We are waiting to hear from Amazing Race

It was a hot summer day in mid-Michigan when, my son, Justin, and I sent off our audition tape and application for Amazing Race 9.  We realized it was a long shot to get picked, but we both felt we had something to offer the show and its many millions of viewers.

We have a very functional and productive father-son relationship.  It started when he was young and it continues strong.  In between those two points, we have done a lot of stuff together in a wide-variety of places.  And I feel that we've been a demonstration to the world that a father and a son can work together to achieve some very big goals, but still retain their individual identities.

We would be "good tv" too.  People would enjoy watching us as we would move around the world trying to win a game that has a pot of dollars at the end.

Our similarities include:

• Our physical appearance.
• Our deep voices.
• Our ability to think through solutions to multi-stepped problems.
• Our motivation and our tenacity to keep going until a mission is accomplished.
• Our ability to laugh at ourselves and to encourage others.

Our ability to work and get-along together has been field tested over the years.  We survived and thrived in the Cub Scouts.  This included an early spring campout in northern Michigan where Alaska would have seemed comparatively balmy.

Because of my staff work in the Michigan Legislature and my participation on political campaigns, he accompanied and helped me on countless campaigns where we went door-to-door in both rural and urban areas.  He could wade through a voter registration list with countless addresses and sort out locations with the barest of maps. 

We've been to 11 Promise Keepers events together, including the more than million man Stand In The Gap gathering in Washington, D.C.  We flew to the event two days early to wander through the sights and through the city.  Together, we navigated packed subways and masses of men from throughout the country.  He was still in grade school.

At the beginning of his sophomore year at the Rochester Institute of Technology, we flew to Las Vegas for the last PK event of the year.  We met at the McCarran Airport and then rented a car.  We sat at a poolside restaurant at the Caesar's Palace.  We found our way up and down the Las Vegas Strip to to the Thomas Mack Center at UNLV.  Piece of cake and we had fun.  It was a packed weekend.

While sitting at dinner at the Venetian in Las Vegas, we signed the papers to form an internet start-up called MyCapitalWeb.com LLC.  When I retired from the Michigan Legislature as a staffer, I was able to make the transition to blog coach and professional blogger.  We work together on these projects as business partners.

He's tall and I'm not.  He's young and I'm not.  He can write a Java script and I can't.  He likes loud Christian rock and I don't.  But, we love and respect each other.

As Amazing Race 9 producers sift through audition tapes and through applications, I hope they call us.  We feel that we are worth a close look. 

Regardless, I feel the ultimate compliment that my son wanted to do this with me. 

I'm ready physically and mentally and so is he.