Amazing Race: Belgium Waffles & Pigeons

After a couple of awesome legs, this one wasn’t very exciting. It was fun to watch the racing, but the rest of the tasks were pretty blah. I do wish they made a show with the first Belgian instructor guy. His deadpan delivery killed me. I could watch him all day, but more on that after the jump.

The leg continued from the last episode where we got some more crotch shots of the snowboarders posing in their Speedos and a bit more flexing from the farmers until they both passed the challenge. After, they were informed like the rest of the teams that they were continuing the leg and going out to the Ford Proving Ground to race Mustangs. This is where the episode turned into a Ford commercial, but I think that one Belgian driver saved the entire episode.

It was a road block where one team member had to drive 100 mph before braking in a certain spot, successfully run a slalom course in less than 15 seconds and then do a couple of victory donuts. Each team member had a professional instructor in the passenger seat to guide them while they were racing. Ernie had the best one. That guy was so deadpan in his advice and delivery, I loved him! The other racers had more enthusiastic instructors, but they were not as awesome as that first one. When Ernie would make a mistake, he would calmly say, “Again.” When he successfully finished something, he would say with no emotion, “Complete. Well done.”

The control freak team were the first ones to arrive at the racing road block with a pretty good lead, but Ernie was not doing well on the slalom course so the boring dating couple caught up. Jeremy loves cars so he was a natural at it and finished right behind Ernie. The NFL team was the first one to leave the pit stop, but were the third to arrive since they seem to get lost constantly on the race. I am not sure how they haven’t been eliminated due to always being lost. They arrived at the same time as the snowboarders. Marcus had the best time ever doing the road block, but then he seems to have the best time ever no matter what he is doing in the race. His instructor also had a bit of fun.

After Tommy struggled with the last “mind” roadblock, the snowboarders decided to quit with their rock/paper/scissor method of deciding who was going to do the road block and let Tommy do the physical tasks and let Andy do the mind ones. Nice jab at Tommy! Then Andy felt extremely jealous that Tommy got to race the car. He really wanted to do it. Then he decided it was a sin to be jealous, God forgave him and he felt much better. Okay then! The farmers arrived just as Marcus finished up so they weren’t too far behind the other teams.

After the road block, the teams drove to Gent and had a detour between building a floatable raft to search for two pieces of the next clue and assembling a waffle stand to bake and decorate 16 different waffles for an extremely picky waffle judge. While the waffles seemed like it might be easier, it appeared that the raft wasn’t too difficult to put together. The snowboarders did it faster than anyone else, but the NFL and farmers did it fairly quickly too.

The control freak team and boring dating couple showed up to the detour first, but the other teams caught up with them by choosing the raft task. Ernie very wisely said that he thought he could do the waffle task effectively but he knew that everything could change as soon as he got into the booth with Cindy. He was correct. They both watched the demonstration but apparently Cindy didn’t pay attention. She asked what Ernie was doing every five seconds while he answered he was doing it the way he saw it over at the demonstration booth. The boring dating couple had problems with Jeremy making the waffles too thick. He said he was more a pancake guy.

The control freak team finished the task before anyone else, even when they did have to redo part of the task since they had a strawberry  fall down. The boring dating couple couldn’t figure out what they had missing on their waffles. First, it was missing powered sugar and then they had two waffles not in the same exact spot as the demonstration place. The picky judge guy was very happy when they finally figured out what was missing. They had the added stress of the snowboarders and NFL team getting to the detour after them and finishing before them with the raft task, but they did finish just after the NFL team. The farmers were the team to finish the detour. While the farmers were doing the task, they did get to joke around with some locals that were asking what they were doing. Bill said he was taking Cathi out on their first date and they should try it. It was very romantic. Ha!

The last task was a weird one was where the teams had to go to one location to release some homing pigeons and then meet up with them at their final location. They didn’t have to chase the pigeons though. They were given the address of where they would be so I’m not sure why pigeons were involved. They did have a tiny clue attached to their leg so that was the best part. The control freak and snowboarders got to the pigeons at the same time, but the control freak could not find the final address so they were lost for a while. Of course, Cindy freaked out about how lost they were. The boring dating couple and NFL team got to the pigeons at the same time and, of course, the NFL team got lost on the way to the pigeons since they had to keep up appearances. The farmers got to the pigeons way behind everyone else and also had a problem finding the final address so even though others were lost, they were even farther behind than the rest of the teams.

The pigeon had a tiny picture on the clue of the pit stop. It was a picture of the Atomium. The snowboarders had to ask a local what it was and where it was located. They arrived at the pit stop in first place, again. They each won a Ford Mustang and were able to customize it. When boring dating couple got the clue, Jeremy had seen it when they had drove through Brussels. They arrived in second place. Control freaks and NFL team finally found where they needed to be and got to the pit stop in third and fourth place. There was no fancy editing trying to show that the farmers were close to any team. They were well in last place when they arrived to the pit stop and were told they were finally eliminated. They had a good run though.

Questions

  1. Do you think the boring dating couple has finally stopped being boring or should they still be classified that way?
  2. Are you sad the farmers were eliminated or do you think they had too many chances to stay in the game?
  3. What did you think of this leg? Did you find it as not exciting as I did?

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