I was recently informed that Dan had been posting here. As someone who has been blogging about sports on a daily basis on the internet for the past few years, I figured I would give this a shot as well.
Yes, I am Andrew from "Andrew and Dan" on TAR 13. Dan's username is Dandrew and he has already posted a few times. About a year ago, the TAR 13 cast returned to our homes across the country after our journey and during the summer months, I was informed about RFF. My mom who heard about RFF from Dan's mom eventually showed me the chat, spoilers and gossip regarding our upcoming season. I was amazed at first when I visited this website. I had no idea how many people try to speculate The Amazing Race. When we arrived at the hotel in Portland after our 3rd place finish, I immediately called my parents after not being able to speak to them for nearly a month. My plan was to keep everything a secret from them and that included the locations of each leg. I wanted to give them dose by dose each week of my adventures when the show premiered. Unfortunately, my parents knew where we were traveling the whole time. When I first spoke to them in Portland and without explaining RFF to me, they told me how they tracked me down in Brazil, New Zealand, Cambodia, India, etc. I was so disappointed at first because I wanted everything to be ultimately a surprise! On the bright side, it apparently kept my mom less worrisome because she was able to see where Dan and I were.
I was told of RFF back in May 2008 and to be honest, it left a poor taste in my mouth. As I browsed through some of the threads, I came across a speculation thread that was mainly focused on the TAR 13 racers. As I kept scrolling through the thread, I noticed an abundant amount of posts about me. Like I said, it left this bitter, stale taste in my mouth and an uncomfortable feeling all together to see that I was being stalked. I never visited this website after that day.
After hearing about Dan's weekend in NYC for TAR 14, I decided to relive some old memories and take a gander at RFF to see if anyone was talking about this past weekend. It turns out there is an entire section of RFF dedicated to TAR alumni so I thought I would give it a shot. I'm a really chill guy and I don't mind some blogging in my spare time so if you have any questions for me, I'm all ears.
Love Dandrew or hate Dandrew, you know we could put a smile up on your face.
Andrew
Hi Andrew - welcome to RFF!
Its unfortunate that your first exposure to RFF left you feeling bitter about us. Hopefully you'll give us another chance - I know lots of the detectives here would love the opportunity to ask you questions! Most of us are really fun - please don't be discouraged by a few people who think that just because you are a public figure it gives them license to be rude and invade your privacy.
When you put yourself in the public spotlight I think you should expect some scrutiny, criticism and misguided ridicule. In your case I believe your detractors are jealous of your achievement and luck at being on The Amazing Race. You and Dan provided entertainment for millions of people and your antics still provide water cooler discussion to this day!
Just so you know - I think there are two distinct groups of people here at RFF. Some - and I include myself in this group - enjoy using our internet detective skills to track the race and racers as they travel around the world. We get to vicariously live the adventure that you are privileged to be part of. This enhances our enjoyment of The Amazing Race and hopefully our enthusiasm is contagious and helps to increase the ratings of the show. I like to think we are something along the lines of being investigative reporters mixed with a smidgen of paparazzi.
The other group of members at RFF are people that like to use the forums as a way of being heard, broadcasting their opinions to an audience that they'll never have a relationship with. They bandy about terms like love, hate, retard, freak without understanding the power of their language and the effect they may have on the reader. Unfortunately the internet and the lack of consideration of consequences inherent in the me generation has given rise to this type of cowardly pseudo journalism. Please understand that in an open forum such as this there is little that can be done by the moderators to censure this type of behavior and I hope you can tune out the misguided posts.
Where is your sports blog - I'd love to read it!