As a rule I don’t watch reality shows. However, I do enjoy catching The Amazing Race on Sunday nights right after 60 Minutes. (OK, not having to change the channel may factor into this since I’m too lazy to change it.)
This past Sunday night’s TAR episode introduced the competitors for this season and featured two parent-child teams – a father-son and a mother-son team. As they were being introduced I said to Pam “That’s what I’m going to do, get one of my kids and go on this show.” Pam laughed out loud and even punctuated it with a “Yeah right .” I have to admit that her reaction kind of hurt my feelings as I asked her in return “What do you mean?” To which she said “Like you could do that.” Appropriately humbled, I stewed a little as we watched the rest of the show.
Therefore, in this iteration of TAR, I’m rooting for Dave (59 years old) and his son Connor just to prove to my wife and the world that us old guys can too do this and succeed at it. Turns out that Dave and Connor are also cancer survivors (click here for story.)
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, here’s a sample look at some of the tasks that competing teams have to undertake. Note that not all of the tasks involve physical prowess. As you’ll see in this example, being a little older and a slower may have actually helped some, since the younger teams were in a such a hurry to move their coconuts without checking to see that they had loaded all of them. Life lesson learned – never move out with your cart until you are sure that you have loaded all of your coconuts.