AR12 - Leg 2 - Ditch Valuting for Dummies

10 teams remain... who will be eliminated next?

Tarry no longer in Ireland, they're immediately off to Amsterdam. The only thing for certain about starting off with a flight is that all of the teams will be relatively equalized into a couple of groups. Especially when they're all starting off around midnight or 2am.

Quote of the night so far comes from Kate and Pat, "We are religious people, but we have no allusions that God cares if we win The Amazing Race." Too funny.

Well, apparantly it wasn't quite as much as getting to the airport to catch a plane to Amsterdam, but to attempt to book the flight fast enough. And some early morning drama on the first morning of the race, probably a bit of lack of sleep makes the tempers rise. What else is to be expected? Of course, the producers will capitalize on that and try to make it seem more dramatic than it is. However, 9 teams make it on the first flight to Dublin, 1 team gets left behind for the next flight. But... you never know, that team will probably end up in first when all is said and done.

Ooohhh, and Team Tacoma pulls the nice card and tries to get a step ahead on the standby list for the flight, but apparently fails as they end up on the second flight. Ronald goes on a bit of a tirade at Grandson about how being rude won't get you anywhere... he might take a bit of his own suggestion and avoid making too many enemies this early on the race. At least *pretend* to be friends with everyone. :)

Detour: Hoist it of Hunt it. Hoist 5 pieces of furniture using pulleys to a several story building. Or hunt for two specifically marked bikes among hundreds, and bike 5 miles to get your next clue. Hoist it seems pretty quick and easy, hunt it seems long and painful. By my long-standing philosophy, take the harder one. But I just can't imagine hunt it to be much easier than this. Though hoist it seems like any of a thousand cartoon episodes where they try to hoist a grand piano 5 stories only to have it crash to the ground on Wile E. Coyote instead of the Road Runner.

This brings us to my latest idea for a new game element... and this is sheer genius if you ask me... I call it the "Dead End". It occurs in association with a Detour on the race, but after you complete one of the detours, it leads you to the forementioned dead end after which you have to go back and take the other detour and try to catch up the lost time. The only problem is that it's really a random penalty if you just happen to choose the wrong detour to take the first time. I think the only time it would be reasonable to do that is if it's a very short detour that won't take long, but just enough to be a minor penalty for choosing poorly. But it would be fun. I hereby place this idea in the public domain... so if the producers of the Amazing Race decide to read my blog and want to try it, go right ahead. :)

Back to the race, we're off to the next stop. As I suspected, those who did Hoist It well managed to pull about 5 spots ahead of the first place team who did the Hunt It.

Roadblock. The Dutch sport of "Ditch Valuting". The name says all you need to know. Sounds like fun to me. And incredibly easy for DC2. Lorena and Jason, are off to the pit stop. This is going to provide quite the comic relief though.

The final 3 teams are just now making it to Amsterdam. But I suspect they'll make it further than some who are already there.

"Lorena and Jason... you're team number one!" DC1 makes it #2, followed shortly by the blondes at #3. Could we pick three more annoying teams as the first three teams? Seriously.

Ronald talks too much. Shut up.

Pops... oh my goodness. "I have no comment," says grandson. I concur.

The goths come in #4, siblings #5 and the newlydaters #6. I actually like these teams.

Ronald still talks too much.

But team Tacoma pulls of a #9 finish.

Kate and Pat are going to hear the 6 words no racer wants to hear "You're the last team to arrive".

This was a rather quick moving episode. Again, not particularly interesting. But we are proceeding to eliminate the only teams who are actually distinct. I have yet to be really interested in what happens next... but it's early in the race and still not the real exciting stuff yet.

Oh, and the show's over... but I have this suspicion that Ronald is still talking too much.