Car inspections should only take half an hour and the owner should not have to stress and think about it.  Anyone who has been in my car will tell you that it has to be in good condition to drive it like I do.  Unfortunately, such a simple thing as a car inspection can go horribly awry.

The car's inspection expired in July.  My father, the car's actual owner (so he can pay the insurance), asked me to wait until I visited his home to get the car inspected.  His friend inspects the car and charges a small amount--plus he trusts his friend.  Fair enough; I always heed others' wisdom in their areas of expertise.

Halfway through July, my father tells me I can just get the car inspected in GSO instead of waiting to go home.  He told me that during one of my busiest weeks; joy.  I took it to Precision Tune, but did not want to suffer through an hour and a half wait.  I then wracked up enough hours at work to get a few days off, so I wait until the day when I can leave early.  When the day came, I took it to Jiffy Lube.  Much to my surprise, they were too busy to look at the car.

My father was in GSO around this time helping my brother move.  He told me he had to get one of his cars inspected.  Since I was going home with him that day, we left GSO early.  I stopped at the Raleigh camera store a bought a few filters, then waited for him to arrive at home so we could drive both cars down to his friend's shop to have them inspected.  Four o'clock came, then four-thirty, five, and five-thirty.  He finally came home, a bit too late to go down to the shop.  Turns out he also stopped in Raleigh and didn't think to tell me to get the car inspected without him.

I had three hours of sleep that night and woke up at six in the morning for my trip down to Jacksonville.  At seven, my dad asked me to wait an hour so I can get the car inspected.  Like I'm going to burn daylight on my day trip to J-ville (2 - 2.5 hour one-way).  At one point in my trip (while on Emerald Isle), I stopped at a garage to get the car inspected.  Work called, asking me to come in as a special favor.  If it wasn't for being nearly 250 miles away, I would have done so.  Anyway, the garage told me Onslow County was not an 'emission' county and I had to have my 1993 car inspected where they could do the emission testing.

The next day, I was back at home and going down to Wilmington with my father and his scout pack.  I related the story to him and he thought it was odd, saying that the emission testing was only for cars around 1996 and later, so my car should not have needed the testing.  Saturday was a no-go for the inspection because of the trip with him.

Monday...  I was back up in GSO.  I left my place two hours before I had to go to work.  I took it to the Jiffy Lube on Battleground.  Their machine was broken and could not do the inspection for any cars pre-1996.  I went to the other Battleground Jiffy Lube and was faced with an hour wait I was not about to do.  I then took it to the Firestone on High Point Road.  They had only one inspector and a two hour wait.  A small garage said they didn't do inspections for pre-1996 cars.  I then went to Jimmy Johns and got a take-out lunch to prepare to go to work.  On my way to work, I saw that the "Der Wagon Haus" auto shop also did inspections.  I made a U-turn and headed back.  After waiting to get some attention, they said the county in which my car was registered required emission testing for all cars.  I related my story to them and they said that was wrong.  They referred me to a "Cummings" auto shop down the road that could do the emission testing they could not.  Cummings had a wait, but I left the car there and simply hiked to work.

When I returned to pick the car up, they had not done the emission test.  This told me what my dad told me was right; it did not require the emission test after all.  When I asked the people at Cummings about that, they responded the other shops were ignorant of this fact.  More joy.

The car originally had the inspection sticker saying it passed the emission test.  This probably confused many.  Why did it have that sticker in the first place?  Most likely because whomever inspected the car last year was also ignorant.  That or else my dad was curious about my car passing the emission test and had it inspected for that just for the heck of it.  Who knows.

Well... I finally have my car inspected.  At least I won't have to worry about this chaotic mess for another year...  And someone at work was used to taking her car in for an inspection and walking out nor more than half an hour later.  At least we had a good laugh.