TAR, Season 9, Episode 2

Episode 1 recap

So, for this episode, we're still in Brazil. Not a whole lot of excitement this episode, but there is some character development, and the fatal driving of a non-automatic-transmission vehicle.

So, we've got some taxis to a bus terminal, to bunching (I'm pretty irritated b/c we had senate primary results blocking out the starting times for all the teams. I *need* to see how spread out the teams are. And I really don't want to know if Tom Delay was selected to run for senate.) Then a boring bus ride. Then VW beetles! But I have to wonder - are these the same as the old-styled beetles that are produced as "new" in Mexico, or are these really 30 yr old hunks of rusting metal. For everyone's sake (and the fact that the seats looked slightly newer) I'm hoping they were newer than 1971.

If 3T was on the show
We would so rock this leg with the VW beetles, as I have 6 years experience driving one. A 1971 beetle, bright yellow, that most of the time only ran on 3 cylinders. One road trip I made, from Gillette, WY (summer job at a coal mine) back to college (Butte, MT) was sheer hell. Mountain bike on top of the car, creating massive drag. Two very vocal and inadequately tranquilized kitties in the front seat. 3 of 4 cylinders functional. Top speed of 50 mph. And complete this experience with a kitty accident of the liquid variety which required me to stop at a gas station around Billings to wash Swift off. Fun! Oh, and 10 hrs of this for ~400 miles. Not cool. Anyways, the race! First of all, I had to laugh at the "hippies" physically walking their VW backwards. Doncha know that for all VWs, to shift it into reverse, you have to push the stickshift vertically down and then shift back to reverse? Silly guys. And those ladies abusing the hell out of their clutch. Its not like VWs are particularly hard to shift.

And as we saw team members climb into the backseat, Will mentioned that he hoped that none of their feet punctured the floor of the vehicle. The floor of mine was so badly rusted that when Will sat in the back of mine (he was being nice and letting my roommate sit up front) his foot went all they way thru the floor of my car. Think Flintstones style. And it was winter, and in Butte, they don't plow the side streets, so you end up basically driving your car in 2 parallel ice ruts the whole winter. And the hole (with scrap metal bent outwards from the car) was in the center of the car, so the entire winter, I had to listen to rusted metal scraping against ice ruts. Yeah, I hate that car and don't really miss it. Why my mom wanted to keep it and restore it is beyond me.

Road Block - ethane or climbing. 3T's choice was decided by me. My knee is still tweaky from training for our backpacking trip in 2004 (I had cartlidge tear or something horrible and while my knee didn't require surgery or hurt, it grinds horribly when I do stairs, but it is getting better, so there's hope). Seeing as how those stupid climber things involve much leg/knee action, and combine that with the fact that in elementary school I could never manage to climb that damn rope to the required height, I chose the sugar cane/ethane option.

Team commentary
Well, my opinions of the other teams pretty much held from Episode 1. Team Nipple Ring are bigger idiots that I thought they were. Glamazons need to go away. The pink girls seem to be ok. Older couple needs to suck it up and start playing. Team Nerd Love is still adoreable. Basically status quo.

I was very satisfied with the ending. I did not like the meltdown between the sisters and how they basically gave up. Considering how many thousands of people applied for the show and would kill to be on it, I think its tremendously rude to just go and give up b/c you can't manage to drive a standard transmission VW beetle in Brazil. Go home, you suck.