ONE LAST TIME: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW -
There has been a lot of information floating around out there and it is time to try to get it down into some kind of order. A lot of things are missing and I'm including some calculated guesses. So to start:
The teams all arrive in mid-afternoon at the Shanghai pit stop so once again our four remaining teams will be leaving the hotel in the dead of night. Aaron and Hayden are going to start finding money before they can get going, and I believe they have learned from previous non-elimination doings to start finding money before they bunk down for the night. Due to plane schedules, etc. it looks like the first task will be to get to the Shanghai Airport. There are two of them, but the one they want is the one for domestic flights (SHA) since they will be headed to the ancient capital city of Xi'an. There are not too many flights and the first one on China Eastern Airlines leaves at 8:00AM. It looks like there will be enough time for all of the teams to make this flight. The distance to Xi'an from Shanghai is about 1000 miles so the only way to reach it in a reasonable time is by air. There is a train connection but this takes some 22 hours! And the bus is even longer!! Don't even think about a taxi. So the shot of Aaron and Hayden by the window of a moving train, must be somewhere else..
Upon arriving in Xi'an it is not clear whether they first must visit the Museum of the Terra Cota Warriors (the most famous tourist spot in town). We have a shot of the teams (including Aaron and Hayden, more about them later) waiting for a gate to be opened. No idea when the museum opens, but this could be another bunching up point (looks like it)Here they may have a route marker task to do, like counting the number of soldiers, or horses in a particular area. But whatever the task, they probably will not be able to run around the terra cota figures since they are a National Treasure and very much protected. When correct they get the DETOUR which has to do with locating something in the Hawkers Market outside the museum. We have Jon racing by the umbrella covered stalls. Outside of that we have no idea what the two detour tasks are.
When the Detour is completed, they are instructed to take a train to the village of Haushan about 75 miles east of Xi'an. Or they may go by cab or bus. Just speculation here, but they do go to Mount Haushan or Flower Mountain (and we have positive identification that it is Mount Haushan and NOT Mount Huangshan) to locate and unlock some particular lock which can be found on the trail near the top of the North (or as one source noted the West Peak) of the mountain. From the village of Haushan a minibus will take them to the cable car station for a gondola ride up to a steep staircase carved into the side of the limestone mountain. We have shots of one couple on the bus (Aaron and Hayden?) waiting to start. Others are not seen so may be ahead or behind.
We have shots of all four teams in gondolas (each gondola can carry up to six people, so they probably are in different gondolas along with their camera people) going up the mountain (about a 4 minute ride). Then they must walk up to the top and find the "love locks". With a key they must try to open one particular lock. This is the ROADBLOCK and it looks like Rebecca, Kris, Hayden and Kendra must do this one. It is difficult and all four teams complain about how hard it is to find the right lock. Eventually at least three teams find the correct lock and are given the clue to the pit stop. Hayden, unfortuneately breaks her key. At this point we do not know what happens, but whatever does happen puts them behind the others.
The pit stop could be back in Xi'an, or locally in Haushan.But based on what will happen on the next day, they may very well return to Xi'an to some famous spot such as the Drum Tower or some particular Temple. We do not know, but we do have a final shot of Aaron and Hayden, hand in hand, without their backpacks running across a square toward what we think is the pit stop, which looks like it may be the entrance of a temple or other landmark. Unfortuneately for them it looks like they are the next team eliminated leaving the three teams of Jon and Kris, Adam and Rebecca, and Freddy and Kendra to make it home in the second hour to Chicago via Hawaii.
The next day, probably again everyone bunched up leaving in the dead of night for the Xi'an airport. We now may be getting some free lancing on making their way to Honolulu the next stop toward home. There is a direct connection from Xi'an to Honolulu via Tokyo which arrives in Honolulu that morning (remember we are crossing the International Date Line so we arrive the same day we leave)at 9:45AM. But the quicker route is to take the 8:20AM, 9:35AM or 10:10 flight to Shanghai. Two flights then must go from SHA to the PVG terminal; the 10:10 flight goes directly into PVG. From here they can either go to HNL via KIX (Osaka, Japan) or NRT (Tokyo, Japan). The quickest flight is via Osaka and we do see Freddy and Kendra talking their way onto All Nippon Airways flight NH7058 (actually operated by one of TAR sponsors United Airlines.)
