Revisión Técnica

We passed the car mechanical check up and have our yearly sticker! This was a stretching experience for John, to say the least! This is more involved than just a smog check. We went with our local friends from our little town. The office, kind of like a DMV, is located in a town 50 miles from here, but it takes about an hour to get there.

We got there, parked the car, payed about $10, and got in line behind about 10 vehicles. In front of us there was a truck driver from town. We had talked to him briefly when we were passing out invitations on Friday, and he recognized us. Our friend stayed in the car with John and his wife, little boy and I waited outside. Finally, it was John's turn. An employee comes out and starts asking John to turn lights on and off, step on and off the breaks, right and left signals, the horn, the emergency, low and high beams, all very fast in Spanish. Then he had to drive through a tunnel, then the man gets under the car and yells different instructions through a microphone. Again, it is fast, the place is noisy and it is all in Spanish. Our friend tried to help by repeating the instructions to John in Spanish. This whole thing was so confusing for John that he was drenched in sweat, and the car stalled. A computer is checking how the car works through all this. Well, we did not pass because we needed a wheel alignment, but our friend knew of a good shop nearby. We drove there. There were no other costumers, so they aligned the wheels in about 30 minutes. Then we drove back to the DMV, had to pay again, but only $5 this time. Luckily, there was no line this time, and he did not have to go through the whole process again. They just checked the alignment; it was correct this time, and they gave us our yearly sticker. We were very happy. Our friends took us to dinner to celebrate. When they had their car checked last month, they had to go two different days to get it done. We left at 1:00 pm this afternoon and got home at 7:30. All in a day's work, from the beach...