The Amazing Race

This is our one weakness when it comes to reality shows. It concluded the other night, with the final three groups working their way through, my home town, Montreal. One conclusion that I came to is that my sister, Stef, is not exagerating when she says that the taxi drivers there are morons. All the groups has to go to the underground city to find one clue, then to McGill Arena (at the MacDonald Campus) or the Morgan Arboretum (incidentally, I used to run there) to do one of two skill testing events, then to the American pavillion of Expo '67 for another clue, before doing some trapeze and then searching all of the seats at the Big Owe for their departure time.

The Weavers got the absolute most unknowledgable driver ever. He got them downtown and then went to the wrong arena (a somewhat understandable mistake). But it seemed like he didn't even know that McGill had two campuses. He had to call for directions to the Expo '67 site and wasn't even sure if he was dropping them off at the right spot. Somehow, this team made it first to the "Sttaaadey Oolympickay", but got all huffy and almost gave up when they couldn't find the departure time.

So is there a test these drivers have to take? If so, shouldn't they have to pass it?

As a note, it's worth mentioning that I picked the winning team, the Linz Family, on the very first show. It was four siblings, one girls and three guys. They were young, fast, strong and had a lot of fun. They had no really weak member. We Titcombes would fit that mold very nicely. Throw in our experience travelling and Stef's insane ability at languages and I'm sure we would have been right there in the end.

The coolest thing is what these four did with the million dollars they won. They are four of seven siblings. So they gave their parents half the money and split the other half evenly between all seven. That's doing it for the family.