“We Were Fortunate and Prepared” – An Interview with The Amazing Race 12 Winners, TK & Rachel

RealityNewsOnline: Hello TK & Rachel! Thank you for talking to RealityNewsOnline today!

TK: Thank you for having us!

RNO: First off, congratulations on your win!

TK & Rachel: Thank you very much.

RNO: How long had you been dating before the race started?

TK: Just shy of a year before it actually started, but when we tried out to be on it we had only been dating for about four months.

RNO: What’s the status of your relationship now?

TK: Better than ever, I guess.

RNO: Still together?

TK: Yeah.

RNO: What would you say was your team’s biggest strength on the race?

Rachel: I think our main strength was just, you know, the abundance of calmness we had. We really worked well together. We just have a really good connection and a lot of things in common, so we were really able to just feed off each other and work well together.

TK: I think we did a good job of looking at the race as a race – something we wanted to do well at – and we didn’t want to compromise that. We didn’t want to compromise our success in the race and we didn’t want to compromise our relationship for the race, so I think those two things ended up just working hand in hand for us.

RNO: Would you guys say you had a biggest weakness?

TK: Definitely. I think our biggest weakness was travel arrangements.

RNO: That’s key on the show.

TK: It’s the main way we fell really far behind was simply on travel arrangements. I think as far as the actual challenges are concerned, we had a few mishaps, but the majority of them went really well. Our main struggle was with getting from A to B.

RNO: You guys ran a strong race, overall, but you struggled for much of the last third of the race. Did you think you were out as you ran to the Pit Stop in Japan?

Rachel: Well, we knew that it was a good possibility, but we kind of felt that a non-elimination was coming up, so we tried to remain positive. You never know what’s going to happen. Another team easily could have done something crazy and fell behind us. So, you never know. We didn’t really go into it completely thinking that we were out.

TK: There were a lot of incidents, especially towards the beginning of the race – and I know we aren’t alone as far as a team in thinking this – where you think, “We are so far behind! There’s no way we’re still in it!” and then you show up and you’re like in second place, you know? It’s a situation where you just try to stay as positive as you can and hope that someone else messed up too, you know?

RNO: When you were flying from India to Japan, why didn’t you find out about the flight that got into Japan earlier that the other teams all got on?

TK: You know what?

Rachel: It’s a mystery.

TK: Yeah, I really think that’s a situation where we did everything right and everything we could and just kind of got some bad information. We really checked and re-checked and over-checked with this travel agent regarding the quickest possible flights. Then on our connection we checked and re-checked other possibilities. We basically spent all our time that leg trying to make sure we were on the right flight and, you know, there was a travel agent with good intentions and the wrong information.

RNO: Did you double check at the airport too?

TK: Yeah. What messed us up was we connected through New Delhi, so our flight from Mumbai to New Delhi – we flew out of the domestic terminal. All the other teams were in the international terminal. So, that’s how that happened.

RNO: You did manage to catch up to the other teams at the high speed train in Taipei. It looked like you barely made that train. How many minutes did you have to spare?

TK: I remember looking at the clock on the taxi as we parked outside the train station and it was 7:54 – which meant the train left in six minutes. So, that whole cab ride there we were thinking that it was our last chance. If the [other] teams missed the 7:35 train and we made the 8:00 train we were still in business. When we found that out, that was the most fired up we were, for sure, on the race.

RNO: And what did you think of Jen’s comments about you guys “not trying” on the race?

TK: I think sometimes – well – yeah. I think sometimes being relaxed in the face of difficulty can come across as being lackadaisical or not caring. But I don’t think that can be further from the truth. I think we cared so much that we weren’t willing to sacrifice our success on the race by arguing with each other.

RNO: Did you realize while running the race just how much Jen & Nate were fighting?

TK: No.

Rachel: Not really because when the leg is actually going, you’re barely crossing paths with teams, especially past the halfway point. So, everybody knew, but we didn’t really see a lot of it and whenever it was Pit Stop time or down time, they’re great. We had a blast with them.

TK: Right. It was a situation where we would have some down time at Pit Stops to talk with the rest of the teams and they would tell these stories about how they yelled at each other and did this or did that and how horrible and blah, blah, blah… I think it really is a case of 95% of the time they’re not arguing, but if you don’t let them eat or sleep – and they’re both very competitive and passionate, so… I guess some things happen like that.

RNO: You had to do a Speed Bump in Taiwan. How long did that slow you down for?

TK: At least a half an hour. What you don’t see is the prep that goes into it. When we first showed up we had to have a safety evaluation where they told us the dangers of it all and then we had to get dressed. The actual task didn’t take that long, but all the prep going into it, putting all the gear on, and then taking all the gear off is what took so much time.

RNO: And then you barely made the train.

Rachel: Right.

TK: That was the climax of our race. Making that train was do or die at that point.

RNO: You probably would have been out if you hadn’t made that train?

TK: Unless… I know Nate & Jen had a little trouble with the subway on that leg, but most likely we would have been out if we hadn’t made that train.

RNO: That’s a big difference.

TK: Yeah, it’s crazy.

RNO: Moving on to the final leg… While you were waiting for the plane to Alaska, Ron & Christina used the internet to research your destination. Did you guys do the same?

TK: Yes, we did.

Rachel: They don’t show that. Most teams did that before every leg. There was just an overboard of research. Sometimes it would help, sometimes it wouldn’t. At least it made you feel better.

