Amazing Race: Inner Cheetah Power

brookeface

Teams headed to Palermo, Sicily where they drove go-carts, painted frescos and stared at opera singer costumes. Brooke also made some faces about her Italian driver being too slow for her. Continue on to read what Amy, Steve and I had to say about inner cheetah power being necessary in go-cart racing in the seventh leg of the Amazing Race.

When the race started, Steve and I picked the wrestlers for going home next while Amy believed it would be a non-elimination episode.  After that, a whole bunch of time was wasted watching teams go to a travel agency to get flights to Sicily, teams fretting about their flights being 40 minutes apart and what that could mean, and then when they arrived in Sicily at night, they found they couldn’t get their next clue until the next morning. I don’t mind equalizers in the game, but do we have to spend 10 minutes watching teams get flights when it doesn’t matter? I’d rather watch them fumble around doing tasks during the leg.

frolicking

The cyclists and dentists were the first two teams to arrive in Sicily and found that they had to get their next clue in the morning, but were invited to dance and eat with a bunch of dancers and musicians. This startled Steve when they started dancing and he said, “WTF is happening right now.” Amy said, “Please stop frolicking.”

The next morning, the teams had trouble finding taxis at 6:30 in the morning. The cyclists and dentists had someone call them taxis. The rest of the teams ran around for a while until they finally found a taxi stand in town, except the wrestlers that stood on one corner for a very long time and whined about not being able to find any taxis.

notaxi

What teams found after their taxi ride was a road block where one team member would be driving a go-cart on a famous windy road where vintage Italian cars usually race. They would have to complete the course in four minutes and seven seconds.  The dentists and cyclists arrived at the road block at the same time. Jim and Kym were neck and neck the entire race, but both managed to finish within the time.

gocarts

The scientists showed up on their own so Maya did the race solo. That might have been a disadvantage since she wasn’t racing anyone, she wasn’t pushing herself enough and didn’t finish in time. I said due to Maya being the lightest, she should have been the fastest in the go-cart. Amy said she wasn’t using her inner cheetah power.  She had to follow the pace car all the way back to the starting line to try again. It also sucked for the next two teams that were ready to go (surfers and T&T) since they couldn’t race until Maya and the pace car made it back.

tooslowgocart

By the time that Maya was back, the wrestlers had caught up so it was Adam, Te Jay, Brooke and Maya battling it out.  Brooke just yelled the entire race and passed everyone. I said the yelling gave her more power. Everyone completed the race in time and then had to ride back up to the top. Even though Brooke came in first place, she picked the slowest car to drive up to the top so she was stuck behind everyone else waiting to get to Robbie.

After the go-carts was a detour. The teams had to choose between painting or posing. For painting, they had to restore a fresco while lying on their backs on scaffolding. I said, “The painting seems tough and it has judging.” For posers, teams had to listen to 10 opera singers sing a short selection from 10 different operas and then go to another room and figure out by only looking at costumes the name of the character and opera in order they were standing on stage. We had so many questions.  Amy said, “Do they tell you the opera or are you supposed to know it? Does spelling count?” I said, “Even if they tell you the opera, 10 is a lot to remember.”

frescopainting

The cyclists and dentists chose to paint. When they got there, they commented on how hot it was and how much they were all sweating except for Misti who proclaimed that she was just fine and wasn’t sweating at all. She just glistens. Wow. All the other teams wanted to do the painting, but only four teams could do it at a time. The surfers, scientists and T&T were racing to see who would be the last two teams there while the wrestlers just went straight for the other detour. It was a footrace to the painting for the three teams, but since one of the teams had derpy on it, the scientists did not make it before the other two so they had to switch tasks. I would think as soon as they experienced how sweaty it was in that area, they would have wanted to do the other task, hoping it was cooler.

When the wrestlers got to the opera task, they watched as 10 people came out onto stage, sang a bit and then disappeared behind a curtain. They had no idea what to do. They wanted to switch tasks, but knew they couldn’t so they went into another room and realized they just needed to put the costumes in order by writing down the character name and opera that was listed underneath each costume. It was so much easier than we all thought! They wrote down what they could remember and then went to watch all the singers again.

Back at the freso, the judge was called over for the dentists and cyclists and said it wasn’t right. She told them what was wrong, but she told them in Italian so they were probably thinking, “What?” Amy said it sounded nicer that way. The dentists and cyclists finished the detour around the same time after their second judging.

The scientists arrived at the opera detour and ended up working together with the wrestlers to get it done just so they could get done before the other teams that were working on the painting. It worked since they both finished their detour while the last two teams were still working on the fresco painting. I also laughed at Maya and Brooke still wearing their car goggles the entire race.

goggles

At the fresco, the surfers finished up just before T&T so that made them the last team to finish any detour while four teams were racing for the pit stop. Were any of them close together? Who knows with the show editing. It did seem like the opera task was much quicker, easier and less sweaty.

At the pit stop, the dentists did come in first. We also learned it was 300th leg of the race. They won a trip to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The cyclists arrived at the pit stop right after the dentists. The scientists and wrestlers showed up right at the same time to the pit stop. Then the surfers followed by T&T. It was a non-elimination leg like Amy called it so no one was sent home this leg.

 

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