Amazing Race - SPOILERS (Page 7)

OMG

Lexi was do loud when Trey was doing the challenge with the straight jacket she didn't shut up.  It was like having the twins back.  Good job to him for conquering his fear.  She sure does cry a lot. 

Hoping Jaymes and James will return on an "unfinished business/all star" season in the future.  Very likable team

Ya, he was kind of annoying at first... the chatty one. But they grew on me... soo soo close! It's cool they won the car too. Seem like good guys.

Ya Lexi cries, and I forgot they were in on the "steal"... so ya. I just started paying attention to them at the end and they get along good to me. Usually couples are pretty dysfunctional. They are certainly not the worst, but I suppose it all worked out right.

Beakmans do have the record from here... there is the team with the most first place finishes to win, and now the worst performing winners ever.

... oh ya... that bungee challenge freaked me out just watching it. Leave me hanging up there for all that time to think about it... uuugh.

The thing that got me about Lexi on that last challenge was that she kept saying, "I can't control it."  What the heck was she talking about?  She could TOTALLY control whether she gave up or kept trying combinations.  True, it wasn't some challenge where you just had to keep stacking something or learning a routine, but it really isn't any different than most challenges. I just thought the "I can't control it" complaint was a bit...odd.

My only problem with this, and the whole "nice guys finish first" concept is that I really only saw Josh as nice.  Brent is really quite rude to Josh and I hope he sees the tape and realizes how unnecessarily mean he was.    He's not Josh's parent and my marriage would be in trouble if I was constantly scolding my husband and offering him ideas for improving himself (that one really stuck with me).  Once again he made sure that Josh knew it was his fault something wasn't working (mixing up the pizzas), even after Josh agreed, when in my view, on a team challenge, they are both equally responsible.  Do you think Josh would be allowed to scold Brent for taking too long in the mushroom cave?  Do you think Brent gave Josh total credit for winning the race for them?  Doubt it. 

It did show (finally) that maturity and not just sheer brawn, was a necessarily attribute.   I am glad AR threw in a bit of a twist.  At one point they showed a time clock and they were about 2.5 hours into it, this was before Beakmans left.

They were all very lucky that they could learn, one at a time, if a flag was right or wrong.  In the past they've had to match stuff up, find out some number where wrong, but not which ones.  Then it really did become a process of elimination and how fast you could attach and raise.  Josh figured this out quickly, although J&J sure did a great job in catching up. 

I think they probably figured out in their pre-runs that the task would have been nearly impossible if they hadn't done it this way.  It might have been easier if some of the harder languages had been closer to the end.  I mean, almost everyone knows hello/goodbye in spanish and french...if those countries had been first they STILL would have likely known them.  If in the previous leg they had JUST heard the hello/goodbye in some weird language they might have recognized it more easily.

Sadly that was a challenge in which I suspect the Twins might have done the best...

I think the reason Josh did well on that final challenge is that he figured it out when he said he had to stop looking at it as a language puzzle and think of it as a math puzzle.

That was the lightbulb moment for them. 

Yep.  You could do a LITTLE deductive reasoning (i.e. the words with a bunch of V's, R's, Y's were probably Russian, etc. etc.) but it eventually came down to a lot of trial and error.  The more deductive reasoning you could do the less trial and error you needed.  Most of them seemed to get the most logical deductive reasoning countries right fairly quickly (Russia, Netherlands, China come to mind).

I was trying to think of the most efficient way to do the "math" since you could just have the hello/goodbye reversed and still be wrong...and I think it did just come down to picking a word to put as "hello"...then cycle through every word you have left.  If none of those combos are right, take the next word...put it has "hello"...then cycle through every word you have left.  It would take a really long time if you couldn't deductive reason down to 4 or so countries...and in the end I think that is why Josh finished first...he got at least 3-4 of the countries on "these words sound right for that country (Russia, Netherlands, China).  So he didn't have too many combinations remaining...and then all it takes is to get lucky on one of your next couple and it just exponentially speeds up.

Yo!  Guys and gals, ya gotta check this out...if you thought the Beekmans were classy before, just check out this link.  These guys are probably the classiest Race winners in the show's history...my wife showed me this link about the guys:

http://beekman1802.com/7-billion-thank-you-notes/

seriously, how cool is that???

Wow.  Those two are gonna make some serious cash off their Amazing Race appearance....

Loved the blog post...

But wow...those two are gonna make some serious cash off their Amazing Race appearance...not to mention being farm mortgage free!