Yeah, I was rolling my eyes at that. One thing not brought up again was that that five team alliance printed out maps and they seemed to have the easiest time finding the place.
Since everyone seemed to have access to the internet terminals at the airport, I can’t understand why some of them didn’t look up the place they knew they’d be going to once they landed.
The orchestra was totally awesome, although I’m not sure why some teams had so much trouble installing the bridge on their cellos.
It looks like the bridge wasn’t connected in any way, just held in place by tension. So if you didn’t string it up right and in the right order, it would just fall down.
I know; I used to play the viola. Thought it was interesting how many of the Racers seemed to have some experience with stringed instruments.
I dropped my viola once and the bridge came out. I managed to slip it back under that strings and twist it into place. And most of the teams didn’t have any trouble with the bridge.
There was a nice video story on the landfill instruments on Al Jazeera that I watched a few months ago. It says it’s no longer available to view online, but I watched on my Roku, perhaps it is still available somewhere. Some of those kids ended up playing with Megadeth at a show.
Really? So you’re in an unfamiliar country, you don’t speak the language, you’re in a taxi with an obviously expensive piece of equipment filming you. Your driver drives you into a ghetto and leaves you and you’re not in the least bit concerned. THAT’s what I roll my eyes at.
Actually, female driver, marked taxi cab, and she’s obviously asking for directions - not meeting up with someone she knows. I feel pretty ok. Annoyed, a bit worried that she might end up charging me double extra for getting lost and re-found, but not the level that those women were showing.
You add in a camera crew - who can get in contact with producers (even if I can’t) and in a situation where we’re likely being geo-tracked, & knowing that if something does go wrong, the TV show will cover the costs. I’m great. They’re worried for all of the wrong reasons.
My guess is camera crew. One guy since it films in a cab with obviously 4 seats. So all the women in prison are innocent because they can’t possibly be involved in crime because they’re…women? And if I was a criminal would I stop at a random house and ask if they wanted to go in on it with me? No, I’d go to the house of someone I obviously knew who was already in on it. Again, foreign country, don’t know what anyone is saying, ghetto at least by American experiential standards and the cab driver stops and leaves me alone. Its not an unreasonable feeling and I really get tired of people seeing racism and classism every time they turn around. What you describe above is the reason tourists get taken advantage of, not being aware and cautious about your surroundings and situation.
That was my point. The cab driver was obviously not meeting up with someone she knew - she was stopping at a random house. Which would be a sign to me of more relative safety.
Perhaps I take bigger risks when I travel - but I do look for things like official cabs (which they were in). And while lots of women are involved in lots of different types of crimes - I do think that a female driver is less likely to try to overpower me than a male driver is. (and even more, I think a female driver is way less likely to try to overpower me, my friend, and the camera crew.) &tc. All added together, they were not in a dangerous situation.
When I travel, I am constantly asking myself, “is this dangerous or is this different?” It means paying more attention to what’s going on around me in order to make that determination. The kind of poverty that you can often see in certain countries is very different than what people who have the means to travel usually see in the US. But that doesn’t mean it’s dangerous - it doesn’t mean it isn’t, but you do have to be more aware and more observant than just “poverty → danger” A tourist who looks at poorer people and assumes they’re all about to kill them… that doesn’t say good things about the tourist.
What I remember from previous articles and interviews with racers:
There’s 2 crew with each team at all times. A camera operator and sound/producer. The camera operator sits in the front seat, the producer sits in the back with the racers behind the camer operator - that’s why the racers are always squished together in the shot.
The producer is in contact with the main production team at all times, and their location is tracked constantly. Losing contact is actually treated as an emergency situation. The production team has a number of roving teams whose job it is to support the racing teams - from mundane stuff like equipment issues, to car accidents, to medical emergencies.
Depending on the country/leg, cab drivers are at times pre-selected and pre-vetted. At the very least, they have to provide their ID/taxi license, as well as sign a TV release, before the racers can use their cab. Obviously this is all edited out of what we see on TV.
