My quest for a shot at "The Amazing Race"

Views: 295
Added: Tue Nov 27th 10:48am
Posted in: Television

• » print
• » report
• » email

CAUTION: GB MEMBER VIDEO AHEAD...KEEP READING ! ! !

What do you get when you mix the following elements: An “amazing” sense of adventure, a 13 page application form, a video camera and my sister, whom I’ve known for 36 years?
It’s quite simple. You get a bona fide entry package into one of arguably the best “reality shows” on television…“The Amazing Race.”

As this prime time Emmy award winning program searches for whom it will choose to be on the show for season 13, my sister and I contemplate what it would be like to actually go through this application process. Actually, every season of the show that preceded this one typically revolved around her asking me when were WE going to apply. And every season prior to this one, I would come up with yet another excuse as to why we couldn’t or why we shouldn’t. Guess what??? I ran out of excuses.

So about a week and a half ago, my wife, Debbie, my sister, Debra (try keeping this straight), and I decided that we were going to shoot our 3 minute entry video to get into the race. But even before that, we had much to do. There was still the 13 page blank application sitting on my desk that I had been putting off and putting off. And there was something else I was missing. What else does one need to travel around the world? You guessed it…a passport.

The race was on.

Facing today, November 27th, 2007 as the absolute deadline for the entire application, I realized back on November 15th that if I was actually going to do this (and not let my baby sister down) I was going to have to act fast.

Leg one. The passport.

On that fateful day (the 15th), I hopped in my car and headed down to the clerk of the courts. The post office was too busy and I needed an appointment to see someone anyway. Ah, but the clerk of the court accepted walk-ins for passport applications. No problem, I walked in with all the requirements. I had my photo ID, my birth certificate and my passport application that I had already filled out. All was good until the clerk looked at me and said, “This is not your birth certificate.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “this is the certificate the hospital gives you when you are born, we need the actual BIRTH CERTIFICATE that is on file with the county in your birth state.”

A few months ago, I thought I had lost the hospital certificate which I thought WAS my birth certificate, which of course I’ve been carrying around my whole life thinking that this proves I exist. Realizing that I indeed lost my fancy looking hospital certificate, complete with my baby footprints on the back, I called the county that I was born in back in New Jersey and asked for the "official" birth certificate…you know…the one with the embossed seal. WHATEVER! But, it’s a good thing I did that because now I can prove that I DO exist. Needless to say, I eventually did find my fancy looking hospital certificate.

“Damn!” I thought to myself. I hopped in the car and raced home. There I turned the house upside down until I found the OFFICIAL birth certificate. I jumped in the car and raced back to the clerk just in time. Again, there was no wait. “YES. This is it,” she said. Whew! She processed my paperwork and off it went. Leg one of my race to The Amazing Race was complete.

Leg two. The application form…the 13 PAGE APPLICATION FORM. Oh boy.

It started off quite easy. First name. Last name. Address. Phone Number. Date of birth. No problem. Then it got interesting. Describe your perfect day. What was the most exciting moment of your life? What are your phobias? How do you blow off steam? What is your favorite topic of conversation at a dinner party? What topics are off limits? So I put some thought into my answers and filled out those as well.

Now I had to come up with some answers about my sister, my teammate. She had to do the same about me. These questions truly required some thought. What do you hope to gain from participating in The Amazing Race with your partner (besides winning)? What communications issues do you have with your partner that you would want to address while on the Race? What is the biggest disappointment you have experienced from your teammate? How did you resolve it? What famous person reminds you of yourself? What famous person reminds you of your teammate? What is your biggest pet peeve about your partner? You can see for yourself that if you ever decided to do this on your own, you would have to put a lot of thought into your answers. Just remember, the producers are always looking for a great story.

Leg three. The crème de la crème. The video.

I’ve worked in video production for the last 17 years of my life. My wife has been in the industry for slightly longer. So the pressure was on. What are we going to do to blow their minds? How are we going to show that we make a great team AND we’re big fans of the show all at the same time? Debbie, my wife, came up with the brilliant yet obvious idea of playing out a similar scenario as to what you would see on the show. After realizing that you spend more time watching teams interact with each other while they are traveling by car from pit stop to pit stop, we said that THIS was the way we were going to sell ourselves. The scenario was simple. We were going to race from my sister’s house in Palm Coast, FL to the post office to drop off our application package. The only problem was that the post office was only 2 miles away. We knew that it was going to take some time to get used to being on camera so we decided to shoot it a couple of times. It was just like shooting a movie. We did that race to the post office 3 times before we stopped shooting. I was going to pull the best stuff out in post production and then we would have our entry video.

If you are curious as to how it turned out, just click on the box to the right also known in my media folder as “My Amazing Race Entry”.

As you can see, we had a blast doing this. I raced to the post office on the 20th, had an overnight delivery to El Segundo, California for the 21st and managed to have everything done 6 days ahead of the deadline.

Now it’s just time to wait and see.

Of course I hope that this is not the end of my Amazing Race adventures with my sister, and if it isn’t, I will be blogging more about this subject EXCLUSIVELY on GrowingBolder.com.

My goal is to be able to take YOU with me on my journey…my quest…my goal from becoming just another reality show applicant to receiving a check with my teammate for $1 million. If that doesn’t exemplify growing bolder, I don’t know what does.

Stay tuned…