A wise man once said: “Lots of people like to watch adventure. It doesn’t mean they should get up off the couch.” That wise man is Jeff Probst, and right now, he is shouting at me, barking fire, on the hottest beach on the planet, in the hottest moment of my life.

This is Quest For Fire, the first immunity challenge in Survivor history, and the first challenge in Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance. Probst looms nearby while I crouch on the ground, desperately shoving the shattered remains of a makeshift pole built by a legendary Survivor winner through a wooden gate, doing my level best to grab a key so I can put an end to my colossally embarrassing misery.

Spoiler alert: My level best is not very good.

Bayon and Ta Keo race each other in Quest For Fire (Timothy Kuratek/CBS)

About an hour earlier, I was falling asleep on the open-air deck of Ponderosa in front of at least half of the Second Chance cast. Can you blame me? It was a long day of interviews! You try fending off 20 potential millionaires-in-the-making on the eve of the greatest adventure of their lives without needing a little siesta.

Okay, yeah, you can blame me. I’m snoozing in front of Survivors. Not exactly the most professional look, and beyond professionalism, it’s just kind of lame. It’s an even worse look considering what I actually look like. I’m wearing awful-smelling aqua socks, a navy blue T-shirt that’s one size too small, my glasses are foggy, and I’m sweating profusely. At least my swimsuit is awesome, what with its red-white-blue-black-yellow color pattern that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. Oh, and I’m snoring a little bit, because that’s how I roll.

The snoring ends when someone tells me my boat’s about to leave Ponderosa for the next event of the day. I shoot up out of my seat and book it, trying not to pay attention to the few Survivors who are laughing at my sudden awakening. I speed-walk down the dock toward my boat, and below me, in the water, is yoga master and perfect human specimen Vytas Baskauskas. “I like your shorts, dude,” he tells me, and man, so do I, but I do not like running late, let alone running at all.

The boat leaves, I’m on it, and when we roll up to Challenge Beach, two familiar words pop into my head: “Get out.” Except I don’t mean it in the “oh, sweet, that’s Ponderosa” sense of the words. I mean it in the “oh my, this is happening” sense.

Here’s what “this” is: Quest For Fire, a challenge requiring two teams to jump off of a platform and into the water, swim to a raft, move the raft toward the shore while lighting several tiki torches along the way. Once you hit the beach, you must pick up the raft, carry it uphill, lighting more torches along the way, then set it down on a platform.

Finally, one member of the team must solve Jailbreak, a Survivor classic where an individual has to tie poles together to create one longer pole and use it to grab a key on the other side of a gate. Once you have the key, you unlock the gate, you unwrap a bunch of chains, you burst through, you light the biggest tiki torch of all time, and then you do the Moto Meke dance because yay! You won.

Got all that? Good, because I don’t.

Spencer Bledsoe lights a torch for the Ta Keo tribe (Timothy Kuratek/CBS)

Let me paint a picture for you.

I am not athletic. I know not of these “sports” you speak. But I do know Survivor, and knowing that a challenge would be coming up on press day, I wanted to get myself in passable condition for the once-in-a-lifetime occasion. I dropped 10 pounds between finding out about the location visit in early March and shipping out to Cambodia in late May. I figured I was in good enough shape.

Hey, about that.

No amount of weight loss would give me the confidence to remove my T-shirt in front of the Dream Team, a group of young men and women who are literally professional Survivor gladiators, charged with testing out every single challenge before the Survivors run the real deal. They aren’t out-of-their-minds jacked, at least not all of them, but they’re in decisively phenomenal shape all the same, used to the hardships of the game.

Also in my group: Parvati Shallow, the Survivor: Micronesia winner and Survivor: Heroes vs Villains runner-up who now works as part of the CBS press team. She, like the Dream Teamers, is in fantastic shape, practices yoga on the regular, has won four individual immunity challenges in her time, and she clocked in at number two on a CBS-approved list of The 10 Steamiest Survivor Castaways.

And so it is decreed! Wigler’s shirt stays on.

But what about the glasses? Now, this is a real Rafe’s Choice, because I am basically blind, and yet I also can’t wear them in the water without fear of losing them or destroying them or who knows what other form of catastrophe to them. The Dream Teamers on my tribe tell me the glasses must go, and so, they do.

I also say goodbye to my wedding ring. It is loose on my finger because of the weight loss and I am not going to be the snug-shirted doggy-paddling challenge-blowing cliche who loses his wedding ring on Survivor. I will not be that guy.

So, here I am, standing on a floating platform, looking ten times more ridiculous now than I did at Ponderosa, shirt on, glasses off, like Kitty Sanchez warging into Samwell Tarly’s body, standing on the edge of Quest For Fire, the first ever Survivor challenge, on the eve of the anniversary of the Survivor series premiere, on the eve of the first day of Second Chance, completely unable to see, surrounded by beautiful people who do this for a living, including someone who won this show once and almost won it twice, and Jeff Probst is standing on a platform nearby and he shouts his signature “Survivors, ready?” and I think to myself NOPE I AM NOT, NOT ME, I AM NOT READY, and then I hear Probst say “GO,” and so I jump in, and here we go.

The Ta Keo tribe hits the beach and races toward Jailbreak (Timothy Kuratek/CBS)



You know what? Not so bad!

That’s what I’m thinking after Quest For Fire ends, standing in front of an unopened gate, watching as the rival Ta Keo Dream Team celebrates in front of their roaring fire. We lost, but it wasn’t a blowout. We were neck and neck for the whole physical portion of the challenge. Parvati handled the Jailbreak, and she did great! But she was up against Alex, her camera guy who is as fit as any Dream Teamer and is awesome and interesting and should probably be on Survivor for real. Tough draw.

