The Amazing Race > The Racers

TAR 20: Kerri Paul and Stacy Bowers *Cousins*

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Theo:
Sad to see them go! :'(

bc922:
http://www.tvguide.com/News/Amazing-Race-Kerri-Stacy-1045040.aspx

Amazing Race's Kerri and Stacy: We Are Not Navigationally Savvy
Joyce Eng
Mar 19, 2012 03:06 PM ET
by Joyce Eng

After completing the gnome-curling Roadblock in second-to-last place on The Amazing Race's Bavaria leg, Kerri Paul and Stacy Bowers seemed to have secured the final Top 7 spot. But then, they got into their car. "Kerri and I were always efficient in the challenges. What killed us in this leg was we couldn't get from Point A to Point B," Stacy tells TVGuide.com. "When we could get there, we'll kill the challenge. But then we'll get killed going to Point B!" The cousins wound up losing their five-minute lead on federal agents Nary and Jamie, and got eliminated. Why were they so bad at navigation? And why weren't they rooting for Ralph and Vanessa afterward? Find out below.

How far behind Nary and Jamie were you?
Stacy: I don't think we were that far behind. After we had gotten eliminated, we saw them in passing.
Kerri: We probably had about a five-minute lead. I think I saw them behind us at one point, but I wasn't exactly sure. We had kind of driven around. People tell you to go one way and it's wrong, and you turn around and go another way.

What happened? Was it just bad directions?
Stacy: Yeah. We totally got bad directions. We couldn't spell it any other way. People directed us to, like, three different places instead of the one place we needed to be in five seconds.
Kerri: I think we even passed it at one point.
Stacy: No, we didn't pass it. But we were practically right next door to it and everybody kept sending us to different places!
Kerri: Nobody could really articulate to us what the Pit Stop was. I don't think we realized it was that barn until we saw the cows! Until they mooed at us!

How many people did you ask?
Stacy: Five people. We went into a store and we waited on a man for directions. He shopped for a minute and he came out. He was like, "Wait one second. Let me put this down." And then he disappeared and nobody else spoke English. I was like, "OK, Kerri, let's go drive." And then he comes running, like, "Wait! I know where it is!"

Did you have a map?
Kerri: No. And it didn't seem like anyone had a sense of urgency. I want to take responsibility for our actions, but when you're left in a situation like that, you have to ask locals because there's no other way to find a place, especially when there's no sign of the name on the building. It was kind of vague. I'm sure the other teams had a hard time. They don't show that necessarily because they can't fit everything into an hour, but I'm sure they did. Everyone kept telling us to go to the next village. In America, we don't have villages, so it was hard to know what they meant.
Stacy: It was hard to determine where each village was. Like, do you mean the next village 20 minutes from here or two minutes from here? ... We drove around for probably 10 or 15 minutes. It's not a lot, but it's bad when somebody's on your tail! I was just saying a prayer, like, "God, I'm sure we can bargain right now." [Laughs] "Let's negotiate something and maybe we'll get there and Phil will be like, 'This leg continues.'"

You had a lot of trouble with self-navigation. You got lost last leg, and the beginning and end of this one.
Kerri: Yeah. I think navigation savvy is one of those things where you either have it or you don't. You can't practice being navigationally savvy. Personally, I've never been savvy with navigation. Going from A to B? That's not my strong suit.
Stacy: But that's part of the Race. We get so dependent on GPS and technology to find things. When I'm overseas, I use the GPS to go everywhere. I'm never lost because I always have GPS. You take that tool away and you really gotta have that savvy. And we didn't have it the past two legs.

How did you end up at the wrong castle?
Stacy: There were two castles and the way we came into the castle town was from a different direction, so we didn't see the right castle on top of the hill. So as soon as we ran up to the wrong one, we were smart enough to ask, "Is this where Ludwig's bedroom is?"
Kerri: Yeah, because we were not gonna wait to go on the tour! [Laughs] Thankfully, people pointed us to the right direction. We always made sure that before we dove into something that could be time-consuming we knew were doing the right thing. We went to the wrong castle, but we asked. The other thing about the Race is you don't realize how much time other teams waste and that you can make up time. But when you're in the back, it's just hard to get out of that mind-frame. You need mental prowess to really overcome that.

How did you get along with the other teams? The extra clips online show some drama between you and the twins, and Vanessa and Ralph.
Kerri: The twins —they were just guys. You know how big brothers pick on little sisters? That's what our relationship was like. At first, you don't really know the other teams, so you're just trying to feel each other out. But Ralph and Vanessa — it wasn't so much Ralph. You know how you can be a good person, but one bad apple could fall off the branch? I think it was like that for their team. She pre-judged us before she even talked to us. ... Even though that little tiff happened with the twins, we don't judge them for that. It happened in the moment and we all got over it. But Ralph and Vanessa were like, "Oh, they're stuck-up." How do you know we're stuck-up when you haven't talked to us yet? Vanessa said that about us to other teams and they told us, so we were like, "Really? Is this The Real World or is this The Amazing Race?" Then Ralph tried to block us on the plane when Stacy was trying to get me to the front. She wasn't telling anyone to block him.
Stacy: Kerri was a few rows behind me on the plane, so I asked the people who were in front if they could let her get off the plane with me. ... Vanessa was just very catty. I can't deal with catty women. I can't tolerate it.

