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The Amazing Race 15: Episode 9 - Victor Jih's Top 10 Moments

Posted on 11/18/2009 by Gina in The Amazing Race

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The Amazing Race

 

by Victor Jih
Winner of The Amazing Race Season 14

 

So I took a week off while I was in China.  But I’m back.  Last week on The Amazing Race, five teams traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, where they obtained ROUTE INFO after riding a Fritt Fall and tossing rings at coned Travelocity gnomes.  At the DETOUR, teams chose between Nobel Dynamite or Viking Alphabet.  After every team decided to blow things up, they were faced with an Amazing Race SWITCHBACK where they had to travel back to Bogs Gard Farm and the site of the infamous needle-in-a-haystack ROADBLOCK.  To be more precise, one team member had to search through hundreds of hay bales for one of seven small flags.  Gary and Matt finished in last place in what ultimately turned out to be a non-elimination leg. 

 

This week, the same five teams traveled to Tallinn, Estonia.  There, they raced to the Mustpeade Maja, where, at the ROADBLOCK, one team member had to solve a mystery in the secret merchant society.  Taking a candelabra, the team member had to find a specified room, secure a blank scroll, and figure out how to decipher the burnt blank scroll with their candle.  At the DETOUR, teams had to choose between mud volleyball (Serve) or vegetable slingshots (Sling).  In the end, Gary and Matt finished last again and were eliminated.  Meghan and Cheyne finished in first place after a phenomenal showing in mud volleyball.  As always, here are ten random thoughts from someone who has been there before:
 
1. I couldn’t blog last week about the Amazing Race because I was in Shanghai and Beijing, where this Season of the Amazing Race has not yet aired.  Ironically, I was watching television in the hotel room and saw a commercial for Season 14 (our season) of the Race, which is just starting to air.  The internet was not an option since you can’t access CBS.com’s video feeds from China (territory restrictions) and youtube.com is apparently being blocked in China.  My inability to watch the show reminded me of our season.  Our parents live in Taiwan and we had a huge issue trying to find a way for them to watch the show in some semi-live capacity.  We tried saving the shows and transferring them by internet, but the files were much too large.  We ended up streaming the show live with Slingbox to Taiwan.  It was funny because while I watched in California with my friends, I would sometimes pause the show to talk about what was happening.  But when I did so, my parents would immediately call from Taiwan frantic because the feed had stopped!  Anyway, on to this week…
 
2. Because Gary and Matt came in last the prior leg, they had to deal with a SPEED BUMP this leg, which involved sitting in a sauna bus for five minutes.   Five minutes didn’t seem like a long time, but it must have taken a while to locate the sauna bus since many teams finished the ROADBLOCK at the Mustpeade Maja before Gary and Matt were even able to start the ROADBLOCK.  I did like the SPEED BUMP, though, since it required teams to relax in the middle of a very stressful situation.  Although Matt looked anxious sitting next to the blond Swedish bombshell, he was all smiles.  
 
3.  It is clear the stress level is increasing as there are fewer and fewer teams.  The question is whether teams perform well under stress or whether they start making stupid mistakes.  Under stressful conditions, racers can do some really stupid things (like Matt thinking a “candelabra” was a person is or Sam thinking “tower” spells “toe-ver”).  After some atrocious looking volleyball, the Globetrotters ran in the wrong direction instead of towards the pit-stop.  And Gary and Matt misread the clue and try to go into a Tower when the cluebox is outside on the grounds.  Gary and Matt make more mistakes this leg and are eliminated.  If the Globetrotters do not calm down, they may be the next to go.  We will see.
 
4.  As mentioned above, Matt had trouble reading the blank parchment.  He finally read ¾ of the clue, but never finished the clue—so he and his father ended up racing to the Pikk Hermann Tower, and not the Pikk Hermann Tower Gardens.  I was surprised, though, since the Globetrotters yelled out the location in front of Gary as they were racing out of the building.  Didn’t Gary remember hearing it was the gardens?  In any event, I was shocked Gary did not cross-examine his son when they could not find the location of the next clue box.  I could tell Gary wanted to “go with the flow” and just “trust his son.”  But in order to be a true partnership, one team member needs to be willing to cross-examine the other team member.  I do not blame Matt for his franticness or momentary lapses into stupidity.  The truth is, there will be legs where one team member does not function well or think straight (remember how Cheyne struggled the prior leg and Meghan had to step up and make all of the decisions).  The only way to guard against one person’s inability to think or function is to make sure the other person is checking them to prevent disaster.  The challenge is how to second-guess each other under situations of extreme stress without driving the other person nuts.  Not challenging them and avoiding conflict is not the right answer.  I know from first-hand experience that’s not easy.  It’s difficult to challenge your teammate without raising years of baggage.  I do know that screaming at them (like Dan did to Sam at the hay bales) while they tell you to shut up doesn’t work.  Tammy and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to constructively question each other without causing a nuclear melt-down.  That’s probably the most important thing teammates can do to prepare for the race—figuring out communication styles that work under pressure.  We had to figure it out during the race.
 
