Recap of Amazing Race, Episode 9  by Arthur Perkins
 
Teams are released from the pit stop in Almaty as these times:
 
Nick/Starr 921pm
Toni/Dallas 1047pm
Ken/Tina 1117pm
Andrew/Dan 1241am
 
Nick and Starr's Fast forward won them a 1.5 hour advantage over the next team, but everything is leveled by a bunching at Almaty Airport. Dan and Andrew have  no shoes and use come there is slippers, but have to spend $300 to get the least expensive sneakers for both at that Airport. All teams get a 605am nonstop flight from Almaty to Moscow. Then taxi driver roulette takes over for the rest of this episode because all rides were quite long. Moscow is a  huge metropolitan area. Teams that are lucky enough to get a competent and knowledgeable driver move ahead while teams plagued with bad luck fall back.
 
On the first taxi segment, driving to a Monastery, both Ken/Tina and Dan/Andrew are victims. All teams light a candle, get their clue and are off to the Kolosok decommissioned military base where they find a DETOUR but on the way Nick/Starr are delayed by taxi driver inability to get to the destination quickly. Either way they have to change to military garb, including a cloth wrapping over the feet. Doing that wrapping takes a huge amount of time for Dan/Andrew. BOOTS is selecting a drill group, learning how to march, then doing a tour of the grounds using the distinct goosestep with swinging arms. Nobody has any problem with this except Dan. Andrew was in marching band so he knows how to do it, but Dan is hopeless and hapless. The "soldiers" (they might actually be that) get great laughs off Dan's style because he has no rhythm and cannot match the needed precision. So while the other teams have left Dan/Andrew decide to switch to the other DETOUR of Borscht service for 75 soldiers. Dan almost immediately think this is a mistake after they start the preparations, so they go back to BOOTS but Dan has made no progress and still can't do the required marching well enough and they are rejected for one more time. So they go back to BORSCHT again, do this well, and get on their way.
 
The taxi driver that Nick/Starr have is hopeless on the next segment to Zhukovsky where they must locate a specific bakery. They switch but the next one isn't much better. By the time they get there, they are far back in 3rd place. It is a Roadblock with the task being carrying 50 55-pound sacks of flour from a truck into the bakery and staking it neatly. Dallas has a head start and manages to finish first, but he went out of the blocks too hard by carrying 2 bags each load. Ken with his NFL experience was able to do that and he and Dina made up most of the time deficit against Toni and Dallas. Nick was clearly slower but he progressed steadily and left to chase the others to the pit stop. Dan/Andrew showed up soon after and Dan plowed through the flour bags, making up time on Nick/Starr.
 
Getting to the pit stop required another long taxi ride to find a specific address, I believe the Russian Academy of Sciences at 14 Leninsky Prospekt. Once there teams have to find a hard-to-find gate to get into a garden where the finish mat is. Toni/Dallas maintain their lead , finish first and win a trip by Travelocity to the Punta Cana resort area of Dominican Republic. Ken/Tina are a close second and happy with that performance. Nick/Starr have more taxi troubles and finally arrive in third place. Dan/Andrew continue with the same taxi driver, but the length of the trips and the total taxi expense of several hundred dollars for the day wipe out their funds to pay for it and leave them around $200 short as best I can tell. They got their taxi driver to accept something (it's not clear to me what) for the shortage. They finish last but are saved by a non-elimination point. They will face a speed bump on leg 10.
 
This was a hilarious episode, with the "soldiers" were laughing hard at Dan's feeble attempts to march and the AR13 viewers also having fun  with it. The can-do attitude of all those doing the Roadblock was a positive statement. Ken did best, Dallas second, Dan third and the less muscular Nick was last. The setup of this leg to focus on differential taxi driver performance was fun to watch, although it had to be hard on all teams except Toni/Dallas gritting their teeth while it was happening. We now come up to the penultimate episode next week. It is virtually certain to be an elimination point because no Amazing Race has gone with 4 teams into the final leg.

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