Amazing Race Tidbits
CBS' The Amazing Race 13th Edition
All three teams take the same Lufthansa flight from Moscow to Portland OR connecting thru Frankfurt, Germany. Their scheduled departure time was 7:05 AM. They had to find an adventure camp, the Tilikum Retreat Center near Newberg, Oregon, on the other side of Portland from the airport.
Ken and Tina actually arrived first, with Nick and Starr not too far behind. Dan and Andrew had really bad luck with their cab driver. Perhaps they did not get enough research accomplished in their limited time at the Internet caf� at the Moscow airport. As a result, they arrived far behind Nick and Starr, well after both teams had left Tilikum and gone on to the next destination.
High and Dry
From the website: Both team members had to climb thirty feet up a tree, traverse a 40-foot log, and then leap through the air to retrieve one half of their next clue. If either team member fell off the log without nabbing a clue, they had to start over from the beginning.
The halves of the clue were attached to trapeze. Teams quickly figured out to grab the trapeze, retrieve the clue, and descend using the safety rigging. The male team members had no difficulty with the task.
Low and Wet
From the website: teams had to walk 850 feet across a floating log bridge over the water to a clue waiting on shore.
No team selected this somewhat forbidding, but relatively straightforward option� even though Tina had a serious fear of heights. Did any of the team members have a problem with swimming?
Episode Eleven Detour |
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|---|---|---|
Members |
Option |
Notes |
| Nick and Starr | High and Dry | Finished first, even though they arrived second. Starr hesitated, but completed the high log act OK. |
| Ken and Tina | High and Dry | Arrived first. Tina made it an adventure alright as she was very afraid of heights. It was about all she could do to walk the log, a very high balance beam. Leaping off that log was the last thing she wanted to do, and she had to fight to gain the composure to jump off to the trapeze and grab the clue. Kenny's comments were not helping. |
| Andrew and Dan | High and Dry | Not especially fast, but both did OK after arriving last. |
Teams had to find a Columbia River crossing known as Bridge of the Gods. Ken and Tina had better luck than Nick and Starr and gained the lead. It was quite a drive from the Newberg Oregon area as it is about 40 miles east of Portland. From this otherwise toll bridge, teams took a zip line to an island in the river. Tina was again scared, but once she let go, the thrill overtook her fear as she enjoyed quite a view as she descended to just above the water on the way to the island. All others had an easy and fun time with the zip line.
How much do you remember?
From the website: Working together, teams had to choose a game board with ten game pieces, each representing a leg of the race. Then, beginning with the first leg of the race and working in chronological order, teams had to remove a game piece revealing a symbol underneath. The symbols represented Route Info, Roadblock, Detour, or Pit Stop. Teams then had to enter a field containing 150 clueboxes, each containing a picture. Teams had to search for the correct picture of the task, denoted by the symbol they revealed, which they had completed for the leg of the race the game piece number represented. When they entered the correct piece in the game board, a green light would turn on.
Drawn from prior legs of Race, this was a test of memory for the teams. Teams were to work together, but toward the end, Tina was more restrictive in her interpretation, causing them to lose valuable time. Nick and Starr passed them while going for the last match. The brother and sister were both fast moving and efficient in how they checked the clueboxes. Each would check a cluebox for the picture they had already figured to be the correct match, while running side-by-side through the field of boxes. Not all the correct matches were shown. Searches for pieces related to Episodes 5 and 7 were not shown.
Episode Eleven Game |
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|---|---|
Team |
Result |
| Nick and Starr | Arrived second, but their superior speed and efficient search pattern, sharing the load allowed them to take the lead. |
| Ken and Tina | Started first, got first two matches before Nick and Starr, but fell behind in the late stages. Finished shortly after the siblings. |
| Andrew and Dan | Last to start. Took a long time to finish, but little was shown of them after their initial look for a clue, with a wince when they realized some of the clueboxes were empty. |
Teams ran through the field of clueboxes onto a footbridge when the last green light came on. In the middle of that bridge, they found a cluebox with their next clue.
Teams were directed to find a green dinosaur near the Portland Building. The Standard Building, it's one over, as Kenny said. That building is home to The Standard Insurance Company, located at 900 Sw 5th Avenue in downtown Portland, OR. Starr used a cell phone to call the Portland Visitor's Center to get information. Nick observed that the clue said Standard something. Ken and Tina's driver turned into traffic, and away from the Standard plaza. They walked all around the Portland Building, then walked across to City Hall, where the guard was kind enough to point them in the right direction. Maybe 10 or so minutes lost. Never again are Ken and Tina in contact with Nick and Starr.
On reaching the dinosaur, Nick and Starr learned that they had to find a Russian vendor in a row of ethnic vendors at the Alder Street cart pod at least 3 or 4 blocks from the plaza, where they would get their next clue. They were scared stiff that Ken and Tina would spot them leaving the building, however unlikely that was becoming. Once there at the Russian sandwich stand, they found a clue directing them to a hole in the wall doughnut shop, where "the Magic Is In the Hole". Teams found out that it is called Voodoo Doughnut, located just south of the Burnside Bridge on SW 3rd Avenue in Portland Oregon. It is tucked safely between The Paris Theater and Berbati's Pan . Is Portland like downtown Toledo in its street numbering, with the low SW numbers on the relative fringe of the business district? Finally, now off the main business grid in downtown Portland, they had to try to flag a cab to the Pit Stop at the Pittock Mansion, in the western hills of Portland, overlooking the city.
The Pit Stop was at the Pittock Mansion. Ken and Tina and Nick and Starr had a very difficult time getting a cab from the streets they were on. The two front running teams wandered on lesser streets, instead of toward more major streets, perhaps not so far away, but both teams spent tense moments locating an available taxi. However, that roughly 10-minute separation held up as both found cabs. Teams had to find the parking area, round a corner, and then go across the lawn to the Finish Line.
Episode Ten Order of Finish |
||
|---|---|---|
Members |
Place |
Notes |
| Nick and Starr | 1 | Sprinted to finish, not quite sure yet how far behind Ken and Tina were. |
| Ken and Tina | 2 | Several minutes behind |
| Andrew and Dan | 3 | Distant third |
Nick and Starr Spangler hugged intensely as they celebrated their win.
After Ken and Tina Greene checked in, Ken surprised Tina by pulling rings out, placing one on her finger. They celebrated their making it through the Race by recommitting to their marriage. Nice! Later, on the CBS Early Show, Harry Smith noticed that they were holding hands. They said that the Race had helped them to bond again.
Nick and Starr were truly formidable, having won so many legs. On this day, they were unbeatable! They made only one visible mistake, losing a bit of time getting to the bridge, and made up that ground. When passed going into Portland, they were unflappable, Nick and Starr took the lead for good as their driver found a better route to the location of Standard Plaza and the green dinosaur, which they spotted immediatel. Because Ken and Tina did not get the clue right away, Nick and Starr wound up surging to a commanding lead at the Standard Building. Their strengths of communication, research, and running ability paid off all through the final episode.
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