Travis' World in Video

Day 1:
My flight landed and I made my way to baggage claim. When I got to baggage claim there were two people waiting for me. One guy, Spencer, with a camera, and a girl who must be an assistant producer of some sort. My driver wasn't at baggage claim so I had to wait a bit while they found him. While we were waiting the made me put my bags onto baggage claim so they could film me getting them off and walking away and toward them. Once they found the driver they filmed me walking to him and meeting him and then we walked a short distance out of the airport to a limousine that the driver described as gangster. In the limo the girl asked me questions that I had to answer as if she was not there while Spencer was filming. I was already extremely tired and they wanted me to be all excited and energetic. First of all, I am not a outgoing energetic person as it is and second I had been up for about 20 hours. We rode through The Strip and I got to see a glimpse of Vegas all though it was hard to concentrate while I had to be talking. We finally arrived at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino. I got out of the car and then had to get out of the car a second time so that they could get both angles. I was dropped off at the VIP entrance and lead through a long hall way to a private check-in where movie and rock stars go. Next I was taken straight up to my room. I'm staying in a super nice room that is dedicated to the movie “A League of Their Own”. There is signed memorabilia around the room and pictures and props. In the room was a Doritos: The Quest backpack that had a baseball cap and nylon shirt inside. Also there was a little tool; a flashlight, thermometer, compass, magnifying glass, and whistle. I figured it might be important so I got familiar with the tool. At around 11:00pm here my liaison Jill called me and said she was coming up with some clothes. She made it up close to midnight and had a couple of hats. There were different colored Indiana Jones style hats, a Sherlock Holmes hat, and a girly cowboy hat. She told me since I was from Texas that I might want the cowboy hat but I don't think she understood that it was not a real cowboy hat. So I picked a light brown Indiana Jones type hat. She then gave me a pair of Justin Work boots, which she called hiking boots. Next she handed me to pairs of clothes. A gray Timberland t-shirt and some cargo shorts and then also she gave me a blue button up shirt with the netted shoulders and stuff. She headed out and called me about 20 minutes later to make sure the stuff fit and to tell me that I needed to be ready to go at 8:15 in the morning. I flipped through some channels and then headed off to bed.

Day 2:
I woke up this morning at 5am due to either nerves or just body timer and laid in bed till about 7:00. I then got up and realized I should have put the room-service thing on the door last night, but no worries. I made a phone call and breakfast was going to be here in 45 minutes. At around 8:20, Jill came by to make sure I was good and told me that someone will be back to get me shortly. 10:30 rolls around and someone finally comes to the door. I am taken to a lounge room where there is a makeshift studio setup and we do some interview questions for a bit. I am then taken back to my room and wait even more. Then I am taken back down to the VIP lounge and get to re-shoot the whole exiting the limo thing again. This the producer introduces himself and tells me that this is a reality show type thing and that I need to ignore the cameras. They circle the car around to the main entrance this time and I'm greeted by a PH (Planet Hollywood) staff member who walks me up the escalator and chats and eventually hands me a small scroll. As I walk to some elevators, camera crews following and leading, I unroll the scroll and it tells me to make my way up to room 3251. I get up there and we have to shoot me coming down the hall a few times and then also opening the door a few times. I walk into the room and it is a lounge type room with 2 rooms connecting I think. They then bring me out of the room and we head back down to my room in 3146. I wait and Jill calls and says that I can order some lunch. So I find Penne Pomodoro on the menu and make the call. I then get a call from Nicolette, the PR director, and she wants to swing by for some media training. Just after I get my lunch, Nicolette comes in and she explains to me about the media asking me questions and how to answer some and defer the rest to the Doritos PR people. Soon after lunch, Jill came back and took me back to the 3251 room and we walked in and the producer was there. He explained to me that I am going to enter the room again and act like I'm experiencing it for the first time. He then shows me where I should walk and then sit down. He tells me that it is here I will meet the other contestants and then someone big would come in and give us some really important information. He said then we would head out to do something. At this point I am taken back down to my