Time for a little MMQ (Monday Morning Quarterbacking for you non-football fans)
Overall we did not do too bad; mainly we had the events right but the order wrong.
Departure times from New Orleans Pit Stop were dead on; we called for a 1AM to 2AM departure and teams actually left between 12:40AM and 1:54AM.
We had the two flights Continental and American pegged; and yes it looks like these were their only options. Both brought teams to Panama City about when expected.
Not too good on the next call; trip to STRI led off the task, but we did call for an overnight stop and bunch. Yes, this is the first time we had teams agreeing to leave in order arrived. Some boats sure were faster than others. And the VO we had of Mama Gaghan saying that they were going to stop to pickup another person was for the boat and not the bus. The sun angles did show that the boat race was early in the morning.
Strange to make the long boat trip out to Isla Barro Colorado just to find the guy with the next clue, and then another boat race back to shore to get to the DETOUR and FAST FORWARD. Note that Phil says that this is is ONLY Fast Forward during the race. (Does that also mean next weeks YIELD is the only one we will have?)
We had it right that Paolos would beat out the Gaghans on the Fast Forward. From the looks of things, it looks like the Paolos got to the pitstop way in advance of the next team. But time advantage will probably dissappear next week at the airport waiting for flights to San Jose.
Looks like most of the teams got to the pit stop before noon; this is getting to be trend to start off at daybreak and complete tasks by early afternoon; which leads to early morning departure. Note that Phil now says only "after a mandatory rest period" he never says after a mandatory 12-hour rest stop. It looks more and more like most pit stops are running to 36hours; is this because of the youngin's and some kind of legal rules?
Pretty sloppy ball playing; the only really good hit was by Papa Gaghan! And it was a little unfair that the batter only got to see 3 pitches and everything counted even balls thrown way wide! And errors counted as much as hits.
How is it that the Gaghans continue to be the penultamate team and continue on. But this is the basic rule of TAR: it doesn't count that much to arrive first (except for the added freebies - free gas from ARCO and BP for LIFE!!) but always keep one team BEHIND YOU.
There was an early tease in I think a Phil interview that one team put on all their clothes in anticipation of being last during a NONELIMINATION Leg. Good thinking. And we are pretty sure that they get to Montreal in the FINAL FOUR. But did they have to surrrender all their camping gear also? There must be some use for it since the producers included it in the SUV's they moved to Huntsville for the teams (it wasn't on the buses from Charleston) and we see the teams continue to lug it everywhere they go; so some more camping probably is on the agenda and what about the girls? share tents with the boys?
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