“We Just Wanted to Have a Good Time and Win” – Reality News Online’s Exclusive Interview with The Amazing Race 20's Joey “Fitness” & Danny

RNO: How much time do you think it cost you trying for the FF and not getting it?

Danny: It took us about an hour to do it, so it really set us back. Then the biggest problem that we had was our cab driver was working by himself – as opposed to the other teams [cabbies] who went to the Roadblock – they were all following each other. Our cab driver was all by himself. He had no clue where the helicopter area was. So it took us forever to even get over to that area.

The cab really hurt us bad. You hear about it in past seasons all the time. A cab driver can really kill you – and it did.

Joey: If we would have seen Dave & Rachel leave before us [for the Fast Forward] we might not have done it. But we were the first ones out of there so we were pretty confident that no other teams were doing it.

In previous seasons and earlier in this race you only see one team going for the Fast Forward at a time – it’s never a battle between two teams. So when we saw Dave & Rachel pass us in the cab we knew it was going to be a battle.

Danny: Three teams were allowed to try for the Fast Forward at the same time. It would have been alright if another team would have tried for it too.

RNO: Were you more upset that you lost the Fast Forward “to a freakin’ girl”?

Joey: I think I was the one who said, “We can’t get beat by a girl.” Then when we were beat by a girl it was like, “S#*t, we got beat by a girl.” I definitely tip my hat to Rachel. It’s not like we were so far behind – fair and square they did beat us. So I definitely tip my hat to her.

RNO: Joey, how freaky was it being in the helicopter crash simulator?

Joey: Honestly, I’ve been around water my whole life. I grew up on the beach. I used to surf; I used to do some life guarding. I’m always around the water. So I was pretty confident I’d be the one doing that.

It wasn’t that hard. I’ve held my breath under water numerous times. You just have to stay calm, cool, and collected. When you don’t panic you can get out of it pretty easily. I can see where the water would rush in and people would start to panic – maybe they can’t get their seatbelt off or can’t open up the window, but I did it pretty quick. We were just trying to go through everything as fast as we could because we knew we were behind all the other teams.

RNO: Did you even see any of the other teams that leg after you left the Fast Forward area?

Danny: No, we didn’t. We didn’t know where any other teams were. We were just trying to finish [the leg] and hoping to God that maybe it was a non-elimination leg or another team got a penalty or something.

RNO: Often in a leg with a Fast Forward it is also a non-elimination leg. Did you think that would be the case for you?

Danny: I just figured since there was a non-elimination two legs ago I thought this one would be [a non-elimination leg]. But when we saw the Fast Forward we just went for it.

Joey: It seemed like it was very easy this leg. Picking the apples out of the car and scrubbing the guy down were things you didn’t really need skill to do. So we lost an hour doing the Fast Forward because we didn’t get it. We were hoping we could catch up to the other teams, but the tasks were so easy to do. We did them really quickly, but all these other teams were way ahead of us. They finished them pretty fast as well.

RNO: I appreciated your sartorial choices on the race – but did you worry about spending your money on these little extras?

Joey: [Before the race] we were in the store trying to get some clothing for the race and we saw the hats. We said, “You know what? We’re going to buy these hats and if we go somewhere cold we just have to wear them.” And we had the glasses too – we bring those wherever we go.

With the bloggers and all the websites, people either liked the hats or they hated them or they made fun of them or they said they were cute. We were just having fun. We wanted to show everybody that, yeah, we started out with the stereotypical Jersey Shore look, but we wanted to show everybody that there was another side to us.

It’s about having fun, being silly, and enjoying yourself. We were on the race to win the money and have a good time, not to bicker and argue with each other or start drama. We just wanted to have a good time and win.