Actually, what killed them is one of the two* deadly AM sins:
They couldn’t read a map. On at least two legs of the race I noticed, Mrs Black threw up her hands and said “I can’t find < location > on the map. Let’s just drive around.”
This is instant doom. You cannot recover from bad map-reading skillz. I still liked 'em though.
Fenris
*The other is “Me and my team-mate are having relationship problems, we’ll use The Amazing Race as a substitute for therapy” (or “I have something to prove to my dad/mom/husband/partner, I’ll use TAR as a substitute for therapy”.)
I totally agree with this! I cannot believe how many contestants can’t drive a stick. I mean, you’re going on a game show where you know you’ll be driving at least some of the time…and you don’t go learn how to drive a stick? I don’t understand that.
I hate when one person does all the driving. I think they should make a new rule, like the Chip & Kim Memorial Roadblock Rule. The teams need to take turns driving, maybe switching off on each leg. If one doesn’t know how to drive a stick, learn. And fast.
Incidentally, these Deadly Sins made me think of one of the Deadly Sins of Survivor: Not knowing how to swim.
I kind of agree, but some people are better navigators. Let me use me and my husband as an example: If we went on the Race, he would always be the Designated Driver, because (1) he can drive stick, and (2) he can’t read a map to save his life. Seriously. If the map had only one road on it (say, Interstate 80) and the clue said drive from Point A to Point B along that one read (say, from Tannersville, Pa. to Danville, Pa., along I-80W), we’d still get lost if he was the navigator. Completely lost. Like, we’d-end-up-in-Miami lost. And while people getting lost can be funny, it isn’t when it happens to us. I have a big mouth and I cuss a really lot when I get mad.
Well, what about Charla? She can drive, but she does need to adapt a car somewhat to do it. This is fine for everyday life, but the Race producers wouldn’t make any changes at all to accomodate her (which is cool, since she wouldn’t really need anything like as many changes as people might think) and that would include, say, pedal extensions on cars. So she was unable to drive on the Race through no fault of her own. An “everybody must drive” rule would exclude anybody who needs any sort of car adaptation from the Race completely.
You’re missing the point: they WANT their contestants to screw up in funny ways and provide lots of drama from their fears.
So if you want to be selected:
Reason you want to be on this show: My friends keep teasing me about how often I get lost, I want to prove them wrong. Also, I’ve never been outside my home county so I want to see the world.
Fears: heights, dark places, confined places, flying.
Handicaps: cannot eat more than a few bites of food at a time, don’t know how to drive.
Languages spoken. English. Ummmm. Do C++ and Java count?
Life’s ambition: hair model for shampoo commercials
Relationship with other: He’s my ex-husband who cheated on me with my sister so I married his son in revenge, but now we’re trying to make a go of it again.
Detour: Flotillas or Chinchillas. In “Flotillas,” teams must play shuffleboard on the Lido deck of a luxury cruise ship docked in the port of [insert tropical cruise ship destination here] until they win three games against a team of competitive suffleboard players. It may take the teams a long time to find the ship, but the competitive shuffleboard players are each 86 years old and half-blind, and there will be a lot of frosty drinks with rum and paper umbrellas served. In “Chinchillas,” teams must select one of the animals from the Vanilla Gorilla Chinchilla Ranch and carry it with them for the rest of the race. It will be easy to find the farm, but the animals are so cute that it will hard to choose just one, and petting their soft fur for the remainder of the race might prove to be a distraction later.
Hey, I’m just working with the material y’all give me. “Boats and furry animals.” Just imagine Phil describing that Detour, saying “flotill-er” and “chinchill-er” as he is wont to do. He’s a damn fine looking man, that Phil … maybe I will name my chinchiller after him.
