“Once We Were Left on Our Own, We Were Pretty Much Screwed” – RealityNewsOnline’s Exclusive Interview with The Amazing Race 15's Lance & Keri

RealityNewsOnline: Hi, Lance & Keri! Thanks for talking to RealityNewsOnline!

Lance: Hi, how are you doing?

RNO: What made you guys apply for The Amazing Race?

Lance: Basically, I had for years been applying to Survivor. We’re both big reality TV fans. I probably applied to Survivor like ten times. Then, the last few years, I started getting calls. I’ve always been a fan of the Race, but I never had a partner really.

Then, this year, I was in discussions with them for their current Survivor and they had pictures of Keri. We started discussions on that and, ultimately, we ended up being a better fit for The Amazing Race. That’s the story. So, weren’t picked out of a bar. We weren’t recruited. We just came up the hard road.

Keri: It was one of those things that Lance was looking at based on Survivor. I hadn’t really considered it until we started talking about it and he had sent in the application.

RNO: At the very beginning of the race, during the starting line elimination challenge, did you see Eric point to the symbols on the starting line clue and did that give you the information you needed to find the correct license plate?

Lance: (Laughs) That guy’s crazy!

Keri: No, we didn’t. We were starting to get down to the heat of it and we looked down at the clue, and there it was – staring at us, plain as day. I was like, “Oh, my God! We have to look for this symbol.” We just started scanning really meticulously and, sure enough, we saw the license plate.

Lance: No, he never saw the clue until the very end. What they didn’t show was there was probably ten minutes of three different passes between the two teams running up with a plate. He pretty much figured it out at the end, but Keri didn’t see it ‘cause he saw it.

I think I saw somewhere too that he said they wrestled Canaan & Mika for a plate – which never happened. I don’t know. No one figured it out. The only people who figured it out were Zev & Justin. Everyone else guessed.

Keri: Everybody else guessed. When we found that out we didn’t feel so bad that it took us so long to figure it out. Sure enough, when the pressure was on and we looked down, we saw that picture.

Lance: Yeah.

RNO: How scary was it to almost be eliminated before you had even left the country?

Keri: Gosh, that was stressful!

Lance: The scare is just the ultimate embarrassment you have.

Keri: To make it to the finals and not get past the start line?

Lance: To take all the time off during the summer and then having to go home and confess that you were on a show… Then to watch the show and see you booted in just a second – awful! Great TV, though.

RNO: In this leg, do you know how far you arrived at the Pit Stop behind Mika & Canaan?

Lance: You know, it’s hard to say. It was hard to have a conception of time. Race time is different than real time. In race time, if you’re five minutes behind someone, you might as well be an hour behind. All we know is that, when we got to the build a snowman thing, no one was there except melting snowmen. We kind of knew we were in trouble.

It turns out the Pit Stop was close to the Detour location. So, it really wasn’t a footrace to the Pit Stop.

RNO: What was it like being on top of the tallest building in the world?

Keri: It was incredible – just because we didn’t have to jump off of it. It was an amazing view. When we got up there, to me anyway, it was such a relief to see the clue box and know we weren’t jumping off of it. But, leading up to it, it was very stressful.

Lance: Everyone was a little nervous because the thing is just immense. [The other teams] came running down acting like they had done something. But, of course, when I saw Maria & Tiffany coming down smiling I knew there wasn’t going to be anything too intense up there.

RNO: Why didn’t you stay with the other teams when you were getting your cars from the parking garage?

Lance: You know what? You kind of react on quick instinct. I think we felt that, because we were in the second group, even though it was a 15-minute advantage, it was actually a little longer because just getting back and forth… They had more of an advantage than that.

The sense of urgency was that we were racing against four teams and we had four teams ahead of us. So, it was my decision. I made a decision to get the car first. The other teams ran to get the directions and stuck together. We ran into the wrong garage or a part of the wrong garage. Once we did that, we couldn’t find the car. When we did find the car, all the other teams were gone.

It pretty much was the fact that all the teams caravanned up together. Once we were left on our own, we were pretty much screwed.

Keri: Yeah.

Lance: The first group totally stuck together. The other group, for the most part, were in the same vicinity as each other.

RNO: The Roadblock looked pretty brutal. Lance, how long were you searching for the water in the desert?

Lance: You know, the problem with the Roadblock was that all the water urns that were close to me were taken by the earlier teams. There’s your penalty for being the last team there. So, the water urns I had to run to were like a mile out! I mean, we were easily there 30 minutes. I was trying to run it, but it was pretty brutal out there – to say the least.

RNO: You mentioned on Elimination Station that you were “directionally challenged” on the race. Why do you think that was?

Keri: I don’t think it was for the whole race. For the most part, with taxis, it’s the luck of if they know where they’re going. But for this last leg the highways were very confusing. The signage… Getting directions from random people on the street. It was very difficult.