that this would have been the first time we at SAIC would have ever had the title, right?

Wrong. Because all documentation regarding registration that I have seen has said First National Bank of MD and not SAIC, leads me to deduce that somewhere the forms to transfer title were never completed. So I should call them, right?

Wrong. It's 2003, and First National Bank since had been purchased by AllFirst Bank. So I should call them, right?

Wrong. AllFirst Bank has been swallowed by M&T Bank, who are too busy sponsoring the home of the Baltimore Ravens to keep their inherited vehicle leasing records, twice removed, in order. So, I do the most obvious thing I can in order to resolve this matter. (By the way, it's now March of 2004) I call Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis*.

Ray was a huge help. As of yesterday, some 21 months later, the title to the van, which has now become a relic in its neverchanging parking lot, is sitting here on my desk. Now I can do what I set out to do in the first place: donate a cursed van to charity.

*- Okay, maybe it wasn't THE Ray Lewis. But as per the aforementioned principle to make this interesting, you gotta Woo what you gotta Woo.