room and waited for a bit and then the guy that brought me down came back and is now sitting in here with me waiting for us to be called back up. We go back up and I do as they say and the other contestants enter the room. I was expecting a 59 year old man to come through but instead Jim sent his son Dave who had recently won another contest like this with Volvo. After that shock the three of us just chat on camera and then our hosts busts in. They have to re shoot him coming in quite a bit and while he was introducing us to the quest they had to keep stopping to tell him lines and what not. We are then introduced to Sara who is going to be guiding us through the quest. Dave leaves and then Sara walks us over to another part of the room. We then sit on the couch and talk for about another hour before they have that new part of the room set up for the shoot. They film us walking over there again and sitting on a new couch. In front of us is the large wheel. Sara explains the rules and says that because we are in Vegas the first challenge will be based on luck. She explains that the alphabet symbol from the online game represent re spins, the doritos symbol represents a secret number underneath and the numbers will be the score that we receive for our total. The point of the game is to get the highest score. The numbers go from 1-25 on the wheel. I am first up and I immediately roll a 12. Dave then goes and ends up with a 23. Next John goes, and after about 5 re spins he gets a 24. Sara then says we will have another shot if we like but the new number will be our final number. John sticks with his number and Dave goes up to spin. After a few re spins he gets a 5. I then walk up there a little more confident and I spin an 8. So I end up in second place for this challenge. 1 st place received 5 quest currency that was mentioned in the introduction by the host. They are supposed to be used to buy, trade, and steal in the game to help us out, but things may not always be what they seem. For 2nd place I get 3 coins and Dave gets 2. Next Sara pulls out a plate with scrolls on them and she says that we have our first opportunity to use the coins. We all elect to get the scroll hoping that it help. Next sara pulls out another plate with three cryptexs on it. She hands one to John and says that his has 2 letter already filled in correctly. She hands me mine and says that I have one letter correct. And Dave gets his with none filled in. We then pretend to leave the room. After another hour of waiting a crew comes into my room to do an OTF (On the fly) interview. They ask me questions about what I think about the opponents and stuff. Then I wait some more in my room when they want us to go back upstairs to the floor the suite room is on. The start me at the suite and have me walking briskly to the elevator. I get in the elevator with camera crew and all and lights go out as soon as the doors close and we are not moving. I'm thinking that that was the shoot and now onto something else. Then on the TVs that are in the ceiling of every elevator comes on with our host Dave. He says that everything is important, everything I see and hear and even the writing on the walls. He then goes off and I begin to look around the dark elevator. With nothing but a black light on, the mirror in the back of the elevator reads, “I run smooth as a rhyme, I like to fall but do not crawl, I can give a single seed birth.” So with the cryptex in my hand and the newest scroll, I open the scroll I just purchased and there is the Quest alphabet and numerical system. I was very glad to find these on paper so that I can refer to them. Now back to the riddle. My first thought was something to do with a nut that has fallen from a tree. I also know that one of the letters on my cryptex is correct but I don't know which one. All the 5 letter nuts I could think of did not fit any of the 5 letters on the cryptex at the time. I looked up and read the first line of the riddle again and was like “Oh Water!”. I try to enter water into the cryptex and I have no idea how the thing is supposed to open because I have only seen pictures of these and they are always closed. The end slides open just a little bit and then I think it is jammed. The producer in the elevator with me grabs it and checks because he knew I had the right answer. Turns out I had one of the letters wrong (DUMB MISTAKE) so I turn to the right letter after the cameras start rolling again it opens with ease. Inside is a car key and another scroll. I open the scroll and it tells me to head to the main entrance of the casino and wait for further instructions. So the elevator opens and they lead me back to another hotel room to do another OTF about what just happened in the elevator. Then I get put in another room with a TV and I get to watch the Bellagio water show from the window. Jill comes and gets me again after about 30 minutes and all three of us contestants head downstairs. They have us wait behind a wall while they are getting the next shot setup. We are told that I will be going third