Week Three - My Thoughts

Oh boy. This epsiode? Was, well, weird, and strange, and a little bit...odd. I'm just going to give a shout out to the editors and the music people who work on this show (and they won an emmy for it), because sometimes it's all about the little things. Don't think editing and music add that much? Do yourselves a favor and check this out.

Wait...was that a plane?! Am I Tatoo? I was glad to see the teams got to fly somewhere and leave all those gas guzzling cars and camping gear behind--except, when they got to Charleston and in turn to Alabama, they still had the camping gear. Now, there's no way they could have carried all that on, so does that mean that all the teams are forced to check luggage this year? Yikes.

Anyways, we find ourselves leaving the pitstop on the way to Dulls (tm Megan Linz) Airport. Has anyone seen anything as precious as Billy Gaghan trying to psych himself up for a 2.30 AM start time while on the mat? Some people probably found it annoying. Those are probably the people who aren't in my car when I'm driving to work at 8 am pretty much doing the same thing. Nothing too out of the ordinary on the drive to Dulls--the Linzes make poop jokes (I'm assuming that's what the wideload was), and the Weavers pull yet another fantastic driving move and end up going in reverse on the freeway.

But Dulls? Anything but Dull. So first we have Rolly and Hunter hanging out, being normal fourteen year old boys, and Hunter is quickly admonished by his stepmom to "shut his pie-hole" and come back with the rest of the Schroeders. I mean, honestly, what did Hunter think he was doing, fraternizing with the enemy? I suppose he did have a lot more to lose than he did to gain, seeing as how the Weavers don't really understand the airport. Here's the Weaver's current intellectual level:

• Pennsylvania might be a state.
• Washington DC is in Washingston (she thought)
• When Dad gets killed on a speedway, the most obvious thing to do is pick the task involving moving wheels. Every single time.
• Airports (especially that whole gate B13 part) are very confusing.

Now, speaking personally, I don't like the airports (this has already been well documented). I have to increase my betablockers each time I approach Lindberg terminal because even picking people up at the baggage claim makes me extremely nervous. But I understand airports. You give your confirmation and ID to a very grouchy woman who must be made that way because she spends her time printing out boarding passes for people going anywhere and everywhere while she stands behind a counter in a really ugly uniform and doesn't get to see anything except the green tint of the computer screen and zit-ridden morning-breathed early morning travelers who just want a window seat. Then you go through security where security guards the fitness level of Wally or Tony (it's a toss up) sit on a stool with their butts hanging over each side and glance at X-rayed things and tell you to take off your shoes and you kick yourself because you wore your converse high-tops again which are a pain to take off and you promised yourself you'd remember to wear something else but you didn't so it takes forever to take the shoes off. Once you're done, you find your way to a gate to a very uncomfortable seat (but still twice the size of the one you've paid around $300 to sit in for the next few hours suspended 30,000 feet in the air), and then you board and shove your possessions into either a poorly latched bin or shove it underneath the seat in front of you thereby negating all leg room you might have had and buckle yourself into the aforementioned $300 seat (because that strip of nylon will do so much when your plane turns into a cartwheeling ball of flame) and then wait for your fate to be put in your captain's hand who you have never seen or met because he's protected behind bullet proof solid doors.

So, Mrs. Weaver, what don't you understand about airports?

Oh, and Hunter thinks you're a bitch, Char. Which you kind of are.

So back at Dulls, the Aiellos get all up in arms because the Weavers are being so sneaky and deviant trying to find out more information that the Aiello boys totally psyche themselves out (see previous paragraphs on the Weaver intellect level and what's not to understand about airports)--and I found myself laughing really, really, hard during this sequence. The Weavers being sneaky is about as likely as the Paolos not fighting over buying a map (which also happened at the Dull airport. Dude! Just buy the map!).

And off we go to Charleston. I've heard Charleston is a nice city and all, but I really don't understand why the teams went there. They flew to a town to do a detour? Odd. Anyways, it looks like I was a week too early on the Forrest Gump comment in last week's recap. I think I would have done the mud bogging myself, because I was on the northern coast of France a few years ago and our table of people ordered a "Fruit d'Mer" platter and this huge plate came and the seafood was so fresh the shrimp still had eyes and legs on it. Oh, it was gross. There were also oysters on the halfshell, and the people at my table who liked that kind of thing said they were the best they'd ever had. When the waitress came back she stared in horror at the empty plate, save for a few lemon wedges we figured were garnish. In broken English, she was all, "You didn't put ze lemon on the oysters? But that's what kills them!"