The next stop is Honolulu. Flight NH7058 arrives at 7:00AM. And it looks like the first task will be totravel from the International Airport to the lookout on top of Diamond Head. Here they get instructions to go to a smaller regional airport and meet up with the sky diving teams.This is the ROADBLOCK. We have shots of Jon, Adam, and Freddy taking the dive out of an old DC3 (they still are flying) over the ocean off the coast of Oahu; one shot looks like Diamond Head down there below them. And it is not clear whether all three teams go up at one time; the plane looks big enough this time instead of the last time the sky diving stunt was done when only one team could go up at a time.
Once on the ground, it is not clear exactly what they have to do next; we have a scene of Jon wading through the surf, and this must have been pre-planned since we have a shot of his legs going by from an underwater camera (this has to be in place in advance, you can't just push your camera underwater and expect it to work!).
Somewhere they get the clue for the DETOUR (perhaps after wading out to some marker) and this seems clearly to be either OUTRIGGER or OUTFITTER. In outrigger they must row an outrigger canoe over some distance to do some physically demanding task. In Outfitter, they must search through racks (at a dry cleaners??) to find a particular matching Hawaiian shirt. One task is physical (as usual) but quicker; the other task is less strenuous (as usual) but can be time consuming.
It looks like Adam and Rebecca and Freddy and Kendra opt to do the outrigger; while Jon and Kris are stuck trying to find the particular Hawaiian shirt. At the end of their task,-- we have shots of Adam and Rebecca with the yellow route marker envelope in her hand - if this were the final run to the final pit stop, I don't think she would still be clutching that route instruction in here hand, so I think this is at the end of the outrigger task -- they are instructed to go to the airport and catch a flight to CHICAGO THE FINAL PIT STOP and One Million Big Ones await them.
In all of the scenes so far in Hawaii there have been no shots of Aaron and Hayden. And since we have been told by CBS that one team is eliminated in the first hour in China, the team eliminated must be Aaron and Hayden. Sorry people, but one team has to come in Fourth.
It looks like there are two good ways to get to Chicago and wouldn't you know by coincidence these two flights are on American Airlines and United Airlines (two TAR sponsors, of course). United Flight 2 leaves at 4:25PM; American flight 72 leaves at 4:35. Perhaps the first team to arrive at the airport is Freddy and Kendra and they get on the United Flight; Adam and Rebecca and Jon and Kris arrive later and get on the American Flight.
Both flights arrive early in the morning in Chicago; we have shots of the Chicago skyline at dawn and a shot of a 747 landing at ORD as the sun starts to come up. United was scheduled to arrive at 5:15AM and American to arrive at 5:48AM. Sunrise in the first week of September in Chicago is at 6:20AM. So these could be matching shots with the plane landing being the American flight.
We have shot of Freddy and Kendra racing out of United's gate C18a. United uses Terminal One and gates C; American uses Terminal Three on the other side of the building and gates K. We also have a very early spoiler saying that a person saw a "very cute young team" on the plane with cameraperson, etc. But only one team. So we must assume that Freddy and Kendra may have a short lead over Adam and Rebecca and Jon and Kris.
Next we see Freddy and Kendra racing up out of a subway station in downtown Chicago; it is just getting light out now. Later we see Kris and Jon running around some other corner, but I don't think we have a shot of Adam and Rebecca. In any case everyone seems to have ditched their backpacks by now; who needs that stuff when one million smack-a-roos are at stake.
Who wins!! Do they go directly to the spot from which they started Buckingham Fountain? Or do they have to do something else first which has been the usual practice in the past?
But for what it is worth here are my picks:
Fourth: Aaron and Hayden (we lost them in China)
Third; Kris and Jon (they seem at lost in Chicago and not clearly going anywhere fast)
Second: Adam and Rebecca (they race hard at the end but are beat out by)
First: Freddy and Kendra!! Perhaps they had the most to learn on this trip, and the editing became more positive during the later stages of the race.
Poll