by Victor Jih

Winner of The Amazing Race Season 14

Despite Tiffany and Maria’s plea “to please leave Dubai,” this week’s adventures continue in Dubai on The Amazing Race.  The place really seems like a rich person’s Vegas and the city has so much to offer—so no complaints from me.  Seven teams leave the Souk Madinat Jumeirah and head to the Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club with a locked briefcase.  Once they arrive, the ROADBLOCK requires one team member to row an inflatable dingy across rough currents to a yacht floating off in the distance.  Once they make it, the sheiks on the yacht, in a gesture of traditional hospitality, give the racers a Rolex watch.  The time frozen on the watch is also the 3 digit combination to the locked briefcase, which contains a clue directing them to Abra Station in the Souq quarter. 

The DETOUR is a choice between GOLD (requiring math skills to weigh US $500,000 worth of gold) and GLASS (requiring an attention to detail to assemble twelve glass hookahs in the searing Dubai heat).  The leg is not over, as the ROUTE INFO directs teams to the Atlantis Aquaventure, down the “Leap of Faith” water slide through shark-infested waters, and to the PIT STOP.  Meghan & Cheyne continue their dominant ways with their third first place finish!  In a particularly gut-wrenching moment, Mika is unable to overcome her fear of water and of heights, Team Globetrotter is able to pass them, pushing Mika & Canaan to elimination. 

Returning to the “ten thoughts” format, I offer nine quick random thoughts and one bigger thought for the week.
 
1.  Gary and Matt have an amazing relationship.  I love their comment at the very start that “this is the LONGEST we’ve ever been together in our lives” and the image of Gary helping Matt dye his hair the night before.  It’s particularly touching since Gary started the race tearing up at missed opportunities to spend with his son.  I don’t think many family members can enjoy the stressful ride of the Amazing Race like these two are.  I know from experience being tethered to my sister (15-feet rule) for nearly a month how challenging this can be.  While we had a strong relationship, we had our fights and we were more than happy to have some alone time at the end of the journey.
 
2.  Perfectionists and professional rowers must have cringed at the different and unconventional ways teams handle the inflatable dinghy.  The runner-up prize goes to Team Globetrotter and Dan McMillen who decide the seated backstroke is the best way to handle the rough waters.  First place prize goes to Gary who goes with his strength and decides to “canoe” his way across the water.  In terms of the real rowers, Tiffany really held her own against a field of athletic guys.
 
3.  The team everyone else wants eliminated seems to be Team Globetrotter.  Sam and Dan definitely want that team eliminated, identifying them as their number one athletic threat.  It’s unusual that the teams want Team Globetrotter gone, since Meghan & Cheyne seem to be winning every leg and are clearly the biggest threat.  While Team Globetrotter’s athleticism is certainly part of it, the “do it ourselves” way of running the race is probably a large part of it.  You can see the downside of that approach early in this leg, as every team figures out the combination lock quickly and Nate struggles.  (Sometimes your brain thinks one way and it is near impossible to analyze it a different way.)  No team wants to help Team Globetrotter, and every team smells blood in the water.
 
4.  I can’t believe Sam and Dan thought to bring a calculator!  (Convenient shout-out to Walmart.)  Tammy and I were so worried about bringing too much that the last thing we would have done was bring a calculator.  It turns out Sam and Dan are prophets as the calculator proves handy at the GOLD DETOUR.  Teams have brought some crazy things on the race, but never a calculator I’m sure.  (The craziest thing we brought were piles and piles of Cliff Bars.)
 
5.  The detour choice this week was difficult, though ultimately I think GOLD was definitely the way to go.  It was admirable to watch Brian try to conquer the math problem in long-hand.  The funny thing is I probably would have done the same thing.  It turns out the only way to solve the problem (given the constantly changing exchange rate) is to use a calculator.  Brian and Ericka assumed (as a lot of teams would have) that calculators were not permitted, even though nothing in the instructions said so.  Sam and Dan were prophetic, so they had a calculator.  But Team Globetrotter simply asked the store clerk for a calculator.  Easy.  I definitely would not have had the presence of mind to ask for one, though.  This is another instance of assuming a task has to be accomplished a certain way, when it doesn’t.
 
6.  This leg must have been Mika’s worst nightmare.  In prior legs, Mika already had to overcome her fear of heights to take the elevator up the Burj Dubai.  Mika already had to overcome her fear of water as she has traveled in little boat after little boat.  To ratchet things up, this leg forced Mika to conquer both fears simultaneously with a six-story tall “leap of faith” into shark-infested waters.  This proved too much.  It was painful to watch.  Canaan felt powerless as he could not talk Mika into overcoming her fear.  And Mika was obviously pained as she knew she could not avoid letting Canaan down.  Ultimately Mika could not take the “leap of faith” and had to take the walk of shame back down the steps to an awaiting Canaan.  Fear is irrational, but every racer has to know by now that WATER and HEIGHTS will always be a part of the race.
 
