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holdenseven
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ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« on: Aug 22^nd, 2004, 10:12am »

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Just a little something for us fanatics:

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/travel/22bpamaze.html?n=null

August 22, 2004
ESSAY
Around the World in 30 Days
By ZACHARY G. BEHR

ABOUT a year and a half ago, my college friend Flo Pesenti and I finished first in the CBS-TV reality show "The Amazing Race." The show follows teams of two as they race around the world for a million-dollar prize. During the race, we traveled 41,000 miles and visited 13 countries in 30 days.

The show appears to have tapped into a vast national sense of wanderlust: it recently began its fifth season, with ratings among the top 10 prime-time shows, and has already outrun its reality-genre competitors to an Emmy award.

Any trip that compresses so many airline flights, mad-dash cab rides and rocky train trips into so short a time would seem to be a crash course on how to deal with the vicissitudes of modern travel. For Flo and me, that's exactly what it turned out to be.

Flo and I had a large degree of spontaneity forced on us by the nature of the race, but even on a well-researched trip, it doesn't hurt to assume everything you think you know is wrong. That wasn't hard, since we usually didn't know much about our next destination.

Besides, we couldn't possibly carry all the necessary guides, even if we knew in advance where we were headed. Instead, we came up with a topographical solution: When in a new city without a clue where to go, start walking uphill. When you feel you have reached the highest point around, usually there will be a church or mosque or some other site with an equally impressive view of the surrounding area. From this vantage point, you can usually plot out the rest of your day.

Staying healthy is crucial to any vacation, but with us it was especially so. Besides the typical bottled-water precautions (I was usually lugging a gallon of it in my backpack), we learned to let the locals be our guide when it came to cooked food. Near the finish line, on a train in Vietnam, a wonderful smelling cart full of chicken skewers and noodles passed by, and the Vietnamese passengers immediately flocked to it for a helping of one of their traditional dishes.

While our competitors passed up such delicacies, for fear of stomach troubles, I dug in. Luckily, there were no gastric consequences to the delicious, cheap fare. I now make it a point to follow the local crowd when hungry in a foreign land, on the theory that where throngs gather, there is good, clean food.

Airports were the scenes of the most stressful moments of the race, since we never found out what our destination was until we began each leg of the race. On one segment, we had to jet from Casablanca to Munich, and a few days later made the leap from Zurich to Kuala Lumpur, and most of the time we had no idea how to map out a trip based solely on speed. This led to the next epiphany: the knowledgeable airline ticket agent.

Initially, it didn't seem to make sense, given the archaic, mouseless computers many agents were using, but they helped us to an unfathomable degree. Naturally, they had the most up-to-date information on flights, delays and weather conditions, but they also seemed invariably to know the airport layout in our destination city.

When we explained that we were racing around the world, ticket agents would always give us their full attention and - the best part - crucial information on all the other airlines' flights as well. And agents can work incredibly quickly under absurd amounts of pressure, although few may be as agile as the Mexicana ticket agent in Cancún who booked our seats to London in 10 minutes while telling us the precise departure, arrival and layover times of every other flight going from Mexico to England that day.

In the air, flight crews become another information source if you befriend them, as we took pains to do. They were particularly helpful for driving directions to sites off the beaten path, which the TV show's producers seemed to take a twisted delight in sending us to. On our way back to the United States, we had to find "The Big Kahuna" on a rocky bluff somewhere on Oahu, and the attendants helped us find our man.

What flight attendants did not know, some homeward-bound fellow passenger usually did. On our way to Malaysia, a woman gave me some critical time-saving advice about express-train service to our next destination. Any reservations we had about striking up conversations with complete strangers had evaporated by the end of the race.

Cabdrivers, too, were often a key support. Sometimes, it was surprising - even a little frightening - to see how far cabbies would go to satisfy our need for speed (and we were always demanding that they go faster and faster, through some of the tightest, most crowded streets in the world). Driving through the medina in Marrakesh, packed with freely roaming cattle, assorted hawkers and the occasional bewildered tourists, we pleaded with one cabdriver (and tipped him generously) to cut around cars, and he obliged every one of our requests without hesitation.

On average, though, taxis were about as much of a crapshoot as they are in New York - a different Moroccan cabby took two of our competitors way off the route into a scary situation involving a local government official and their being temporarily detained. They were so shaken by the incident, they wound up being eliminated soon after.

My partner and I were traveling light in the linguistic department. Together, we were fluent in just English, Italian and Spanish. But communication in any tongue, I am now convinced, is as much about tone and facial expression as it is about grammar and pronunciation. Gesture, grunt and moan: you'll feel like an idiot, but most often get what you want. The real universal language, however, remains a flash of a smile and some cash - it gets the lines of communication humming, as it did with a Vietnamese train conductor, the only guy standing between us and a place to sleep in an air-conditioned car on the 24-hour trip from Saigon to Hue in 90-plus temperatures.

And when the cash runs out, just try asking. While driving through Spain in the middle of the night on the way to a ferry that would take us to Morocco, I mistakenly put regular unleaded gasoline into our diesel car. I thought for sure I had put an end to the race for us. Instead of giving up and going to a hotel for the night as another team did (which got them eliminated), we trekked half a mile back to the station, where I pleaded with the attendant to get help. He made a phone call and woke up a mechanic friend; a few stressful hours later we were back on the road.

In general, getting help was easy. Flo would walk up to strangers on the street, wearing a look of desperation, and beg for directions or some other form of assistance. Manage your finances properly, and you won't have to walk into a Munich pizza shop and ask for a free slice, as I did (the shop owner handed one over). But when you have no other choice, you would be astonished by how generous people can be to total strangers.

Flo and I didn't get along - she was constantly threatening to quit. And I wouldn't let us spend more than a few dollars on food, which I somehow deemed unnecessary. In fact, the tension between us eventually became one of the main subplots of the show that season. Yet interpersonal dynamics, I have come to believe, are overrated. Our friction-filled dynamic was perfect because it led us to victory. We excelled because our roles were defined. I was the driver and navigator and eternally optimistic one; Flo was in charge of creating instant relationships with strangers and getting crucial bits of information along the way, as well as doing much of the legwork at airports. We focused on the journey, and not on each other, and what we got out of "The Amazing Race," besides the million-dollar prize money, was this: Sometimes, you need to let the trip take you, instead of the other way around.

ZACHARY G. BEHR is a freelance television producer currently working for NBC at the Olympics in Athens.

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Psycho Pericles
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #1 on: Aug 22^nd, 2004, 10:40am »

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Our friction-filled dynamic was perfect because it led us to victory.

Really? I could name handfuls of more teams with friction and they didn't win.

Great article Cool

« Last Edit: Aug 22^nd, 2004, 10:40am by Psycho Pericles »

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JP
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #2 on: Aug 23^rd, 2004, 9:45am »

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Future TAR contestants: read this! Cool

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david
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #3 on: Aug 23^rd, 2004, 9:50am »

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Sounds like Flo still has him wrapped around her finger

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lakelady
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #4 on: Aug 23^rd, 2004, 5:53pm »

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Just read this on another site. Very interesting indeed. Cool

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luci
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #5 on: Aug 24^th, 2004, 9:02am »

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An enjoyable read Cool

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ilovemymariners
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Re: ZACH SPEAKS!!!
« Reply #6 on: Sep 6^th, 2004, 3:44pm »

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What's Flo's real name Huh

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