As for me? I was okay! I swam hard. I shouldered my share of the raft. I was winded, sure, but not as winded as I would have been two months earlier. Was I the weak one on the team? OBVIOUSLY, but not so obvious that I would’ve been the de facto choice for the tribe to vote out if we were about to head to Tribal Council.

It also turns out that Parvati found the hidden immunity idol on the course, and I didn’t see it. Literally, because of the no glasses thing. I won’t spoil where she found the idol, but she found it, tucked it into the back of her shorts, and no one was the wiser. Early vindication that this season’s new twist might work.

I put my glasses and wedding ring back on, because the challenge is over — except that it’s not. Probst and producers want to see what it will look like on camera if my Bayon Dream Team wins the challenge, so they have us finish up Jailbreak, and by us, I mean me.

But no pressure, right? The challenge is over. We already lost. The production team has wedged the Jailbreak key onto my Jailbreak pole, so it’s not like I really have to grab anything. All I have to do is fish the pole from the gate, yank the key off, unlock the thing, remove the chains, burst through the door and boom, I’m a hero and it’s caught on camera. What could possibly go wrong?

Behold, and stand witness as everything goes wrong:

If you can’t watch the video, here’s the recap: I broke the Jailbreak pole immediately. The key flew off. I crouched down and jabbed at it over and over and over with the knife-like remnants of the pole, like some sort of faded psycho.

“Find your inner superhero, man,” Probst shouts at me. “COME ON, JOSH!“

The pressure of Probst barking behind me is very real, and the exasperated laughter of my tribe mates is also real. “Get it Josh,” shouts two-time Survivor finalist and one-time winner Parvati Shallow. “Come on, don’t let us down!” I finally skewer that key and start unwrapping the chains, and it’s difficult, really difficult, and then — and THEN! — my loose wedding ring flies off of my hand and hurtles off toward the sand.

I’m that guy, I’m thinking as my ring sails through the sky in slow-mo like a Kalabaw wrecking ball, I’m the snug-shirted doggy-paddling challenge-blowing cliche who lost his wedding ring on Survivor!

Thirty-nine days later, the chain is off, and we’re through the door, and we’re running up to the torch, and I nearly trip and die, and Parvati says, “Oh, be careful! Oh my god!” Then Parvati and ET Canada’s Daniel light up the torch and shout, “Winners! That’s how you win a challenge!” And then one of the hunky Dream Teamers hands me my wedding ring, saving my marriage right there on the spot. I watch the fire in the tiki torch die in front of me, just like I would watch my torch die in front of me if we had to go to Tribal, because now it is confirmed: I am the first person voted out of Survivor.

Move over, Wendy Jo DeSchmidt-Kohlhoff, and call me up, Chicken Morris, because damn! In an alternate universe, I am in their clubhouse. I repeat: I am the first person voted out of Survivor. Only a moron once and an idiot twice would keep me around after all that. It’s okay to say it. It’s real.

However. It is not all bad. For one thing, I ran an immunity challenge and got yelled at by Jeff Probst. For another, I ran an immunity challenge and got yelled at by Jeff Probst. Win or lose, first boot or Sole Survivor, that’s pretty awesome.

It’s also not the end of the story. Two days after Quest For Fire, I compete in the second immunity challenge of the season, an intensely physical obstacle course involving climbing A-frames and solving a vertical puzzle. I survive the A-frames with a few scrapes and scars to show for it, and then absolutely crush the puzzle portion of the challenge, alongside the great Gordon Holmes of XFinity.com. He can tell you all about it. And one day after that, I eat boiled scorpion in a gross food challenge against Gordon and Entertainment Weekly’s Dalton Ross. Turns out, I’m not so bad at that, either. Gordon can tell you about that one, too.

Point is, I’m the first person voted out on Quest For Fire day, but I’m not the first person voted out every day. With the right challenge at the right time, maybe I’m not so bad at this after all.

And yet, for all my years of Survivor fandom, for all my armchair strategizing, I can now confirm for myself that there are practical realities one must overcome in order to do well in this game, from the physical aspect to the survival aspect, living through the extreme conditions day in and day out. And then there’s the stress — oh man, the stress — of surviving the pressure of letting down your tribe while Probst breathes down your neck. The flip side of that coin? Pure elation when Probst narrates your victory. When Spencer Bledsoe describes Survivor as a constant dance between ecstasy and devastation, he’s not kidding.

Survivor, I have learned, is hard, but I sure am glad I got off the couch and found out for myself, if only on a minor league level. I strongly encourage you get off the couch and try to find out for yourself, too, if you can. If you can.

TOMORROW: Who Will Win Survivor: Second Chance? Here’s Jeff Probst’s Pick

PREVIOUSLY: Joe Anglim Thinks Dirty Thoughts About Survivor: Second Chance

START AT THE BEGINNING: Jeff Probst Tells You Everything You Need To Know About Survivor: Second Chance

Josh Wigler is a writer, editor and podcaster who has been published by MTV News, New York Magazine, Comic Book Resources, Digital Trends and more. He is the co-author of The Evolution of Strategy: 30 Seasons of Survivor, an audiobook chronicling the reality TV show’s transformation, and one of the hosts of Post Show Recaps, a podcast about film and television. Follow Josh on Twitter @roundhoward.

Visit Parade.com every week day until the September 23 premiere of Survivor: Cambodia – Second Chance for new stories from Josh’s trip to the set.

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