We Win Some, We Lose Some

One night in December, while we were back home in Fayetteville, I was checking my Facebook feed. One of my running girlfriends had posted a link to a local article and announced that she was looking for a partner to compete with. Her statement intrigued me and I clicked on her pasted link. Isn’t it funny how the smallest, most innocuous moments in life like that can lead to some very interesting and unexpected changes? Well, in our case, the link lead to a reality TV show casting, to be held in Fayetteville, of all places. Producers from LA were picking new contestants to compete in sets of two on a spin-off of the Bear Grylls show. Castings were being held nationally in 9 different cities, and somehow little ‘ol Fayetteville had made the cut.

There was little information provided, aside from that there was a “Life Changing Prize” for the winning couple and that the selected couples would be dropped off in an undisclosed location, left to compete amongst themselves. Given that it was a takeoff of the Bear Grylls survival show, which is famous for showing Bear eating live snakes and drinking his own pee to stay alive, we figured that the competitions would be something along those lines, with building fires thrown in for good measure. The casting was that Saturday afternoon and we had nothing better planned, so we decided to go and see what came of it.

Casting for the new Bear Grylls NBC show

Saturday morning we showed up five minutes early for the 10am start time, only to find that 150 other couples had already shown up ahead of us. We had walked in with some semblance of confidence, but once we saw all the other couples and noted that most of them looked like stiff competition, we almost considered walking back out. After a moment’s hesitation, we again remembered that we had nowhere better to be and sat down to fill out the (12 page!) application. The line moved slow; couples were brought in in sets of two to appear in front of a panel of casting producers for 10 minutes at a time. By the time our turn came around, it was two o’clock, and the line was still long behind us. We went in front of the panel with another couple and spent the next 10 minutes bantering with the producers about why we thought we’d be a good fit for the show. When we walked out, I turned to Skyler and told him that I thought we’d blown it.

Skyler filling out his 12 page application

"Will Drink Pee To Be On TV" is what this sign says! 

That night, we received a phone call from one of the producers letting us know that we’d been selected to move forward. We were to appear at a local hotel room Monday afternoon for another interview, this time one on one with the panel of producers, for an hour, and in front of a recording camera. That interview went much better than our first, and at the end I asked how many couples had shown up on Saturday for the first casting and how many had been picked to appear for the next step. The producers estimated that over 200 couples had been interviewed over the weekend, and that only 15 were asked back for the second interview. They also threw in that we were on of their favorites. All of a sudden, our chance of getting on the show seemed much better. When we’d originally estimated less than 1%, now we were figuring a good 5%. We were told to fill out another online application and then to create a 10 minute video about ourselves. They gave us 3 days to turn the video in.

The next three days were spent with us hectically recording all kinds of goofiness on my dad’s video camera. This was the same camera that my dad recorded my 12th birthday party with. It was horribly bulky and super nerdy looking, but we made do, setting it up on a tripod and recording us doing all kinds of athletic things at the local fitness center. We submitted the video just before midnight of the last day and waited patiently to hear back. A week later we got an email saying that we were still in the running and that now we needed to sign waivers and fill out even more forms. We were told that by the end of January the final contestants would be selected and flown to LA for the last casting. From there, the picked teams would be flown to an international island at the end of February and that the show would be taped over the next three weeks. The finished show would be aired on NBC sometime this summer.

By this point we hadn’t let ourselves get too excited. At best we were one of several teams picked from Fayetteville. That still left the other 8 casting cities and however many contestants were chosen from there. On top of that, online submissions were allowed, so that opened up the running to quite a large number of couples. As the month wore on though, we thought about that “Life Changing Prize” more and dreamed about what all we would do with it. I also had plenty of time to freak out about what exactly we’d gotten ourselves into. Was I really going to drink my own pee on national television? What if I was employed by the time the show aired and all of my future co-workers saw me in a yelling match with Skyler, or as a huge, sweating mess, like all the contestants we’d seen publicly humiliated on other shows like “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race”?

They had said that the last announcement would be made on Monday, January 28^th. Monday came and went and we hadn’t heard anything. The next morning we got a short email saying that they were still deliberating and that they would let everyone know by the end of that night. Skyler and I were on pins and needles. That night again we didn’t hear anything. The next morning they again sent a short email saying that they would let everyone know by the end of Thursday night. The first casting had been on December 15^th. We’d been waiting for the results for over a month and a half now. We were dying to know so we could move on with our plans, one way or another. (How do we plan what we’re doing next when we could potentially be missing for a three week period in March? What if I had a job interview…do I tell them I might need all of March off?) We’d postponed making any major life decisions until we knew for sure on this show. Finally, on Thursday night, at 10pm we got an email saying that if we hadn’t been personally called that day, they were very sorry, but that we hadn’t been picked for the show.

AWWW. Deflated.

Isn’t it weird how all this hadn’t even been a factor in our life until we showed up for that casting back in December? If we hadn’t planned on this being a part of our life, then we could consider the opportunity a plus 1, an unknown benefit. So therefore, if we didn’t get it in the end, that minus 1 should set us right back at our starting point. Why then, did it feel like we’d lost something? Like we’d gone negative 1, instead of end up at zero? Well, it was humbling to say the least. We were pretty bummed out (I might have been secretly relieved), but we were just happy that the suspense was over. We moped around the rest of the week, all of sudden somewhat discontent with life. Since we had waited to formulate any plans until we’d heard back a final answer, we had nothing concrete to look forward to. We were at a loss, and had no desire to pick back up and start planning.

UNTIL…until my dad called one evening the following week and said that he’d spotted some incredibly cheap tickets to Russia for the month of May. I was born in Russia, and most of my relatives still live in Russia, and in all the 11 years that Skyler and I have been together, we have yet to go there together. Since immigrating to the US I had only been back once myself, and that was over 10 years ago. The idea of going on such an adventure all of a sudden seemed so exciting! The tickets were indeed incredibly cheap and it just so happened that a lot of big events would be happening this year in the month of May, including the milestone birthdays for my grandmother and uncle. Skyler and I deliberated for two hours, worried that the cheap tickets might sell out, and then took the leap and bought them! We picked tickets so we’d be there for three weeks, with hopes of spending most of our time in St. Petersburg, several nights in Moscow and then a week traveling in the neighboring countries of Sweden and Finland, and possibly Estonia. 

This booking created a marked deadline for us to be back in Fayetteville (the tickets we bought were flying out of Fayetteville) by the beginning of May. Now we had a set timeline to work with and we got right to planning. When we found out the results of the Bear Grylls show we were in the middle of our stay in Austin, TX. We were set to check out of the RV park we’d booked there on February 15. That left about 11 weeks before we were to be back in Fayetteville. Here is what we’ve planned for those 11 weeks (all of course due to change in case another life kink is thrown our way):

Our planned route

Tulsa, if you’ll remember, was our very first stop on this Great American Road Trip of ours, when we left Fayetteville back on February 22 of 2012. I think it makes so much poetic sense that this be our last stop on this RV trip. After Tulsa we’ll be back home in Fayetteville to drop the pups off at a local puppy boarding hotel, just in time to catch our flight to Russia! After Russia, we don’t know yet. We still plan to move to Portland (I’m pretty sure I left a small piece of my heart there). In the meantime we’ve put our plans of applying for jobs on hold, until we get closer to May. The part of our life after May has yet to be written, and we’re kind of excited to see where it goes.

Happy Life Curveballs,

M.