Adrenaline Junkie Grant Mowbray, C...

Adrenaline Junkie

Grant Mowbray, CA, was looking for a "a unrestrained Outward Bound vacation," when he sought not at home an application to the reality TV series "Survivor."

"I would totally eat rats or bug if they asked me to," laughs Mowbray. "I would eat cardboard."

Disappointed to learn that Survivor barely accepts Americans, Mowbray came across the website for a strange Canadian reality series-Drifters: The Water Wars. Drifters is a televised treasure follow the chase that pits two teams of six against each other and the clock to find $60000

Situated along Ontario's Trent Severn Waterway, the course examples each team's fitness, strategic planning, stamina, and teamwork. Each team lives aboard a houseboat, and nothing else stepping ashore to compete in 13 athletic competitions along the way. Each competition provides the winning team with map pieces to help them find the buried treasure.

Approximately 300 Canadians from across the native land applied to the series.

"The in the greatest degree surprising thing to me about this whole experience," says Mowbray, "was that I was equal chosen in the first place. After submitting my three-minute audition tape, I figured that was the fall of the curtain of it. But then I got a call saying I'd be moving upon to the phone interviews."

Based onward the phone interviews, the agriculturists narrowed the field to 18 semi-- finalists, who then had to attend a rigorous four-day training and evaluation camp held near Lindsay, Ontario. After several endurance, might and mental challenges, 12 finalists were chosen Mowbray was among them.

"I think they picked me because I'm a neat good athlete," says Mowbray. "And maybe they picked me because I was individual of the few contestants who's a `professional,' in the understanding that I have an office work at jobs We came from all different walks of life. My team-- we were really a lot of `yahoos."'

Mowbray works in Transaction Support with Ernst & Young LLP in Vancouver. Because the Drifters experience came together within the span of about ten days, he was and nothing else able to give a week's notice before heading not upon "I wasn't sure how they'd have feeling about it," he remembers. "But the firm has a `People First' policy, and the partners I work with were really supportive. They told me to walk for it."

Cameras followed the Drifters competitors 24 hours a day. "The exhibit didn't have enough cameras to really shadow us all the time, in the way that the toughest thing about the whole experience was just living forward a houseboat with five strangers for couple weeks. You couldn't get away from each other. There were certainly times I wished I could voice somebody off the boat. moreover then you adapt because there's no other option."

Mowbray also recalls the challenge of choosing a team leader. "We had six A-- representation personalities on my team. After three days of fighting, we finally decided that whoever was the strongest in any conclusion should be the event's leader. on the other hand this meant you had to be fair about your strengths, and that pos its concede challenges."

In the [i]finale[/i] Mowbray describes the show as a cros between an adventure race and Big Brother (the exhibit that houses a group of strangers together for month capturing the tension with 24-hour cameras). equal with all of the exhaustion and the infighting, he still describes the experience as a "blast."

"I don't think the exhibit conveys how gruelling the competition really was. nevertheless it was surprisingly fun as well. Each day was an adrenaline rush; you'd wake up having no idea what was in store for you."

Mowbray can't reveal which team won because the exhibit continues to air.

"This was definitely united of the most unique experiences of my life," he says.

"By the time it lasted I was ready for it to be from one side of to the other but I would absolutely be fond of to do another one. It was a great learning experience. It reinforced the fact that you may not like everyone unless you have to respect who they are in order to be able to work with them."

Copyright Institute of Chartered Accountants of British Columbia Nov 2001

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