and I need to stand on the middle dot. So because of this I knew that I must have came in last on the riddle. After they cue us to rush outside, the host is waiting with Sara and looks extremely like an amazing race finish line. I stand on the dot and they announce our places and that was upsetting. We have a bag sitting at our feet and they tell us to look through them. In the bag is a GPS, a notebook and pen, a flashlight, and a swiss army knife. I then get in my car that my car key went to and we then head off. I pull out second so I hope we are back on level playing ground now. We pull over and then they tell us to circle around and bring the cars back to valet parking. After this we turn in our mics and the producer says we did a good job and that we have some free time and we are able to go explore the hotel. He also said that any food we want just to charge it to the room and they would be picking it up. I ended up going to a steakhouse called The Strip. It was sort of awkward sitting in this really nice restaurant by myself because we are not allowed to talk the other contestants or crew. There was no menu with prices or anything, the waiter just listed meats and I picked. I got this amazing Kobe Beef steak. I also got a really fancy vine ripe tomatoes and red onion salad (mmm). They must of knew why I was here because the chef sent out a special thing for me to welcome me and it was a small chilled soup of some kind in a shot glass. It was pretty good and fruity. After I had my amazing meal I got the bill and it was $201!!!! I couldn't believe it. I'm really glad I am not paying for it. Now I am back in the room and preparing for tomorrow's big day.

Day 3:
So I woke up this morning felling a little odd. It turns out that my very expensive meal last night did not sit well I threw up the 200$ meat this morning. At about 7:30 Jill was there to pick me and we gathered all the contestants and went down to the mezzanine level of the casino. We waited there for about an hour before Jill lead us outside to where we last saw our cars. We wait there for a bit and are pulled off one-by-one to do another OTF. We then get into our cars and filming this again then the camera man sits in the passenger sit of the car. Julie (another producer) comes up and tells each of us where to go to on the GPS to find out where to go. So they tell us to pull off and they say they want to reshoot my drive off, so I begin the big circle back to where we started when they tell us never mind to go ahead and go. My GPS was not working whatsoever and it had no idea where we were. Also it wouldn't stay on the window so it became the hand held GPS device. Once we got on a highway, my GPS finally retrieved a signal. So the camera man is asking me questions while we are driving and what not and to my surprise even the race to the next location is scripted. They would make me slow down and let another contestant pass me and so forth. This is all while I am making it sound like he is passing me without me knowing about it. We drive out way into the desert about an hour and finally get to Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the nation. We are at an area called Echo Bay. There is a little marina and hotel there. At this point we head into a room in the hotel and are handed a lunch menu and told to pick something. While we are waiting they call us outside and we do more camera shots of us actually pulling up and running to our places by the lake. After all this business we then head back to the hotel and finally get our lunch. We sit around and rest for a while, I tried to squeeze in a little nap. Jill then came in and told us we needed to put our swimsuits on underneath our pants. We do that and get all lathered up in SPF 70 sunscreen (I know crazy right?), and then head back down to the water. We sit around there for a bit before they film us walking down the docks to Sara where she explains that we will be jumping from one speeding boat to another. Next we get some safety gear and get in our assigned boat. We head out and then sit in the lake for about an hour while they are figuring out logistics. And then just as we are ready to go, a small storm comes and the wind picks up about 20 mph. Luckily they waited for the storm to pass before we did our jumps. After a couple of practice runs it was finally time to jump. John was jumping first and he missed his first one. I was the second jumper. I jumped and grabbed on the the mat and held on till a wave pulled my head back and off the boat, but I took the mat with me. They had to reset the mat for David to make his jump. He missed also on the first try. Alright now we get to all try again. John misses his jump again and so my boat speeds up The Quest boat. As soon as the horn sounded I knew I had to do this in a good amount of time. I jumped and made it, I quickly then had to look around for a canister that was going to have a new clue in it. I read the clue and it said (The doritos sound wave) marks the spot. I had seen a flag with the sound wave on it as we were