Amazing Race: Cathi Falls Down a Lot

This leg of the race, teams stayed in Indonesia to do some bike riding,they did some field work involving planting rice seedlings and herding sheep, and then roamed around a huge temple. What we really learned though is that it is tough to walk through a rice field as Cathi proved by continuously falling down.

Bike Surfing

The day started with teams taking part in a Colonial Bike Ride on what was once a traditional Dutch bike patrol path with a group of really slow moving bike riders. They also got to wear goofy outfits. The snowboarders pretended they were surfing on their bikes. We learned that Jennifer couldn’t ride a bike since she almost immediately steered her bike into a wall and a person.

It wasn’t a task that would put one team ahead or behind one another since they had to keep pace with the rest of the their bike group, but Ernie lost a pedal, which actually put Control Freak team behind quite a few people They lost their third place position as the twins, dating divorcees, farmers and brother/sister teams passed them. They were only ahead of the NFL team. This did not please Cindy.

Field Work

After the teams were done with that task, they took taxis to Salakmalang Village where they found a detour. The teams had the choice of going through a rice field to fill up two huge bags with freshly cut grass, carry them over to another place to pick up two sheep and then walk the sheep over to another area with the grass to turn them all in. After that, they had to fill up six buckets full of water from a well and pour it into a trough for the sheep. The other choice was to take a plate of food out to the workers in the rice field and while they had their lunch break, the team members had to plant 300 rice seedlings.

A few teams found out that they didn’t fill up their bags enough, but they weren’t given that information until after they lugged the bags over to collect the sheep and then walked them over to another location. That’s when some teams were told that they didn’t fill up their bags enough, which forced them to take the sheep back, then run to fill up the bags and repeat the task again. The snowboarders were one of the teams that had to fill up their bags again. That allowed the father/son team to catch up to them. They were both filling up their buckets, when the snowboarders noticed that the father/son team had not read their clue close enough to see that it said they could only use two buckets at a time. The snowboarders even told the team to read their clue, but they didn’t catch on. Those first two teams left the detour by the time that the rest of the teams arrived. The only team missing was the NFL team since they were the last team to leave the pit stop and had a slow taxi driver.

While people were either running through the rice fields to pick up the grass or head out to plant the seeds, a few people slipped since it looked like the grass was flat, but it was deceiving and most of the grass was sticking out of water. Cathi was the worst at staying on the hard parts of the ground. There was a fabulous montage of her falling over and over again. She never got mad and never got frustrated. She would just yell, “I’m okay!” and get back up. She was filthy when she was finished with the detour task. The sheep were also unruly, which made many teams have issues with trying to get them follow them along. When Marcus couldn’t get his sheep to cooperate, he just picked it up and carried it. Jennifer told Justin that his sheep, “sounds like it smokes a six pack a day.”  Cathi lost her sheep at one point and had to go off chasing after it.

While it sounded like the hay & sheep task might be quicker, it actually took much longer. Most teams chose the sheep task with only the twins and showgirls picking the rice seedling task. Those two teams finished the detour before the rest of the teams that all arrived at the detour at the same time. The teams had all finished and took off to the text task by the time that the NFL team arrived. They started off doing the sheep task, but when they found out they did not fill up their bags enough, they just switched to planting the rice seedlings. By the time they finished, all the teams had arrived at the temple that was the location of the next clue.

Counting Buddhas


The next stop in the leg was Borobudur Temple, which had a road block. Teams had to trek all the way up to the top of the temple in order to receive the road block. One team member had to walk around the entire temple and count how many buddhas had different hand positions. They also had to demonstrate the hand position to the judge when given the final count of each position. The snowboarders and father/son team arrived to the temple around the same time. They decided to work together. When they finished, they gave the final count of 17, 17, 17 and 18. The judge asked how many of what. That’s when they went back up and figured out they needed to remember what the hand position was for each number. When they were headed back into the temple, Zac yelled to his dad, “Take your time Dad.” That made Andy say, “Take your time? What are you guys doing?”

The rest of the teams were arriving while the first two teams were still counting. The only teams missing were the NFL team that were still back at the detour and the dating divorcee team that had to get out and run the last kilometer to the temple since the taxi they were in died. All the team members were working by themselves at first. Ernie was thinking he needed to count carvings and not just statues. People were coming up with numbers as varied as 68 to 400. None of them were figuring out they needed to count each different statue hand position. The snowboarders and father/son team were able to get it correctly and were off to the pit stop first. While they were leaving, they passed the NFL team as they were coming in. The snowboarders told them the hand positions and the numbers so they could go right to the judge. They wanted them to stay in the race. Unfortunately, they were exhausted from the detour and then were exhausted after walking up to the top of the temple, so Marcus said he would do it but he hadn’t been paying as much attention as Amani had when the snowboarders gave them the hand signals.

The other teams finally figured out the hand positions in the clue. Four teams started working together (twins, Control Freak, Brother and Divorcee). Marcus and the showgirl started working together, and Bill was working on his own. Even with all the teams working together, Bill got the answer first. The group of four teams finally got it just before the showgirl and Marcus finished.

Pit Stop

For the pit stop, teams needed to walk over there (they were not allowed to run) and many teams had to go back to where they had left their cabs to settle up before checking in. Two teams lucked out by not having to pay their cabs. That would be the dating divorcees that had left their cab when it died and the NFL team since they didn’t like their cab driver after being slow all day so they had planned on finding another one after the task, if they needed it.

The father/son team were the first team to arrive at the pit stop, but they incurred a 15 minute penalty for using more than two buckets at the detour. How do they determine the length of penalties in this game? It used to be 30 minutes for everything. Anyway, they had to wait so the snowboarders checked checked in first. They felt bad that they were ahead of the father/son team and Phil did tell them that they could forfeit their first place and trip they just won to Dubai, but the snowboarders said they would have to answer to their wives so they better keep the trip. There didn’t seem to be any hard feelings from the father/son team as they checked into the pit stop in second place.

Following the first two teams were the dating divorcees, brother/sister, control freaks, NFL team and farmers. It was down to the twins and showgirls who were trying to find their cabs so they could pay them and get to the pit stop. The twins found their cab first, which meant the showgirls were in last place. They were eliminated.

Questions

  1. What do you think of the random time for the penalty? Is it because it wasn’t that huge of a mistake or is it just the game randomly changing rules again?
  2. Were you confused about how the twins and showgirls were so far behind the other teams since it seemed they all finished around the same time at the temple? Was their cab super far away?
  3. What do you think about the snowboarders giving the answer to the NFL team? It ended up not really benefiting them, but if they had been more “with it”, they could have been in third place.

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