I wouldn’t be surprised itf there was a new rule about paying your cab the full fare unless he agrees to accept what you give him. There have been several situations in the past where this has gotten out of hand with the police and such.
Why in the world would a bookmaker take bets on something that has already happened??
Excellent point. Stupid bookies. When they wise up, there will be far fewer leaks & spoilers.
I don’t think it’s been noted – the million-dollar crucial point in the race was when U&J’s cabbie asked for directions in Spanish, which just happened to correspond to the actual name of the store they were looking for. Romber, on the other hand, not only didn’t get good directions, they got terribly bad directions (16 blocks off, IIRC). $1M right there.
Colin was excellent at working the airport – which was why it was such a shock when his airport strategy backfired on him. (Hee.) The one time he failed to look for a better flight, it bit him in the ass. (Hee hee.) You just know he is a nightmare to travel with now.
In fairness, I don’t know how wrong the flight to London really was. Hindsight and all; it ended up working out for the two teams on the connecting flight but it just as easily could have gone terribly wrong for them, and then U&J would have been in better shape. Anytime you have a connection, you’ve got two chances for delays to cause a problem. I’ve spent too many nights sitting in the Houston airport to not know that. Your first flight could be delayed, causing you to miss your connection completely, or your connecting flight could be delayed, which happened to teams a couple of seasons ago. Plus, they didn’t actually have confirmed seats in Frankfort, so they could have been stuck there. Lots of ways that could have gone bad; lucky for Rob it didn’t.
U&J took the safe choice, made somewhat safer by having the old folks with them. As long as the oldsters stuck around, you had to like your chances in a heads-up race with them.
Not saying they were perfect, but the worst of their mistakes were early. They were pretty solid down the stretch.
Or on Preview, what Zut said. Adding maybe that having to beg at 3am is a pretty big hurdle. Granted it may be editing, but if they were starting on even footing Uchenna looked like he would have smoked the other two at the golf and been way ahead.
Under normal circumstances, yes. But how can somebody be pulling a scam, with a camera guy right there, filming the whole thing?
The boats didn’t take them all the way back to shore. When Ron is comming out of the water, you can see his boat a good distance from the shore.
I thought it was funny when Amber climbed into her boat. We hear her say, “let’s go”, but you can just see her legs sticking up in the air.
Did anyone else notice that Joyce failed to remove her golf outfit?
I didn’t, but I can’t say I blame her. She had just the clothes on her back, and heaven only knows how long they might have been running around in the same clothes.
I noticed it, too. I figured, after the others changed out of the clothes before leaving, that they weren’t allowed to take them. Either Joyce sweet-talked somebody into it, or Rob, Amber, Ron & Kelly wasted time changing back into their clothes. 
Does anyone know what time they hit the mat? How long after U&J where Romber, etc?
I too am not cynical enough to believe the producers had anything to do with the flight being held. I think it was simply communication with the pilot about having racers on the plane and another team at the gate, and he/she personally decided that would be a cool thing to do.
I also don’t think anyone on the race or crew intentionally leaked the outcome. It may have been people in the park. Personally, if I won a million dollars, even if I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t buy anything and I didn’t change my lifestyle, you can bet my demeanor would change. I would seem much more relaxed and have a stupid grin on my face. People around me would no doubt know that something was up.
I was happy with the outcome, but I would have been fine with Rob and Amber winning. They were excellent racers. Ron & Kelly need to be bludgened with a hammer and I think if they won, my head would have exploded.
Ya know, my first theory was that the race was filmed in January, right after the tsunami happened, so they avoided S.E. Asia entirely. But according to Meredith & Gretchen’s blog (which was shut down by CBS, but Google’s cache is still active) the race was filmed in December. So now I’m totally confused.
They are specifically not allowed to say the words “Amazing Race”; technically, they’re supposed to tell people they are filming a documentary for the Travel Channel. No, really. Everyone does bend the rules a bit by saying “race” or “competition”, and I think once a team actually said, “We’re in a RACE and it would be AMAZING if you could help us!” On the other hand, just how daft do they think people are, they are carrying bright yellow envelopes that say THE AMAZING RACE on them, and TAR does have a sizeable international following.
Re: Airport strategy. Teri & Ian from TAR3 were also wizards of the airport. Every time they took a flight, they wound up several hours ahead of all the other teams.
Whenever a team ends up begging for money, they usually ask fellow Americans, since they don’t feel right asking the poor people of whatever country they’re in. I always wonder how long it will be before someone sees the black fannypack with the red and yellow stripes and realizes they’re on TAR and hands over $50 or some other huge amount. I keep waiting for someone to say, “Hey, you’re on The Amazing Race, aren’t you? Here, take all my money!” 
