TAR - March 21

Well, it started out in Russia with the "psyche you out pitstop" as Dave (I think, of the nerds) called it.

The beach bums (Eric and Jeremy?) got out of their first. They made it over to the airport and caught the last Lufthansa flight of the night (7:15 p.m.) to Germany, the next stop.

Other teams made it to the airport and were told no luck by Lufthansa. But then they realized that Aeroflot (Russian airline) also flew to Germany. They lined up at several different windows to get tickets. It seemed really arbitrary, depending on the ticket window, but some people managed to get on a 9 p.m. flight. Others had to stay at the airport overnight. The ones on the first Russian flight were Lake and Michelle and B.J. and Tyler.

The ones who got to Germany early then were delayed several hours because the next place - Mercedes Benz - didn't open until morning. However, they did beat the people coming on the morning flight by a couple hours. At Mercedes Benz, they had to take a test drive. Not a normal test drive, but a high performance one. They had a professional driver. First they went at speeds of 170 km/h and then they went on the "high bank" which literally had the car SIDEWAYS.

Then they went to the roadblock where they had to go through a field, looking under feet and hats looking for a Travelocity gnome. There were tons of hiding places, but only 10 (or so) gnomes.

Once they got the gnome, they had to go to the detour at some film studio. The choices were break bottles of wine (prop bottles) over each other's heads until the found one that said ... umm.... whatever German for "Cheers" is. The other choice was learning how to do a German dance.

Most people chose the bottles at first. Fran and Barry started with the dance. Ray and Yolanda and MoJo started with the bottles, but switched to the dance when they got frustrated with the bottles.

Dani and Dani and the mom and daughter were pretty much behind from the time they arrived in Germany. Neither team knew where they were going. DD followed mom and daughter around even though they realized mom and daughter were driving in circles.

At the travelocity gnome challenge though, DD found a gnome first and got ahead. Mom and daughter were eliminated.

Yikes, that's really a bare-bones summary!!

Some points of note: The hippies ran to the pitstop backwards for some reason. Some people thought it was funny. Others (including me) thought it was stupid and corny.

Lake and Michelle picked up a "fern" in Germany who went in their car with them and showed them where to go. The fern said he was drunk (Lake was driving, not the fern!) and it was like first thing in the morning but he got them where they were going. Lake and Michelle then gave him a ride home before going on to the next stop. (Lake is growing on me.)

The mom and daughter were really annoying my by the end. Well, the mom the most. Despite how she sucked at the swimming challenge last week and daughter was supportive, she just bitched constantly at the daughter for not finding a gnome right away (purely luck based). In another forum, someone mentioned the daughter was more the parent than the mom and I agree.

Eric and Jeremy continue to be smarmy - telling Phil they want the DD team to be safe so they can play tonsil hockey at the pitstop.

Okay, I think I hit the highlights (or lowlights!) there.

~Michelle