Amazing Race Casting Call: Bring Out the Wacky!

Wednesday night, partner in crime, Tara, and I headed south in Adorable Truck to Aurora, CO to sit in a cold parking lot and change our futures.

Our mission: In 60-seconds, convince the producers of Amazing Race to at least call us back for a second interview in L.A., all via video tape.  We never actually saw a producer, that we knew of.

Tara is a dear friend from Peace Corps, and the lady who convinced me to come out to Fort Collins in the first place.  She is also a complete badass who runs marathons off the couch, recently ran the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim, and lived in one of the hottest spots in Benin during our PC service.  Sure, she's got a competitive streak...like a few years ago when it took her 20-something miles to drop out of an ultra-marathon because of hypothermia...and then kicked its ass the next year.  In summary, we'd at least be in shape if we were to get a call back for the show because I can't think of many worse fates than answering to her if we lost a challenge because I couldn't hack it.  And so we planned our attack.

Showed up at midnight, auditions at 10am.

I have no idea what I can say about our 1-minute spiel because the waiver explicitly says that we are not to breathe a WORD to anyone about what we said on camera.  I do feel comfortable saying that in spite of the fact that we were running on 30-minutes of sleep, we don't think it could have gone any better.  We were the second team in a line of over 200 people.  And thank god for that because once the ball got rolling, everyone was crowding the door to get a glimpse of the competition.  The filming was at the Aurora Sports Authority (I have never been to a weirder strip mall town) and they ran two cameras at once to really circulate teams through.  We fully utilized our props and gave them our story.

Before 200 more people showed up

Though we'd read rumors of numbered tickets being issued...and had high hopes of spending hours in the nearby coffeeshop, the news crews showed up to film around 5am and the organizer explained that  we should fully expect to be in line until 10am.  The store did open at 8 for bathrooms.  If traveling has instilled anything in me, it's a deep appreciation for a private place to potty.  Bless you Sports Authority.

Waiting in line for 6-hours in Colorado in January = sleeping bags and lots o coffee!

When we left my truck to actually line up at 4:30am, we were equipped with coffee, sleeping bags, a cooler of snacks, and lots of hope.  In front of us in the #1 slot, was a team of ladies trying to raise money for Alzheimer's.  Certainly a noble cause, however the ringleader of that duo spent the entire 6-hours conversati-ng and in the end just plain invading my personal space because she was so damned jazzed she couldn't control it!  Yes, a 50+ woman was two-stepping around (to someone's blaring iphone) and punctuating her moves by waving jazz hands in my face and commanding me to perk up.  Some of you may know how awesomely perky I am at 5am.

This, after a very sweet fellow applicant bought about 60 breakfast burritos and handed them out down the line. Jazz-Hands watched me eat and exclaimed "Whoa girl!  You're a scarf-er, you'll do great on the show!"  Of course, it didn't help that during the 5:48am CBS Live interview, Tara couldn't control her verbal vomit and in the middle of a sentence, blurted out "SHE"LL EAT ANYTHING!"  The link to said clip is below.  

On our other side in spot #3, was a married couple so deeply in love, they were just whispering their script to each other in a manner reminiscent of a forbidden romance on Downton Abbey.  Despite this, these folks were actually pretty amazing. They'd offered to do a taco run at 1am for the early birds in the parking lot and provided dry humor throughout the morning.  They also had a very comical dachshund, who's little legs couldn't follow them around the parking lot fast enough.  

But perhaps most entertaining were the two early 20-something ladies who had driven through the night from Salt Lake City.  They were skinny as rails, slept under a mountain of blankets on a bouldering crash pad and did not have a mean bone in their bodies.  Simply adorable.  When they overheard that our names were Rachael and Tara, they perked up and erupted with "Our names are Rachel and LARA!  They knowingly provided an immense amount of entertainment and we are grateful for them.

Ready for the L.A. interview!!!

If we don't get a call back like the thousands of other applicants, I will rest easy (after we drown our sorrows at the breweries).  We had a blast putting our application script together and took the opportunity to sift through a zillion pictures of us from Peace Corps and since.  I can't believe it's been almost 6 years since we served!  All in all, it was a really interesting and hilarious experience.  There should definitely be a reality show about the first round of reality-tv applicants because sweet lord, the spectrum of personalities that showed up provided better people watching than the Greyhound bus station.  If anything does come of this, I probably won't even need to blog about it because you will hear us shrieking around the globe!  And even if this isn't our window of glory, I have a feeling you haven't heard the last of this formidable team.....

Check out THIS LINK to see us on CBS Denver from a 5:48am live clip....pretty ladies!