I Moved My Cheese

I certainly hope some of you are watching the new season of The Amazing Race. It is absolutely amazing. The Pony and I laughed our eyes out last night on the season premiere. We haven't laughed that long and hard since the unfortunate ox-cart incident several seasons ago.

This year, the teams seem to be a reasonable mix. The ones I can remember are:

Little People Stuntman Brothers
Guy Who Fights With Girlfriend
Mother/Deaf Son
Redheaded Ex-Pro Football Cheerleaders
Blond Flight Attendants
Hillbilly Meth Head and Older Wife
Nondescript Older Couple
Gay Dad/Gay Son Writer
Black Athlete Sisters
Asian Brother/Sister Lawyers


There were 11 teams, so I am missing a probably nondescript young dating couple. Anyhoo, the first show wasn't all about the teams. It was about the challenges. The first one was OK, something that I would never do, that had me screaming and covering my eyes, which was to bungee off of a giant dam in Switzerland. Of course the partners all whined, "This is the thing I am most afraid of--heights." Maybe if these fools would stop filling out their CBS application listing 'heights' under their biggest fear, they wouldn't have to do this kind of challenge. How about saying, "I am deathly afraid of winning $1 million." Or maybe, "I am scared to death of sleeping 12 hours in a row after eating a gourmet meal." Yeah. Maybe that would give them some tamer challenges. Which brings us to the funniest one I've seen in a couple of years: The Great Cheese Race.

Teams had to climb a Swiss Alp, which was really just a kind of steep, grassy hill, but to hear them complain, you would think they were stabbing their crampons into a glacier at 29,000 feet. Each couple had to climb the grassy knoll and carry down 200 pounds of cheese. This wasn't a Swiss cheese challenge. That cheese was in 50 lb. rolls. Four cheeses, two people. They each had a wooden frame cheese harness thingy that supposedly the Swiss use to carry their cheese down the side of a grassy mountain. Thing was, these cheese harnesses must have been made of balsa wood, because several teams broke theirs carrying them on the way up the mountain.

Getting there was not half the fun. The Gay Dad complained that every time he opened his legs, his groin pull pained him. Several complained that the mud was sometimes animal poo. They would be hiking along at a reasonable snail pace, and then WHOOPSIE! The grass went out from under their feet and they were spinning their soles in brown goo.

Once they reached the top, they carefully strapped on a cheese and started down. Few made it more than a few steps before their cheese frame harness thingy crumbled. That's when the fun began. "MY CHEESE!" was a common lament. Oh, the CHEESE! The cheeses rolled willy-nilly, bouncing to and fro, down that grassy Alp. One crashed into a building, one tore through a fence, one rammed a tree trunk, and many others landed out of camera range. One of the stewardesses dipped her cheese in doodoo. A group of Swiss rowdies swilling ale at the bottom of the Alp took great delight in this spectacle. As did The Pony and I.

The Gay Dad sat down on the grass with his cheese in his lap, and inched down on his buttocks. Behind him, cheeses bent on his annihilation bounded unfettered down the mountainside. Gay Dad closed his eyes. "Please, PLEASE don't let a cheese hit me!" Other teams ran/slid/stumbled down the steep slope, shouting, "My cheese! My cheese! Where's my cheese?"

The Hillbillies arrived around this time, and had to climb up the mountain amidst the flying cheeses. The wife could not make it up the hill, so Meth Man took his cheese harnesses to the top, them came back and got behind her and pushed her up with his hands on her butt. Once at the peak, Meth Man cracked those cheese racks apart, loaded THREE cheeses on his unpatented cheese sleigh, lashed them tight, tied the fourth cheese to Wife's new cheese sled, told her to sit down and pull it along behind her, and started down the mountain. They made it with nary a loss of cheese. Which just goes to show you, I told The Pony, that Hillbillies know how to make junk work for them.

Unfortunately, Hillbillies are also dumber than rocks, because four teams passed them up at the end when all they had to do was take a taxi to a town and listen for the yodelers and find Phil. Which I might add seemed a bit unfair to the Mom/Deaf Son pair, but they won this leg, so no harm no foul. Those pitiful Hillbillies eventually found Phil by accident. Phil took a bit of an attitude with them, giving them that 'Tsk, tsk ,what's up with that, Hillbillies?' look. The meth must have been working its magic, because they didn't even care that they ended up fools. They were still proud of becoming masters of their domain: junk.

I can't wait until next Sunday!

Oh, and those stewardesses are dumb as rocks on the ground. They couldn't even find a taxi. They're a lot smaller than airplanes, I guess.