“We Must Have Listened to that Message Hundreds and Hundreds and Hundreds of Times” – RealityNewsOnline’s Exclusive Interview with The Amazing Race 16's Joe & Heidi

RealityNewsOnline: Hi, Joe & Heidi! Thanks for talking to RealityNewsOnline today!

Heidi: Of course!

RNO: What made you decide to apply for The Amazing Race?

Heidi: You know, we were approached with an opportunity to be on the show. We obviously went through the same strenuous audition process that everybody else did. Then we were finally selected. We knew this was an opportunity of a lifetime, and we could not pass it up.

RNO: This week the U-Turn did you in. Have you forgiven Michael & Louie for using it on you?

Joe: Well, I’ll put it this way. It’s part of the race. There’re certain tactics you can use. They definitely leveraged that piece of it.

Heidi: I think we’re at peace with the whole thing.

RNO: Having seen the episode, do you better understand why Michael & Louie used the U-Turn on you?

Joe: Yeah. The only thing we thought from the interviews that led up to it is they thought we were a threat. They had a choice between Steve & Allie and us – but they also had a choice with all the other teams behind us too… And they chose us.

RNO: When you made the comment on the bus that seemed to get under Michael & Louie’s skin, did you think anything of it at the time or was it just an off-the-cuff remark?

Joe: Well, no, I think it had a lot to do with how people receive comments. When I was being interviewed, I was being interviewed where they were asking me what I thought about the other teams. I said all the teams are competitive. I have to push stronger because, with my knee… You know, overcome that. So, however they overheard that, and what they took out of it, is up to them.

RNO: Did you ever think that not making friends with the other teams might result in taking you out of the race? Do you think if you had done so, they might not have chosen you?

Joe: You know what’s interesting? When we were in Argentina, one of the longest Pit Stops, they [Michael & Louie] were actually behind us in most of the legs. We didn’t really get a chance to meet them, to be honest with you.

That leg, we sat around and we talked and laughed. We talked about their kids and our kids. So, it was a very pleasant time together.

Heidi: For me, the U-Turn actually came out of left field – it was really unexpected. I was really surprised. Again, watching on TV, we revisited that whole experience all over again.

Joe: You know, we’re trying not to be in denial or anything. I mean, we knew we were a competitive team. I know how I sometimes am portrayed. Just, within the race, people say I’m very strong and so forth.

I had some knee problems, and surely that was a hindrance to me. But, at the end of the day, we ran the race like we wanted to go win the race.

RNO: What made the Morse code Detour challenge so difficult for you?

Heidi: Well, we had just gotten done doing the physical challenge of crawling through the barbed wire – all the explosions – I mean, just so you know, it was a lot longer than it looked. You had to go all the way there, get the message, and come all the way back. I believe it was almost the length of a football field.

So, then when we got to the Morse code Detour, it was so quick. If you were to listen to that reel of the beeps – it was just so quick. You could not decipher whether it was a dot or a dash or a space. We must have listened to that message hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.

Again, you’ve got planes flying over, you have explosions, you’re constantly distracted. And we hadn’t eaten in so long. We hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, on the moving Pit Stop. So, all we had to eat and drink was that baguette – in probably close to 24 hours. Your concentration level was at its lowest.

RNO: How long were you working on the Morse code?

Heidi: If you could see… We were probably there nearly six hours.

RNO: Did you ever come close to getting the message correct?

Heidi: We got half of it but, like I said, it was so hard to decipher the message. We knew what part of it could have been, because we got the message from the crawling Detour. When we knew we couldn’t decipher it we put our heads together and came up with maybe 20 other options of what it could be based on the war situation. Unfortunately, we just never got it.

RNO: How long did it take for you to complete the first part of the Detour?

Heidi: Maybe half an hour?

Joe: Yeah… Less than an hour.

RNO: Joe, your knee was obviously giving you a lot of trouble during the race. Was it injured before the race began?

Joe: Yeah, it was through all the running during the race… It was bothering me a little when I was doing the training, but it got aggravated throughout the race. The show cuts out a lot of the running through different terrain and the complexity of doing that with your backpack and stuff. I never liked to run to begin with.