riding out on the boats. I thought for sure we were going to have to get to this flag. Anyways, so David goes for his second jump and makes it also. We find out when we meet back with Sara that I had beaten David by 1 second. So I get 5 quest currency coins. At this time our currency total is 8 me, 6 David, and 10 John. Sara then shows us three flags behind us. One is up aways on a hill, one is halfway up the hill, and one is pretty close. Sara tells us that we should remember that things are not always as they seem. Since I won the boat challenge I got first pick of the flags. I chose the middle one because I figured the middle road was the best. Then Sara told us we had the option to buy another persons flag for 5 coins. They ask me first and I stay with mine and David does the same. John purchases my flag so I then end up with the flag that is the closest. It was sort of upsetting because I should of got the last pick of choosing to buy or not, but o well. So Sara tells us to go and we take off and then they cut in order to get the camera men in place. We then reshoot the take off from a different angle. I get up to the flag and there is another cryptex with another scroll attached to it. I get them undone and I have a long and strange riddle. It said, “I can be found high about statues and at times am eternal. I appear in blue, white, or red. I sometimes appear as an old one of these.” I immediately thought of fireworks, but I needed a 5 letter key. I tried flags and stars and then I read the word eternal and I knew it was flame. The answer was right but by that time I had head John and David run past me. The clue inside the cryptex told us to head to specific coordinates via our GPS. So I was thwarted by another riddle. We then take off to our cars. They cut and we then film us running to the cars and getting in. Then the film us typing on the GPS device. Then they film us driving away a few times. We were told that it is going to appear that we are racing to the next location but we really were not going to be. We then pack up and make the drive back through the desert and back to the hotel. I thought I was going to go out on the strip tonight and see it, but I after my shower I am beat and ready for tomorrow.

Day 4:
Today we had to be ready to go by 7:30am. Jill picked us up at our rooms and we headed downstairs to the cars at valet. We stood around forever waiting on the slow valet guys to get out cars. Once they got there all three of us contestants hopped in one car while Jill was driving. The production crew filled the other two cars. On the way to our next location, they faked the whole car race again. So when we are racing to the Valley of Fire on tape, we are all actually in one car. We have to stop about 10 times on the way to Valley of Fire because they wanted to do passing shots and some tracking. Once we arrived at the Valley of Fire, the temp was already at 100 at 10am. We stopped at the gift shop and did some OTFs on the outside of the store. (Still not sure how they get electricity and telephone) We drove up to a base camp and waited for a while there. Next they had each of us get in our own cars and drive around a corner to the final location. We pull up and there is this huge rock with ropes coming down, so I assume that we are climbing up to the top. So we pull up and get out and then head over to where Dave and Sara are standing. The welcome us to the Valley of Fire and tell us that we are going to have a grueling day. Sara explains that we will be rappelling down the mountain and grabbing 4 flags on the way down. We climb to the top of the mountain and then two of us are sequestered while the third one goes. I got to choose the order because I was in first place at the time. The other two guys go and I have no idea how they did. I get suited up while they are asking me how I'm feeling. I was pretty confident I had this challenge. I head over the ledge with no fear but I cant get the rope to feed, so time is ticking and I cant get moving. I finally hit a point where I start to decend. The first flag is a little to the right and 30 ft down on a small cliff. I work my way to the cliff and grab the flag. The next flag I see is about 10 ft down but way over to the left. I begin to swing my body and keep swinging until I finally have a large enough swing that I can get the flag. This was my biggest time killer. I look down and immediately see the next two flags right in a row. I just open up the rope and slide down and grab the flags as I pass. As soon as I grab the fourth flag, the rope goes loose and I just see slacked rope in front of my face. I free fall maybe 40ft before the line pulls tight again. I then as quickly as possible push my way to the ground where they stop the clock. They do an immediate OTF at the bottom to see how I thought I did. They gave us a 20 minute allotment to go down so I knew I nailed this challenge. I am then carted off to base camp where the other two contestants are and they watch us and tell us not to say a word about the stunt. So we have another 