That never made sense when I was a kid. I knew that, for example, it would be noon in New York, and then three hours later it would be noon in L.A. But whenever I heard people talk about time zones, they’d say “it’s three hours later in New York.”
Took me ages to figure that out.
I would, however, have totally killed at the time zone task on this leg.
Quiet you! 
I realized my typo about three seconds after I posted it and I was hoping no one else would notice.
Until reading this thread I had never heard of UTC,
GMT, EST, Zulu, PST - heard of all of these, but never UTC…
Well, Ryan thought the same thing.
I heard Abba and James interviewed today and they had a few interesting things to say. They came into Moscow on a Friday, before a state holiday. Every State office including the embassy was closed for days. They didn’t get the proper paperwork to leave Russia until 6 days after they had theirs stolen. They said that in every other country it is expressly forbidden to take Gypsy Cabs except in Moscow. They negotiated a price, ran to get the clue never paying the cab fare and the driver bolted. They hypothesize that the fact that they were traveling with a camera crew made the driver assume they were celebrities and that the items in their packs would be of higher value than the fare they negotiated, and chose to cut out on the cab fare and take the bags instead.
Abba also shared that he didn’t have bad knees… He had 2 broken legs.
[QUOTE=Abba]
Here’s what happened with my knee: it turned out that it wasn’t my knee. We had thought it was potentially the meniscus. But when I came home and had a few MRIs, it turned out that I fractured both tibias. So, I ran the race with two broken legs.
[/QUOTE]
I used to be a pilot. My dad was a pilot and even kept his watch set to UTC (back when it was called Zulu). I would have killed at the time zone task.
I would not have put that together quickly. I’d like to think it wouldn’t have taken me longer than Lexi, but I could easily have been sitting there as long as Ryan. My eventual “aha!” moment would have played out exactly as Ryan’s did.
While it may result in a bit of blandness I am glad to see all the teams chugging along with pretty good intrateam dynamics.
Nobody really yelling at each other, dealing with frustration and exhaustion pretty well.
===
And the last two episodes highlight why they work so hard to keep teams from getting two spread out. It’s annoying, but shit starts to fall apart when they need to keep a detour station open for an unknown amount of time. And I’m sure they aren’t traveling around with extra production stuff just in case they have different teams on different days and therefore need to try and staff extra locations simultaneously.
Ryan was so sure he had rocked the task, and they were in such a hurry, that I can see getting into a mindset that “I know I’m right, the test is flawed”. But I have to say, the sequence showing him gradually getting more and more disgusted as he handed over his test page was pretty funny. First, handing it over with confidence & packing up his stuff; then handing it to the guy but not looking at him; then just sort of shoving it toward him while he looked the other way; then ripping it to pieces before handing it to him… my wife was laughing so hard she was crying. At least when he finally realized his mistake he acknowledged how stupid he had been.
I don’t think he’s as much of a loathsome character as the rest of you, I think he just gets a bad edit. That’s my wife’s biggest fear when we discuss, only half-seriously, whether to try out for the show. You make a couple brain farts in the heat of competition and you get edited to look like a complete tool.
If they do another all-star or missed opportunities type of season, I’d love to see the Rockers return. They were awesome.
I probably would have done the same thing. I know UTC, but I never use it. That was a brilliant task though, if you knew what you were doing you were done fast, if you knew what you were doing and missed the one small piece of the puzzle then you got screwed. That’s a well laid task.
Holy shit. Poor guy.
How the hell can you have two broken legs and be walking around?
Broken tibias. Your lower legs have TWO bones in them, so he wasn’t putting his full weight on the broken bones (and they could just as well been greenstick fractures). A portion of his body weight was taken up by his fibulas.
Did we even see a glimpse of the Rockers doing the Detour? I can’t imagine that the one with the leg problem even considered the dancing.
We didn’t see them doing the detour, usually if they’re that far behind they get a clue sending them straight to the mat.
And no one is snarking on the twinnies for using their express pass on the time zone task. With a huge lead.
That’s because the express pass expired at the end of the leg. I would have snarked on them if they hadn’t used it.
This was the last leg they could use it, so they might as well do so.
ETA, since I was ninja’d: And, assuming neither one was charged with having chosen to do the task, the Roadblock would be the most strategic task to use it on, since it leaves open the possibility they could still choose who to do the RB on the last leg, rather than being forced to even up the count.
I don’t know - if I was them, I think I would have tried the Roadblock at least once - spend 5 minutes to see if it’s an easy task, which it certainly could have been. I was hoping they got creamed at the Detour just because I was annoyed they gave up on the Roadblock so easily.
I agree, but according to the Wikipedia article for this season, they had to identify which twin would do it before handing in the express pass, so she was ‘charged’ with a roadblock even though she didn’t have to complete it. I don’t remember which twin it was, but since I don’t know which is which anyway it doesn’t matter.