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This spring, Dallas Imbimbo took time off from college to go on a whirlwind, all-expenses-paid trip around the world with his mother, Toni. The Woodside pair is one of 13 teams competing on the TV reality show “The Amazing Race” for a chance to win $1 million.
The race is over, but who won is a tightly guarded secret that won’t be revealed until the last episode airs. The show started on Sunday, Sept. 28, and airs on CBS at 8 p.m. Episodes can also be seen online at www.CBS.com.
The Amazing Race, now in its 13th season, combines skill and teamwork with dumb luck in a multi-stage race across five continents in 23 days.
A strong team might ace the physical challenges but be undone by a bad sense of direction or an unhelpful airline reservation agent. Other pitfalls in the race may include intra-team bickering, language barriers, flight delays, uncooperative livestock, and defective rental cars.
Previous winners of The Amazing Race include Dallas’ former schoolmate at Woodside Elementary, Tyler MacNiven.
Dallas, 22, is finishing up a bachelor’s degree in communications and psychology at U.C. Davis. He says he didn’t do a whole lot of preparation for The Amazing Race’s open audition, which took place the day after his birthday in December.
“I was still a little bit drunk, and hung over,” he admits. “I was just thinking that it would make my mom happy. If we get it, we get it.”
His mom, a big fan of the show, was immediately certain they’d make the cut, although they had to wait a month to find out, Dallas says. To prepare, Toni got a trainer and Dallas, already athletic, focused on getting in shape to do a lot of running.
Dallas says he knew he’d be in charge of navigating for the team, although just before he left for the race, his sense of direction failed him when he evaded a traffic jam in Sacramento by taking the back roads.
“I got lost for an hour and a half, and I was only about five minutes away from where I needed to be, but besides that instance, I have a great sense of direction,” he says. “My mom, on the other hand, she couldn’t tell you where left is.”
The duo’s previous foreign travel experience wasn’t very good, he says.
“We had gone to Italy and Greece together, back when I was 17, and after that I never wanted to travel with my mom again,” Dallas says. “I think we saw every inch of Italy in six days. I like to go at my own pace, and let things happen.”
This time around, Dallas says, he was hoping that travel would help him establish a more adult relationship with his mom.
“We ended up being able to become great friends after this,” he says. “We talk all the time now.”
He now appreciates the tough job his mom had raising him as a single parent, Dallas says.
“When I was 14, 15 and 16, my mom was the bad guy. She had to do the hard stuff, the stuff that wasn’t fun, but had to be done,” he says. “It took me until I was away at college to realize that.”
While he can’t reveal any details from the race itself, Dallas did say that he and his mom got along with some of the teams, but clashed with others.
“We won’t stand for people treating people badly,” Dallas says. “It’s a race, but we’re not going to sacrifice our character. At the end of the day, money doesn’t buy you anything.”
Photo by Monty Brinton/CBS. (c) 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. ” class=”wp-image-570499″/>
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