TV: Amazing Race: All-Stars Ep 3

This week marked the end of the race for the beloved Kentucky miners. All through this leg of the race I kept hoping the karmic police would step in and punish Charla and Mirna for trying to cut in line. Their panic can also be a bit annoying but that does not impact Karma points. Fortunately, they gained some points for inadvertently helping the hopelessly lost Team Guido. The miners somehow missed an exit on their way to a clue, but it was not really clear how far it had put them behind all the other teams.

We learned a few interesting though not very surprising tidbits about the teams this week:

- Danielle and David have never touched live fish before. But David managed to learn how to handle them faster, while Danielle somehow overcame her discomforts with them eventually. But it cost her team a bunch of time.

- Team Cha Cha Cha needs to do much more cardio work. Granted I do too, so I cannot really make fun of them.

- The Beauty Queens are in really good shape at physical tasks, and they have not gone into a panic. Now they just need to pay much more attention to directions and clues. Otherwise they may not last longer. They were incredibly fortunate not to lose any ground in skipping a clue.

- Amber seems to do most of the Road Blocks. I guess Rob does most of the plotting. But since all the other teams know the game, it may not be much of an advantage this time around. Following signs carefully did allow them to pass other teams at the end and finish first for the 3rd week in a row. However, taking a brief wrong turn early in the leg did show they are not perfect.

- I guess we now know from comments at the fish challenge why Eric is dating Danielle, but that was not too hard to guess. If I put the word he used a lot in my blog I might start getting some interesting hits from people searching for that word. So I won't.

Every team chose the rafting detour instead of a rock climb. Well the Queens did the rafting by accident. I wonder if the 40-foot climb would have been faster considering the time needed to drive to the rafts, get changed, raft, and catch a shuttle back to the cars. Teri was remarkably calm for someone who fell into the rapids. I wonder how quickly the guides were able to pull her back into the boat. The river rafting would have been frightening for me - a dislocated shoulder waiting to happen. The closest experience I have to that is riding the Rip Roaring Rapids at Great America. I vaguely recall that ride had a category associated with it but I cannot find that information anywhere right now. But people are restrained securely to a tall seat within a big rubber tire on that ride, and there are no sharp rocks to worry about.

Mirna spoke the title of the episode this week, but I have not been keeping track of this as much as last season where Mary spoke some classic lines.

Next week the teams may finally make their way out of Chile, with a finish that is sure to shock people.

TV: Amazing Race: All-Stars Ep 2

The theme of this episodes race revolved around paying attention to details. Missing one instruction about speed limits cost Kevin and Drew the race while Romber cruised to another victory.

The Road Block challenge took the teams into a staged boardroom meeting. Letters on buttons or pens or shirts had to be combined to find a secret word that would get them the next clue. Eric should have been the first to figure things our, but sort of outsmarted himself. This allowed Dustin to be the first to solve the puzzle. The interesting thing was seeing Amber being nice to other teams, which did not please Rob too much. I guess Rob still does not believe that karma has been an influence in many of these races.

The Detour challenge had teams choosing between putting a giant tire on a giant machine or moving some gravel around. It turned out that the gravel was easier to do while the bolting wheels required some attention to detail, and that cost some teams a bunch of time. Teri and Ian almost made a fatal error by not knowing where the cars where. Then a bunch of teams took a wrong turn, but ultimately it was the insistence of not driving over 40 km/h that cost Kevin and Drew the race.

Outside of the interesting terrain that teams had to drive through to get to the Pit Stop, there was not much in this episode that might make viewers want to book a trip to northern Chile. Almost all of my international trips have been to Europe and Asia, so it's hard for me to comment on places in South America (unless they ever visit Bogota, Columbia).

There also weren't any big surprises in the order of finish. But this is the Amazing Race, so who knows what the future holds. :)