So I take it you weren't cheering for them after you got eliminated.
Stacy: Oh, no. [Laughs]
Kerri: The truth of the matter is, Stacy and I wanted to run a clean race. We work in athletic fields and we're all about sportsmanship, being classy and representing well for our hometown and family. I was not about to go on TV and act like a fool. I wasn't going to do something underhanded because that's not what I value.
Stacy: TV or not, Kerri and I aren't crazy people in our everyday lives. Going into the Race, I just believed that if I'm gonna beat you, I'm gonna beat you with my wit, my athleticism, and I'm gonna feel good about taking it from you. I don't have to overcompensate for my weaknesses by playing little mind games and just being overall catty and stupid with you.

What are you up to now?
Stacy: I'm about to take a mini trip to go see my husband. He plays [basketball] overseas, so I'm gonna see him. Other than that, I'm busy, taking care of my business and my children. And Kerri's always busy!
Kerri: I am a social butterfly. I'm always doing something, partying, planning social events. I'm back at work and trying to advance my career with whatever God gives me next.

bc922:
http://www.thedeadbolt.com/1003025623-navigating-the-amazing-race-with-kerri-and-stacy.html

Navigating The Amazing Race with Kerri and Stacy
by Reg Seeton

This week on The Amazing Race cousins ‪Kerri Paul and Stacy Bowers‬ were eliminated in Bavaria after the girls fell victim to directions and their own navigational skills.

Although Kerri and Stacy had to say goodbye to their fellow competitors on The Amazing Race, both gave it their all this week when the CBS reality series touched down in Germany. When the girls had to go from task to task, getting around Bavaria became the biggest challenge of the race. It seemed like each time Kerri and Stacy found their groove, the map became their enemy.

So, what went wrong for Kerri and Stacy in terms of directions?

For Kerri, it was all about the obvious.

    “It’s Bavaria, Germany and people speak German and we speak English. I think people there are used to tourists and shrugging you off to the hot tourist spot. Some of those spots weren’t where we needed to be.”

Interestingly, both Kerri and Stacy overcame similar challenges the week before but couldn’t navigate the streets to survive another leg of The Amazing Race. In fact, just when it seemed like the girls got a lay of the land, new directions would lead them astray.

For Stacy, getting a handle on directions in Bavaria was a bit more complex.

    “Despite the fact that we’e showing you exactly where we need to be, we were asking the locals, ‘Do you know where this is?’ And we’re showing them in writing, black and white, exactly where we needed to go, they would send us to, say, the castle again when we were trying to go to the Pit Stop. So I do think in Bavaria there are customs and tourists and the fact that we were looking for a common local spot just really didn’t mesh well.”

At one point in the leg this week, Kerri and Stacy couldn’t find the real life fairy tale inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s castle. In fact, Kerri and Stacey climbed a huge hill only to learn they were in the wrong place.

So, how did Stacy feel to get all the way up to the wrong castle only to realize that the Sleeping Beauty caste was elsewhere?

For Stacy, as she told TheDeadbolt, things may have looked tougher on TV.

    “It wasn’t so bad, because Kerri and I are athletic gals. When we realized that we were at the wrong castle, it was just on to the next one. We knew we were somewhere at the back of the pack but we knew that we could out-run and out-hustle anyone else in that portion of the pack. So we were just ready to keep it moving.”

Earlier in the leg, The Amazing Race teams were given the choice of styling Bavarian beards or building a gingerbread house. It was a choice that didn’t give the girls many options.

As it turned out, Kerri and Stacy chose the gingerbread house by default.

Had they been able to better maneuver the streets of Bavaria, things may have been different.

As Kerri explained, they wanted to try their hand at the beards.

    “We definitely wanted to style the beards but we couldn’t find it. It was in a totally different town. We saw some of the other teams going to do the gingerbread house, so we figured there was strength in numbers. Like Stacey said, we felt we could out-hustle some of the other teams. For us it was just safer to do.”

Although both Kerri and Stacy had a hard time with directions on The Amazing Race, the girls revealed that the process at large was a huge challenge. Despite how easy things look on TV, the reality of The Amazing Race is much tougher on the body.

For Stacy, it was about putting it all together to run the most amazing race as possible.

    “I definitely feel that the toughest part was time management, getting enough rest, eating right and having enough energy. What people don’t see is that you’re going for hours and hours and hours, maybe a day or two days traveling. As soon as you arrive, it’s like go time! The toughest part to The Amazing Race is time management and sleeping and eating when you can.”

For Kerri, running The Amazing Race was all about serving your brain well while staying strong both physically and mentally. Although directions became a problem, it was easy to become tired.

As Kerri revealed, it was a blend of mental and physical.

“You had to stay mentally strong. When you’re exhausted, it’s hard to think right to perform. Just mind over matter, it’s really hard, especially when you’re faced with not having any food, being sleepy or tired.”

So, despite what we saw of Kerri and Stacy on The Amazing Race, were there any moments that didn’t make it to air that the girls wish we saw at home?

    “We wish you guys had seen us change the hell out of that tire when got a flat on the way to the airport in the first leg. We were really happy at how quickly were were able to change the tire on that vehicle. When we got to the airport there was this big conspiracy that we had gotten lost and not had a flat tire. So we really wish more people could have seen it and how well we performed.”

TexasLady:
I liked the Kerri and Stacy, I'm sorry they didn't get to stay in the race. They stayed classy.

apskip:
except when it came to navigation, where they were woefully deficient. This was their downfall.

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