5. On the way to the DETOUR, teams had to scramble to find taxicabs.  Brian and Ericka and Meghan and Cheyne chased after the same cab.  After Brian surrendered the cab (to Ericka’s dismay), Meghan and Cheyne took off telling the cab driver not to worry about the other team, even though Brian and Ericka had asked them to have the driver call for another cab.  Brian and Ericka were able to find another cab quickly, so no harm no foul.  This incident does highlight, however, the different ways different teams are approaching the race.  Meghan and Cheyne, Gary and Matt, and the Globetrotters all seem to be racing alone and are unabashedly out for themselves.  While Sam and Dan and Brian and Ericka are clearly looking out for their own interests, they seem more inclined to work with other teams or to care what other teams think.  It will be interesting to see which approach prevails in the end.
 
6.  I loved how Brian and Ericka tried to get their cab driver to slow down Meghan and Cheyne’s cab driver.  We tried the same thing during the first leg of our season.  As we raced to the pit stop in Switzerland, we knew that Margie and Luke were minutes ahead of us.  We tried to get our cab driver to call their driver and to convince him to slow down, to wait for us, or to go the wrong way.  Our cab driver was happy to do so, but the other cab driver wouldn’t be duped.  (Something about a cab driver’s fiduciary duty to the passenger?)  It didn’t work for Brian and Ericka either.
 
7.  Running to the DETOUR, Meghan and Cheyne are able to find the marked path to the bog pretty easily, by keeping their eyes on the road.  Brian and Ericka, however, miss the marked path.  Seeing Brian and Ericka ahead of them, the trailing teams (with the exception of Gary and Matt who are way behind) all take their eyes off the road and chase after Brian and Ericka.  The result?  All of them miss the marked path.  I call this the lemming effect.  Once teams see another team, they start following that team instead of focusing on the task at hand (i.e., finding the marked path).  Like lemmings, they follow each other into disaster.  It’s so easy to get derailed as soon as you see another team, because the adrenaline gets pumping and people want to catch up to the team ahead.  The brain shifts to “catch up” instead of “do the task.”
 
8.  Mud volleyball in the bogs of Estonia confirms a continuing trend on the Amazing Race—prepare to get dirty.  During our season, we had our share of sheep crap, pie throwing, etc.  The designers of the Race are kind, because the “messy” portion is usually right before the pit stop.  What you don’t see on television, though, is that dealing with the “mess” is NOT easy.   We learned the hard way that keeping the dirty clothing from soiling the other clothing in your backpack is not easy.  And trying to clean your clothes—and more importantly to DRY your clothes—during a 12-hour pit stop is near impossible.  After our pie-throwing adventures, my clothes smelled like cake for a week!   Plastic baggies are key.
 
9.  I don’t understand why the Globetrotters and Sam and Dan were fighting at the end of the episode.  First, I’m not sure why they were racing to the pit stop when they knew they were not battling for first place nor were they facing elimination.  Second, I’m not sure why the Globetrotters would be mad they fell when they were clearly chasing from behind.  It reminded me a lot of our season and the fight between Margie and Luke and Jennifer and Kisha.  The “elbows” were about getting to a cluebox first (when the seconds didn’t matter).  I’m concerned the Globetrotters will be more concerned about exacting retribution on Sam and Dan the next leg, instead of running a good race in the relaxed and fun-loving way they have approached the race so far.  If distracted, the Globetrotters could face elimination.
 
10.  Finally, no comment on Sam’s and Dan’s “brief” encounter with pixelation.
 
Until next week…

 

 

The Amazing Race airs Sundays at 8pm ET on CBS.


(Image courtesy of CBS)

 


For more The Amazing Race links, visit SirLinksALot.net!


  


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