Has anybody linked to this interview from Reality TV World? Don't recall seeing it, though it could be back upthread.
http://www.realitytvworld.com/news/exclusive-jet-mccoy-and-cord-mccoy-talk-about-the-amazing-race-12226.phpJet and Cord really seem to think they were just minutes behind the GTs before the U-turn, and I wonder...I suppose based on the trains, there is info about when they were most likely to have arrived in town for the Detour, and so how far behind they were. Initially, I thought they were totally out of it, mostly finishing alone, but I wasn't paying close attention.
On rewatching, I was surprised to see they actually ran into other teams while delivering the luggage (at least Gary/Mallory, plus someone else, or G/M twice). The article says J/C saw 4 or 6 backpacks (so 2 or 3 teams) when they arrived at the luggage detour, which also surprised me. The other teams were walking through the detour, but every time we saw J/C, they were running. As per Jen and Kisha, some of the hotels were further away and took longer; also, weren't there maps available showing where the hotels were? Gary interviews in the taxi that the GTs and J/C were battling it out...
So if J/C picked closer hotels, going fast, and given the GTs had to redo two more suitcases, plus got lost looking for the U-Turn location - I wonder if they really were closer to the GTs finishing time for the luggage task than the 15-30 minutes that's been speculated.
I was also surprised to hear Jet say when he got to Marco at the RB, he knew there were at least three teams behind him. I wondered why he didn't look all that upset when he knew he had to redo it.
In any case, this article, and the other interviews on that site, give some additional interesting info. For example, it explains more why in the other episode J/C made the choice to take the later flight with fewer connections. Also, Christina and Ron said in their interview that they didn't complain when they got to the mat about the GTs taking their Amazing Purse, they were friendly with the GTs and were going to just talk to them after. She says they were told by production there was going to be a penalty and were asked to go back to the mat to talk about the experience. Finally, it seems the reason teams were so pissed about Kent & Vyksin only getting a 30 minute penalty over the mandatory flight issue was because if you missed the first mandatory flight, you were supposed to wait for the same flight 24 hours later. Apparently, there was an earlier flight than the mandatory flight, and if the other teams knew the penalty was only 30 minutes, they would have taken that...