The racers are aware of all of this. So yes, I’m pretty comfortable saying they were in zero danger, and intellectually knew this, but were still upset they were in a neighborhood full of poor non-white people.
Why does everything have to be about race? If they thought they were supposed to be going to an orchestra, and then the cabbie looks to be lost and driving them through a poor slum instead, I can see how they would be nervous.
There have definitely been times in earlier seasons where the racers were in unsafe places because of cab drivers taking them to the wrong place. I remember the police getting involved a couple times.
Ok, I’ve watched the relevant scenes again, and you’re right, it could also be interpreted as “I can’t believe how lost we are, we’re nowhere near an orchestra, oh shit she’s so lost she’s asking random strangers for directions.” The worst thing they said was “This is our worst nightmare”, which could go either way - certainly one of the worst things that can happen to you in the Race is to get a bad cabbie who drives you hours away from your actual destination, and there’s pretty much nothing you can do about that.
DeAngelo did say his greatest claim to fame was “building Ikea furniture without the instructions”, so his cello building skills made sense.
yeah, you’re all right–evil white blondes, that’s the only answer.
He could make a mint doing this. I’d sure pay.
How many hours would you drive up and down a 2km strip of road before you asked for directions?
It looked like they asked for directions several times, but couldn’t follow them. I feel sorry for them.
About a year ago, I took this self-drive tour in a golf cart with a turn-by-turn direction thing that said told me “turn left here.” “go straight for 50 meters” interspersed with interesting facts about the area. I was in a strange city where I didn’t speak the language. And the city was not laid out in a grid, but a bunch of streets that went hither and thither with “squares” that had what seemed like dozens of one-way streets that connected.
It is amazing how “lost” you can get in tiny little area - I was never more than half a mile from where I should be - but I couldn’t figure out how to straighten out and get back to where I was supposed to go. I ended up going down one street (that I was sure was right) several times because I couldn’t figure out where or when to turn off. The tour company had to call me up and tell me not to follow the directions anymore - instead - they talked me through some steps that skipped that part of the tour and reconnected me to the route somewhere where the streets were more straightforward. Of course, the entire time, I’m getting frustrated, I’m pissing off the people behind me and the people to the side of me and the people on the private roads I ended up on because something went wrong somewhere.
tl;dr - it’s easy to get lost in European streets.
Along with “learning to drive a stick.” One of your prep tasks for the Amazing Race should be to have a friend pick an address on a map about 2 hours away from you. You and your partner have to get there - one of you in the front seat, one in the backseat with just a paper map.
My guess is the people who can’t drive a stick maybe spent an afternoon with a friend and their car or paid for a single lesson at a driving school. As someone who can’t drive stick and who once spent an afternoon driving my then-stepmother’s stick because my dad thought I should learn the basics I think you need at least a week driving.
Loved that interview with Gary and DeAngelo where DeAngelo learns of Gary’s love of art. And Gary did the task like that! Go Gary!
Honestly, if I got on Amazing Race, I’m not sure I would even know how to go about learning how to drive stick. Are there schools for that?
I was completely caught off guard by the blondes overtaking. I was sure it was just a bunch of dramatic nonsense and they would finish in dead last. I really wish they did more “drive yourself” or “walk” legs. Taxi drama is just boring and unfair.
I missed a few minutes of this episode. When I left, the first couple teams were whipping cream and making pies, and when I got back people were throwing pies at them. If you dropped your pie, did you have to go back and make another?
I also missed the first team finishing that task, so I didn’t hear how far it was from the bakery to the carnival museum. I got the impression later that the carnival was in Paris, so part of the drive time would be getting back to the city.
There was a caption at the end stating how long Michelle & Victoria had been driving, but I didn’t catch the actual numbers. How long did it take them to find that museum; how lost were they?
The implied that if you dropped it you would have to remake it but no one dropped it anyway.
They didn’t say on the show but Google Maps show it’s about an hour from the bakery to the carnival. Michelle and Victoria were in the car for six and half hours. It wasn’t clear if that included the drive back to Paris or not.