Regarding Joyce’s golf shirt: IIRC, they all had the racer’s names stitched on them. Kelly and Ron said something about grabbing the shirts with their names on them when they went in the golf shop. I would have taken mine, too. Maybe everyone took theirs, but just packed it, and Joyce decided to wear hers since it was cleaner than the one she had on.
I think of that every time I see a team begging. Because I’d sure as hell see the fanny pack and hand over whatever I could spare.
Of course, months later, I’d be watching the season unfold, and realize the team I gave money to on the 8th leg is the team I’ve despised since the second leg.
Yeah, that’d be my luck. I’d get all excited and go to the ATM and hand over $100 to a team… only to realize later that I had given money to a Ron & Kelly-like team. :smack:
Although I was pulling for Rob and Amber, I must admit that I am satisfied with the outcome. Joyce is a wonderful person, and if incredible luck should befall anyone, I’m glad it was she.
Dont’ get me wrong, U and J won and that fact alone means they are a quality team but they werent’ ever out in front until they fast forwarded. I guess the reason I wasn’t cheering for them (I wasn’t cheering against them either) was that they don’t have any sort of killer instinct. They clearly want it, hell U chopped off her hair, I thought that was total hunger right there and that really endeared me to her/them. They just weren’t as consistently good as Rob and Amber.
I’d like to see a race with no bottlenecking. None of this “we don’t open until 10am bullshit”. You can’t do much with the airlines but removing the bottlenecking would give you more of an idea of who the top teams really are.
In all fairness, I noticed there was much less bunching this season than in previous seasons – which I think made the season better. Now if they could just get rid of the begging…
Responding to several things:
First, when U&J were begging at the airport at 3 am, I don’t think they had that red & yellow purse with them. Wasn’t that taken from them along with everything else? I know the other teams hadn’t carried theirs after Phil took their stuff. But ITA that the camera crew would have been a dead giveaway.
Second, from people who were at TARcon (the fan-run viewing party loosely associated with but not affiliated with TWOP) last night and talked with racers (who come to TARcon the second they can ditch the boring official CBS viewing party), time estimates between U&J and Romber arriving on the mat vary between ten minutes (Lynn & Alex’s version) to an hour (Joyce’s version).
And apparently every racer showed up at the party except either Megan or Heidi, whichever is the one with the young child at home. Even Romber made it and were, by all accounts, very pleasant. Kelly and Ron came in separately and by all accounts never got within 20 feet of each other all night. They both reported they broke up a month or two before the race started, and Ron wanted to race with an Army buddy, but the producers insisted on Kelly. And we know how well that turned out (at least for the parties involved).
Last, Colin & Christie’s airport woes actually weren’t what we were actually shown, according to a long interview they gave to www.tarflies.com a few months ago. It’s a long and involved story, but they did indeed check on a better flight and it’s a long and involved story. So if anyone is interested, you can read it for yourself and find out. (They talked on the phone for an hour and a half, so it’s in three looong parts since Tarflies does totally verbatim interviews now. I should know; I transcribe them, just for fun. Don’t tell my employers how much time I waste on it!)
Just glad that the “stupid black couple” won. I’m glad that editors including Rob’s insults about them throughout the race. And I’m glad he lost.
I was bawling when those two won, especially since they had been through all the ups and downs of the race. And unlike the other teams, they hadn’t won any 1st place prizes. That pissed me off a lot. A million dollars makes up for it.
Rob and Amber make an excellent team, but I wish Rob wasn’t such an arrogant prick. I’d actually be able to conjure up more respect for him.
But I think most people view this in a negative light when, in fact, it should be viewed as a positive. There are many strategies to employ in hopes of winning the race and this is definitely one of them - and one of the better ones from what I’ve seen. Rob and Amber weren’t the first to use it and certainly won’t be the last. I just disagree with how many people are viewing this as “cheating” in some way - it’s a perfectly legal move that any team could do. Yeah, Rob and Amber have the celebrity factor working for them (although we only saw one person who helped them in the entire race that openly acknowledged that she knew who they were, didn’t we?), but I think it’s more in line with what a lot of people here have said - Rob just had the balls to go up to someone and ask them. Plenty of teams could have done that and likely have as much luck with it as Rob and Amber. Fact is, they just didn’t try most of the time.
I still honestly believe that Rob played this race as smart as anyone I’ve seen. On every leg, he was looking for a non-traditional strategy that could get them ahead and many times, he found it. Anyone on the show can do it, it’s just that Rob actually DID do it.