[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] The Amazing Race 13, Episode 11

[Edward Hasbrouck]

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001587.html

Complete index of columns on all seasons of "The Amazing Race":
http://hasbrouck.org/amazingrace

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Moscow (Russia) - Portland, OR (USA) - Newberg, OR (USA) - Cascade Locks, 
OR (USA) - Portland, OR (USA)

As is often the case with a real-life trip around the world, the final 
episode of "The Amazing Race 13" was a bit of a let-down. The scenery on a 
sunny summer day in the Columbia River Gorge was as dramatically beautiful 
as anywhere the racers had been, but it's the cultural differences, and 
the knowledge that at any moment something completely unexpected might 
appear, that gives travel abroad its extra thrill. It's a relief to be 
able to relax your alertness when you get back to your own country, and 
(think you) know what to expect, but there can also be a subtle emotional 
downside to the loss of that extra edge of low-level but long-sustained 
heightened awareness brought on by travel in strange-seeming lands. Even 
travellers who don't think of themselves as "adrenaline junkies" and 
haven't engaged in anything as physical stressful as the challenges faced 
by the cast of "The Amazing Race" can still find it hard, when they come 
home, to come down from their addiction to world travel's continuous rush 
of the exotic and unpredictable. Perhaps that addiction to travel -- the 
one that so often brings people home already planning their next trip 
around the world -- really does have a physical/psychopharmalogical 
component.

At the same time, following an extended stay abroad with travel in your 
home country, before you actually settle back in at home, can be a good 
way to minimize "re-entry shock" and an excellent way to learn more from 
your trip. After my latest year-long trip around the world, I spent 
another six weeks on a road trip across North America and back. I had been 
hesitant to do so much more driving, especially after almost 10,000 km in 
Australia. But it was a deeply rewarding part of our world journey, 
reinforcing what I've called the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle of 
travel": You can't travel without changing both the places you visit and 
yourself. When you come back, what looks different than it did before you 
left? Which of those things look different because they have changed while 
you were abroad, and which look different because your perspective has 
been changed by your trip? And what do you understand about your homeland, 
that you didn't notice or that didn't make sense before, now that you can 
interpret it in the context of things you've seen in other countries? 
Reflections on these questions filled our hours on highways and byways of 
the USA and Canada, and continue even months after our homecoming.

The most interesting task for the racers involved an array of 150 photos 
of sites that they had visited in the course of their month-long trip 
around the world, which they had to identify from memory. This being "The 
Amazing Race", the photographs were in individual "clue boxes" spread out 
on a grassy lawn on Thunder Island upstream from Portland, which the 
racers reached by a zip-line ride from the deck of the Bridge of the Gods.

Sorting photos and trying to match them with memories, places, and dates 
is actually a typical task for the end of a trip. For the racers, it was 
made more difficult by the fact that these were someone else's photos, not 
ones they had taken themselves, and thus ones that wouldn't necessary 
match the point of view of any of their own photographic memories. Have 
you ever been sent a bunch of photos taken by a travelling companion, or 
someone you met on an excursion, and puzzled at the mental transformations 
needed to map them to the images in your mind? ("Oh, they must have been 
looking at that from the other side.")

The photos the racers had to identify were also limited, of course, to the 
parts of the race that we, the television audience, had been shown. That's 
typical in real life, too: Such is the power of the image that, in 
hindsight, our memories come to be shaped by which moments we "captured" 
on film or digital media. 

What shows up on TV from the race, however, like what shows up in my 
snapshots from my trip around the world, is far from a random or 
representative sampling. For a variety of reasons, there were many places 
and types of situations where I took no pictures at all: out of fear of 
crime in some places, out of fear (for myself or others) of the secret 
police in others, or out of a desire not to be instantly identified as a 
tourist. Since all tourists are expected to have cameras, and to be using 
them, a person who doesn't have a camera is frequently assumed, on that 
basis alone, to be something else -- an expat, perhaps, if not a local.

During the parts of the racers' trips that that are shown on TV, they have 
very few chances to talk with anyone other than their partners, or about 
anything other than, "How do I get to ...?" Most of their opportunities 
for personal interaction are with fellow guests at the "pit stop" hotels 
and resorts, in airports and waiting rooms, and on planes and long-
distance trains and buses. These are the parts that aren't filmed at all, 
or that are deemed unlikely to interest TV viewers and shown only in the 
briefest snippets. But who's to say whether these are interludes between 
episodes of the "real" race, or whether the televised challenges (or the 
iconic sights and sites that ordinary travellers make sure they photograph 
to prove that they've "been there") are merely interruptions in the 
sequence of meetings with real-life people and places encountered and 
experienced along the way. If we had no photos to refresh our 
recollection, are the things we took pictures of really the things we 
would remember best, or that we think of as having been the most 
important? I tend to doubt it.

If you need another travel fix, now that this season of "reality" 
television is over, tune in on Sunday, 15 February 2009, for the start of 
"The Amazing Race 14". Or get a copy of "The Practical Nomad: How to 
Travel Around the World" and do it yourself!

Bon voyage!

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I don't expect that I'll be sending out this e-mail newsletter until "The 
Amazing Race" resumes.  In the meantime, look for more news in my blog:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog



----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(4th edition 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
<http://www.practicalnomad.com>

Around-the-World and multi-stop international air tickets:
<http://hasbrouck.org/tickets/>