Amazing Race 8, Episode 9 (and news on ICANN and ".travel")

This column with links:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000952.html


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ICANN admits it overruled its own evaluators', who
agreed with me and recommended against giving the
".travel" Internet domain name to the travel
industry, because the industry doesn't represent
travellers:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000938.html

======================

ICANN agrees to act on my complaint that I was denied
accesss to meetings, documents, and even their press
conferences concerning "travel, and to allow the first
independent review ever of its procedures (but wants
US$3000 from me first as the price of corporate
"justice"):

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000945.html

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Why ICANN's lack of transparency and oversight, and
the capture of "travel" for industry-only use, matter
to you:

http://hasbrouck.org/icann/index.html#why

======================

The Amazing Race 8 (Family Edition), Episode 9

[Yes, I know that some people count the "legs" of the
race differently, but I've used the same methodology
since the first season for counting the episodes.]

Salt Lake City, UT (USA) - Park City, UT (USA) - Heber
City, UT (USA) - Bonneville Salt Flats, UT (USA) -
Garden City, UT (USA) - Big Pine, WY (USA) -
Yellowstone National Park, WY (USA) - Dubois, WY (USA)
- Cody, WY (USA) - Red Lodge, MT (USA) - Absorokee, MT
(USA)

Throughout this season of "The Amazing Race", loyal
viewers of previous seasons have been complaining that
there's been less, this time around, of what makes
world travel really attractive and rewarding.
Certainly those complaints continued throughout the
two-week leg of the race that concluded tonight in
Montana.

Why?

It's not, I think, because they've stayed in North and
Central America. There's plenty for travellers to see
and do in the USA -- arguably the world's most diverse
sovereign nation in physical geography (rivalled only
by China) if not culture. There's a world of
difference just across the border in Mexico. And
Canada, as I was reminded during my trip to Vancouver
last week, is pleasantly different from the USA,
albeit in sometimes less conspicuous ways.

Nor is it just because they've spent so much time in
motor vehicles, although that did have something to do
with it. The latest episode of the race featured
product placements for a remarkable range of vehicles,
from house trailers and trucks towing them to vans
(chauffeur driven in what appeared to be a reenactment
of a scene from an "SUV" advertisement, or perhaps the
filming of a future ad that will play on the
connection to the race), a car (a prize for the winner
of the episode), and ... golf carts (brand name
identified). And a car or truck is remarkably
effective at caging you in as a tourist, and caging
out the world through which you pass. But a road trip
-- whether in the USA, Canada, Argentina, South
Africa, Australia, or any other automotive society --
can, if you make an effort to get out of your vehicle
more often, be a great way to explore a country.

And it wasn't even a lack of interesting challenges in
this episode, which included laying railroad track
(more complicated than most people who haven't seen it
don't realize) last week, and building tepees this
week.

The first time "The Amazing Race" had a tepee-building
challenge was during The Amazing Race 5 in Alberta,
Canada. It got edited out of the broadcast, as has
happened to other challenges from time to time -- the
DVD of the first season includes bonus footage of an
ostrich egg eating challenge that got left on the
cutting-room floor. That left the eyewitness photos
and descriptions on my blog, and a few less detailed
photos on the CBS Web site, as the only record of the
tepee building:

http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000376.html

But I guess the producers really liked it, since they
set the tepee challenge up exactly the same way again
-- except that this time they drove the racers out
into the middle of a private ranch to build their
tepees out of public view, instead of having them do
it in the parking lot of a public park.

No, the real reason I think this season is so
(relatively) uninteresting is that there has been so
much less interaction between the racers and local
people. And that's primarily because they are
travelling in larger groups than in the previous
seasons: teams of four (each accompanied by a
photographer and a sound technician) instead of two.

The larger the group with which you travel, the more
your conversations and attention are focused on your
travelling companion(s), and the less on the people
and places along the way.

And large groups just aren't as approachable as solo
travellers. When six people get out of a van, they
form a closed-seeming group of their own no matter how
friendly they are, and most people will tend to "leave
them to themselves" in a way that they wouldn't a solo
traveller or a couple. Solo travellers are immersed
in, and experience, the places they visit in a
fundamentally different and deeper way than is ever
possible for group travellers. (Travelling with a
companion has its own, different advantages, such as
getting the benefit of your companion's different
perspective and insights into the new things that you
are both trying to understand.)

Being in a larger group also slows the racers down, as
was evident in this episode. As my usual travelling
companion, a statistics teacher by profession, puts
it, "The amount of time its takes to get out the door
together increases exponentially with the number of
people."

So if you didn't like this season of the race, let it
be a lesson in the drawbacks of group travel compared
to travel on your own or with fewer companions.

Fortunately (in the opinion of most viewers) this
season of four-person teams is almost over, with the
two-hour finale next week. The Amazing Race 9 is
already being filmed, if (unconfirmed) reports of
spottings posted in this blog and elsewhere are to be
believed, and is back to teams of two. Keep your eyes
out for the flags and racers!


----------------
Edward Hasbrouck

http://hasbrouck.org

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(3rd edition, 2004)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
http://www.practicalnomad.com