Amazing Race, How Sweet the Sound (in Portland)

by Inara Verzemnieks

Tony Esparza, CBS

There are a number of us around here who happen to be big fans of the whirl-wind travel reality series Amazing Race, where teams of friends, couples, siblings and other family members spend a month racing around the globe, living in airports, battling jet-lag, marriage-encounter worthy breakdowns and waves of culture shock. How big of fans? When we saw this Willamette Week post that The Amazing Race 13 was rumored to be in town filming its finale, well, we freaked out. As if this was the biggest breaking news story ever. And we started dialing everyone we could think of for confirmation. As our editor said (wryly, we might add): "Nice to see democracy is safe today."

After several frantic hours of intrepid reporting (but not too much reporting -- we are fans, afterall, and we do not want to find out too much and ruin the finale for ourselves and others), here is what we know (spoilers after the cut):

* Someone from Amazing Race contacted one of Travel Portland's PR managers a few months ago, and requested "B-roll footage, which is just our raw video footage of various shots of the city, the skyline," says Deborah Wakefield, VP of Communications and Public Relations. (Motive!)

* As one of my colleagues captured in photos on her blog, there are currently several mini-vans and other official looking vehicles bearing the placards "WRP" parked in a lot near SW Park and Oak, encircled in "caution" tape. "World Race Productions" is the name of one of the production companies affiliated with the show. (Opportunity!)

Michael Fine, who acts as the film and video liaison for the city, seemed kind of cagey when we spoke to him (although perhaps he did not understand our questions; this is also very possible).
Everyone -- from tax and permit clerks to parks bureau employees to associates with the state film and video board -- said that if anyone is filming anything in the city, Michael Fine will know. So... Is Amazing Race in Portland?

"I don't know," he said.

But then he added, cryptically,"If it was, they would not be telling me." (Conspiracy?!)

We also learned some other things that don't really help us break this thing open, but are interesting none-the-less...

* Tri-Met spokeswoman Mary Fetsch is a big fan of the show (we figured since the contestants are always hopping trams and trains and buses that public transportation was a good lead to follow...)

* We totally suck as reporters compared to these folks, who manage to track the movements of the show AROUND THE WORLD.

Some people are speculating that the final destination will be O'Bryant Square (see better reporters than us, above), but the parks bureau, which should know such things, since the square is under their jurisdiction, tells us they have heard nothing. Yet.

And now we are going to stop chasing this around, as though we have something to race for too, and get back to work. Our editor is staring at us.

UPDATE: OK. It's 5:30 and our editor just let the building. So we can obsess about this again. The phone rings, and it's Steve Johnson from the Port of Portland (since most of this show revolves around FLYING, the folks at the airport seem good people to check with). "I can't confirm anything," he says. And so we try an old, evil police-reporting trick on him: "Do you deny it?" (Likely putting us in his sin-book forever...over a story about the Amazing Race! What possessed us?! Sorry, Steve. Really.) He is calm. "I can't confirm anything," he says again, as though swatting away a fly.