TV: Amazing Race 10 - Episode 5

I cannot remember the last time a team could not get seats on a plane and having that put them into last place for the whole leg. The bad news is that is what happened to the Coal Miners. The good news is it was the first non-elimination leg. They must now face the interesting challenge of keeping their possessions and money, but having to go from last to first and/or possibly facing a 30 minute penalty or something like that.

Most of the tense and funny moments happened on the way to the airport in Chennai. Peter acted a little slimy trying to form an alliance with the other teams and was basically rebuffed by everyone. The Chos played a mind-game on the other teams by pulling out a fake phone and pretending to make reservations. It looked like the joke would be played on them when Peter found someone willing to lend him a phone so he could make real reservations. Then things looked even worse for the Chos when the first travel agency they went to had moved. Somehow through that mess they ended up finding the earliest flight to Chennai while the Triathletes and the Barbies were booked on a much later flight. I thought that might be "bad karma" due to Peter making fun of the Coal Miners, but the tables turned once again when those last two teams were able to get an earlier connecting flight from wherever they stopped along the way. This let them finish this episode #1 and #2 despite not helping each other.

I've never been to Chennai, India. I just had one day stay in Mumbai (Bombay) followed by two weeks in Bangalore. There are subtle differences between all those cities, but one thing they definitely had in common was crazy traffic and associated pollution. I had fun riding in an auto rickshaw, while cars, trucks, motorbikes carrying whole families swarmed around me with centimeters to spare creating about five or six lanes of traffic where there should have only been two. I did wish I could cover my nose and mouth with a handkerchief though.

Yes, at least in some parts of the cities I visited, a fairly skinny cow would pop out of nowhere and wander across the street. They are just like squirrels in the U.S. except much bigger and slower.

It would be interesting to find out what they really teach in traffic school for a license. It seemed like some teams were getting a lot of help driving from their instructors. One beauty queen was only half joking when she said, "I'm so excited she didn't die." after her partner finished the driving lesson. I was surprised the show producers allowed the teams to take that sort of risk (which I almost considered more dangerous than handling the crocodiles). One good thing about the heavy traffic is that cars are generally moving so slow that an accident will likely not hurt you if you're in a car. I don't know if that applies to the pedestrians or bikers though. Apparently traffic fatalities are a leading cause of death of young people in some of these emerging countries.

I wonder how many different T-shirts the Chos squeezed into their backpacks.

Next week, the teams get to play with some contraption that makes a camel run down a sandy race track. I want to tune in just to see what that is all about.

In other semi-related news, my local PBS-HD station just rebroadcast the Dave Matthews Band performing at Red Rocks, where last Amazing Race started and ended. I guess they had to splice together songs from concerts that took place over a whole weekend. Otherwise, I'm not sure they would have been able to find more than 4 live songs short enough to fit into just one hour.