The Amazing Race

I'm a big fan of the reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Before I had Michael I used to have a vague plan to try out for the show someday. I used to mentally interview potential partners and decide who I'd have the greatest chance of success with. It seems to me like the biggest problem teams have is when they start to bicker, so I thought I could do the race with one of my friends because we don't bicker like that. Kristi and I would do great. She's very competitive so I know we'd always be giving 110%. She's not a chicken like me so if there was any sky diving or tight rope walking she'd be able to take care of that part of the challenges. Kristi has always told people that I'm very good with directions so we would probably be able to divide up navigation responsibilities without too much second guessing going on. The problem is, I've never been sure that her husband would let her do the race with me when the two of them would probably make an even better team. My friend Tracey and I would have a great time. Except I think we'd get distracted with how much fun we were having and forget to focus on the race. And I have an uneasy feeling that whenever we came to a yucky food challenge she'd make me do it.

When they had the family teams of four I thought my cousin Kris, her husband Tom, my friend Craig and I would make an excellent team. Kris and I could be in charge of giving directions, Tom is willing to eat anything--the grosser the better--and Craig is very strong and willing to do anything, no matter how dangerous. Unfortunately they haven't had a family show since I came up with that dream team. My sister said that her husband Joel and I would make a great team. He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, so while I'd be shaking in my boots over any height challenge, he'd be happy to do those. He already likes a lot of unusual foods, so it would probably be hard to come up with a tough food challenge for him. He travels all the time and has an amazing talent for getting people at airports to help him out. And he's very smart. I think the piece of the puzzle my sister forgot, though, is that he doesn't always listen to my opinion and I'm pretty opinionated. So there might be some bickering on that team.

The current season they have a father-daughter team. They haven't been getting along great and you can tell that the dad is really working on not yelling at his daughter so much. Which is nice that he's working on it, but very sad that he needs to. Every time I see it I think, man--my dad would never talk to me like that. He would never get so caught up in a game that he'd forget that I was his daughter. He'd never belittle me when I made a mistake. He'd never shift the blame for his mistake onto me so he didn't have to admit fault. And that's when I realized that we'd be the perfect team. We don't argue, we appreciate each other's strengths (although I have to admit in a race like that he has the majority of the strengths), we could probably reach some compromise when it came to yucky food challenges, and we would have a great time travelling around the world. So if the show ever calls up and offers to fly Michael and his grandma to every pit stop so we don't miss them too much, I'm all set to win the million dollars.