I would have done mud bogging. And, back to complete preciousness, I love it that nine-year old Carissa understands the physics behind mud bogging--"Just go 120 mph and we'll just float over the top". And her dad listened! As I mentioned, I don't understand why the Weavers keep picking detours that involve wheels. They've switched out of both of them (buggy pulling and this one). And Mama Weaver said "dang it"--she must have been feckin' pist off. But the poor Aiellos--thirteen attempts before you switched drivers? Dude. As my mom said, that's exactly what a bunch of guys would do. They won't admit they can't do something. Yes, boys, you were going great guns.

And next--board a charter bus to a...mystery destination. They've pulled this mystery destination things a couple times before, if memory serves me correctly in Africa is season five and on the train in India last season. They've also done really long bus rides (the one from Cambridge to Edinburgh, Scotland comes to mind from season three). But this was a little whack. First bus? No problem. Second bus? Besides Papa Gaghan's exuberant "We're on the last bus!!" shout, pretty much trouble.

Dear Lord, please give me the wisdom and strength to put up with the Weavers.

I'm not sure what happened to them, between Mama Weaver's "I'm imprisoned on a bus" and the entire family looking like they've converted to Islam and are practicing whirling dervishes in the parking lot of the Waffle House parking lot, but it was weird. Killer fatigue on leg three? Is Alabama the new INDIA? In the words of DJ Paolo, the Weavers cracked. And you know they must be really cracked if the Paolos are saying it. That's like Jonathan telling Freddy to calm down in Season six at the railway museum in Hungary. I think that's all I'm going to say about that besides Waffle House?! What?!

And onto Space Camp. Peter sent me this cool map and if you change it to satellite and drag the map over a bit, you can see the rockets.

Godlewskis: "A hangar is an airplane"? I thought y'all were smart! The pink must be getting to your head.

Onto the roadblock, where the clue actually read "Who wants to pull more than three G.I.s?" I thought this was a family show. But didn't Phil look hilarious trying out the centerfuge? I don't ever remember him actually demonstrating a roadblock before--he sure picked a fun one to start. I was hoping, however, that Mama Paolo and DF had taken the roadblock and been pushed to that point of near vomitousness, just so they could know how the viewers feel every time they're on the screen.

The "Search for the Saturn Five" rocket must have been really hard. Especially since it's the big one pointed at the sky with all the spotlights shining on it that's visible from the aforementioned satellite map if you zoom in a little bit.

Free gas? For life? The Bransen's totally hit the jackpot on this leg. Especially with gas prices the way they are now, I bet they're sitting pretty. I'm kind of wondering how it works, though. Are they just given a gas credit card, like in Reality Bites? If they play their cards right, they'll never have to work again! I love BP. About ten years ago their ads on TV were "BP...it keeps ya movin'." We didn't have BPs in Minnesota then, and my family was on a trip out to North Carolina the first time we saw that ad. My little sister spent the next few days singing that in the car. I hope the Bransens have BPs near their homes (otherwise I guess it kinda sucks for them).

Just a few more random thoughts.

• This leg was very much like Season 3 episode 3 (also where they had a big bus ride) in that your success in the leg depended completley upon what you did very early on. I don't think it was planned this way, but no one who did the mud-bogging (or attempted it) made it onto the first bus, which isn't cool. Once you got on the second bus you were pegged as one of the teams to get Philiminated, and since the roadblock was a "first-come first serve" and the rest of the leg was on the grounds of Space Camp, if you were last, you were pretty much done. Which is exactly what happened to the Aiellos.
• I'm not one for the "Hours of Operations", but I think Space Camp would have been a good time to have that. According to Peter, if they'd done tasks during the day, they could have done more exciting things than the centerfuge.
• And finally, next week: The Weavers go to the racetrack. Seems a little mean, but you have to be ready for anything on this race. If Avi and Joe from season six had made it to the Hungary leg and tried the Fast Forward which was drinking pigs blood, they would have had to make a choice to stay with their Kosher diets and risk falling behind. But they'll be fine--God's already given them strength, wisdom, a GPS system, and (apparently) free waffles.

Scrappy, signing off.