7.  Facing elimination, Team Globetrotter take advantage of Mika’s fear.  After Team Globetrotter ratchets up the anxiety, Mika is unable to complete the task and is forced to let Team Globetrotter pass.  Team Globetrotter defends this tactic as the only chance they had to stay in the race.  Canaan calls them out for shady behavior.  If it were me, I probably would not have taken advantage of Mika’s fear.  The truth is, Mika’s phobia was either going to prevent her from letting go or not.  Any intervention by a third-party is unnecessary and gratuitous.  Team Globetrotter’s comments come across a bit like “kicking a dead horse” or “beating someone up while they are down.”  It does raise the question of whether there is any line a team should not cross for the sake of competing.  Different teams will draw that line differently.
 
8.  Did anyone else notice that the Discover card advertisement did not match this week’s episode?  Someone messed up, because the teams do not travel to Groningen Netherlands until next week!
 
9.  So who’s left?  Meghan & Cheyne, Maria & Tiffany, Team Globetrotter, Gary & Matt, Brian & Ericka, and Sam & Dan.  Of these six teams, three teams tend to do their own thing (Meghan & Cheyne, Team Globetrotter, and Gary & Matt).  Three teams tend to work together (Sam & Dan and Maria & Tiffany have their alliance, whereas Brian & Ericka work with others circumstantially as karma requires).  Meghan & Cheyne, given their track record, have to be odds-on favorites to make it to the end.  I think the most vulnerable teams are the isolated ones—so my guess is either Team Globetrotter or Gary & Matt have to be careful as the race continues in the Netherlands.
 
10.  And now the big thought of the week:  RELIGION and the RACE.  This is Mika & Canaan’s elimination week, so I thought it was appropriate to spend some time thinking about that team.  They were presented to the viewers as the “religious” team from Tennessee who sing.  Their religion is obviously important to them.  In the past, “religious” teams have gone one of two routes—those who try to invoke God to help them win the race and those who give thanks to God regardless of how they do on the race.  Religion is a challenging issue, since many people take their faith seriously and yet it is very easy to end up caricaturizing religion.  I was slightly worried at the start of the race that the “religious” pair would be known ONLY for their “vow of sexual purity,” which I have to imagine is but a small slice of what religion means for them.  But I was very happy that we were able to see a much more robust and complete picture of what their faith means to them and how they relate to each other.  Despite obvious disappointment with how Mika failed to overcome her fear, Canaan was remarkably at peace and had the line of the episode—explaining how there is “freedom in forgiveness.”  It did not appear like a canned line.  It did not feel like Canaan was simply saying the right thing for the cameras.  You literally could see Canaan’s peace as he spoke the words.

I will say something controversial though.  It was surprising to me that Mika & Canaan did not pray when it was obvious Canaan’s pleas would not enable Mika to overcome her fears.  Now, I don’t know if they prayed or not, since only they know what was shown on television.  But it did make me think about the issue of what a team does or does not want to share on television in terms of their personal faith.  Here’s a story about our season that I don’t think even the race producers/designers/other teams knew.  My mother made my sister and me promise that we would pray every day while we were on the race.  We made a token effort to do so before the first and second legs.  On the third leg, though, we failed to do so.  There was no particular reason; we simply did not.  Well, the third leg was Romania where we had literally the worst possible leg imaginable.  Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.  Our plane had a malfunction and was sent back.  Our taxicab driver took us to the wrong place.  I got lost for hours in the mountains of Transylvania.  But for Brad & Victoria’s bigger mistake (divine oversight?), we went as low as we could go without being eliminated. 

Needless to say, we prayed every leg after that.  We certainly didn’t pray for victory.  But we always prayed for three things:  for our mother (since we knew she was probably freaking out about our safety every day we were gone and out of contact); for our relationship (that we would be edifying and not destructive); and for thanks (that our journey was continuing).  That said, we made the decision from the very beginning not to pray on camera partly because we did not want to have to think about how our faith or lack of faith in any given instance would end up being portrayed.  I also thought it would be way too generous for anyone to think of us as the “praying” team.  I wish I could say winning the race was part of some divine plan to strengthen our faith and prayer life, but I don’t think I can honestly say that.  The journey continues on that front.  Anyway, I want to be clear I’m not really saying anything about Mika & Canaan since all we see is a small slice of what happened.  I also certainly don’t pretend to know what is the right way to approach matters of faith on the race.   There are others much wiser than me.  For some reason, though, this leg in Dubai made me think about religion and how it affects the Amazing Race.  You didn’t see that one coming did you?
 
Until next week..

The Amazing Race airs Sundays at 8pm ET on CBS.

(Image courtesy of CBS)

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