2-3 hour wait before they are ready for us to do the final challenge. They bring us back to the rock we rappelled and Sara gives us the results. They made me walk in first and so we were all thinking that I ended up in first. Sara immediately address me and says that I finished in a total time of something just over 2 minutes. Then she followed that by saying that unfortunately I finished 3rd. I couldn't believe it! Anyways, David ended up in first on that challenge and nobody expected that because he is the riddle master. They then film a fake run off into the next challenge. They cal us back and after a bit more of re shoots we are told what we are doing. Sara tells us that we have to us our personal GPS device to make our way to 6 waypoints. David is in the lead with th most coins, 11, so he got to go 15 seconds ahead of me with a total of 10 coins. John has 8 coins and gets to start 30 seconds after I do. They line us up and tell David to go so he takes off I am just waiting for the go. I was hoping I was speedier than these guys at running to waypoints. I finally take off and get to the first clue. We race around the desrt up and down mountain sides. Each waypoint holds a clue to our final treasure. At one of the waypoints, while I was trying to take off, I dropped my sachel and lost a few clues. The rules state that we couldn't return back to a previous spot so I was going to have to trudge on without those. I do fall behind every now and again because I was a little slower at writing down the clues in case I needed to have them in my head. Also I was able to try to decipher the clues while I was running. I do however reach the last clue first and there is a cryptex lying there. Eventually all three of us are there and we are trying to solve the final puzzle. We must have been there for like 15 minutes before John's cryptex just pops open. I just sit there and watch him get his prize when David then gets his open. I didn't realize he was tying to open his so then I go back to it and almost immediately know the answer. I turn to David and asked him if it was quest backwards and he said, “yeah”. I then, while watching John enjoy his moment I turn the dials on mine to open up my cryptex. To know that I was 10 ft away from $100,000 that could of easily been mine is heartbreaking, but I am glad that John won because he's a christian and a young married man much like myself. I did not win the $100,000 but I had a blast on this adventure. Now that I have done this I look forward to doing many more contests because there actually is a possibility of winning. I did come away with a bunch of stuff. Lets see if I can name it all. A backpack, a Doritos tshirt and hat, a pair of cargo shorts, a t-shirt, elastic pants, long-sleeve shirt, an Indiana Jones type hat, a personal GPS device, a pair of hiking boots, swiss-army knife, flashlight, quest coin....and an awesome experience!

Day 5:
The trip home was not quite as enjoyable as the trip there. I woke up early Friday morning at about 6:30 by accident (my alarm was st for 10) and I walked about 2 miles to the Hard Rock so that I could buy some drumsticks to add to my collection. I got lost on the way back to my hotel and made the back trip probably 4 miles. Anyway, I get back and order lunch and then I am told to meet Jenn downstairs at 11:45. I get there and we then head to the VIP room where I checked-in and now I'm checking-out. I sat in there for about an hour before my limo driver was there. We had to do a final OTF, so Ricky (a guy originally from Austin) and Jenn ride to the airport with me and we had a good time talking. (In front of the camera thing has gotten a lot easier) We get to the airport and I tell them goodbye. Ricky wants me to hit up a few of his favorite Austin hotspots for him. I get on the plane and we head out to Denver. In denver, I have a 4 hour layover. I am so glad that Denver airport has free wifi and I had my computer. Anyways the 4 hour layover turned into about 7 hours. At this time, they annouce that our flight is cancelled because the flight crew is illegal to fly this trip because of sleep. So I stand for another hour in the customer service line, of which I was at the front of, and I'm contacting Meagan, and the doritos people that handled transportation. They tell me to go ahead and rebook my flight so I do and the only thing that would leave the next day was a flight to dallas and then plane hopping to another airline to get to Austin. The airline puts me in a hotel in Denver that night for like 4 hours and I got a free meal and 100$ towards another ticket. I get up the next morning and make it to dallas and then finally austin. My driver has to call me because I end up standing in another line for lost baggage. My bags apparently, in the switch got on the wrong plane. So they will be delivered to me. My driver drops me off and I get to see my beautiful wife Meagan and crazy dog snuggles. That was the end of a fun trip that hopefully I can do again someday. My bags finally got to me sunday afternoon.

Thanks for reading!