TK: Yeah. I mean we had a few hours in that airport before the plane took off where Nick & Don and Rachel and I hung out, had lunch, went and got the internet together and researched it all – played cards. We had a great time hanging out in that airport, but then we started getting antsy because we hadn’t seen Ron & Chris. We’re going, “This was the only flight to Alaska today…” So, there was a good half an hour there where we started to doubt it all.

RNO: You started to wonder if there was an earlier flight.

TK: Exactly, exactly.

RNO: Okay, what was with your bad luck with taxi drivers in Alaska? Was your luck as bad as it looked?

TK: It might have been worse! You know what? It was just bad luck. It was absolutely hilarious because we had just gotten done on the plane talking about how excited we were to finally be able to communicate with our taxi drivers and all that stuff and we just happened upon the taxi driver who had just started and didn’t really speak English. We spent most of the time on the taxi driver’s cell phone with his boss, getting directions and telling the taxi driver where to go.

RNO: How much time do you think that wasted for you?

TK: Um… I think because we were able to problem solve quickly and get his boss on the phone, who was able to get us proper directions, maybe ten or fifteen minutes at the most. It was just getting out of the airport – Ron & Chris got a big lead getting out of the airport and they were done the Detour before we got there.

RNO: They finished that very quickly. You guys did the crab Detour –

TK: Which I have no idea why we did that!

Rachel: Oh, man! We were like, “Yeah! Crabs!” It was a little extreme.

RNO: How painful was that?

TK: Believe it or not, it was actually pretty painful. They were chomping right on you. I had cuts all over my hands.

Rachel: They give you these plastic gloves which get torn to shreds in a minute. They’re pulling our shoes off, they’re climbing up our legs, I kept screaming and jumping out –

TK: Yeah, you really couldn’t tell, but when you jumped into those tubs you’re basically – I’m a tall guy, but I was almost waist-deep in crabs. It was crabs ALL the way up.

Rachel: All you’d do was stick your hand down into the water and a crab would attach itself and you would just pull it up, throw it, and put your hand back in again. That was about it. That’s all it was.

RNO: Wonderful. On the show it looked like you almost stopped that Detour to switch to the other Detour option. Did that really almost happen?

Rachel: Yeah.

TK: We were really close because we had been there the entire time when Nick & Don went back to the sporting goods store and back to the Detour again. We had been in there fishing for crabs and it was getting to the point where we –

Rachel: We gave ourselves a time limit.

TK: We were definitely at that point where we had to find the crab or switch. And we got lucky and that’s awesome. The way they showed it was really how it happened. Rachel said, “It’s time to stop. We need to switch now.” And then the next crab I pulled up had the tag on it. Some luck helps our sometimes.

RNO: When it came to the final Roadblock, had you worked your other Roadblocks so you each could have done it?

TK: Yes. We had it figured out so either one of us could have done it. But Rachel had kept a journal throughout the entire race and our entire flight from Taipei to Alaska we spent reading over her journal and studying what we did in each country and the order of the countries and what the Detours were. Before the race, we saturated ourselves with past episodes and kind of saw that a lot of times there’s a challenge on the last leg that has something to do with the race – all-encompassing, you know? So, we were fortunate and prepared for it. So, it said, “Who’s ready to relive the race?” We knew right away that Rachel was ready to do it and she was going to do it.

RNO: Rachel, you did really well at that final Roadblock. How long did it take you to complete?

Rachel: It ended up taking me about an hour.

RNO: How many times did you get it wrong before you got it right? Was it a lot?

Rachel: Well, okay, I started off being very methodical and doing it, but once I got a couple of no answers, then there got a point where I was just trying every combination I could think of, then it finally clicked in my head that the cleaner from Japan was an “animal.” And then it all clicked. But I had done it at least ten times before that.

RNO: TK, how hard was it waiting for Rachel?

TK: You know, for me the stress was off! All the stress was on her. I was just kicking back with Ron and Don, cracking jokes and trying to keep it as lighthearted as possible. Those two guys were pretty serious there at the end and I’m not one to really lament and worry about things. I was confident that Rachel was as prepared as she could be for that type of challenge. I know how intelligent she is. I already knew she was really good at puzzles and things like that, so I was actually pretty confident. I was kind of giving Don and Ron a hard time, and we were hanging out and it was really fun.

RNO: TK, you looked really stressed in the taxi heading to the last Pit Stop.

TK: Oh, I was!

Rachel: It was definitely the most stressed he had been the whole time.

TK: That was finally – I just finally let it go. We – what they don’t specifically show is that from the Roadblock to the finish line we got really turned around a few times in our taxi. We made a couple wrong turns and definitely got a little lost a couple of times. We knew we left the Roadblock first and we didn’t know how long it would be until Ron & Chris left the Roadblock, and we knew that anything could happen. We knew that if they had gone straight from the Roadblock and finished right after us that we may not have won. So, all the way up to the finish line I felt like I was going to throw up the entire time.

RNO: And, according to Ron & Chris, she completed the Roadblock only minutes after Rachel. But their taxi got lost as well.

TK: Yeah, see? So, that’s probably what saved us.

RNO: When you were running to the finish line, did you think you were first?

TK: Once we rounded the corner – the finish line was at the Girdwood Airport. We basically had an entire runway to run to the finish line. As we were getting close, we could see people cheering. On the show they showed me turn to Rachel and jump up and down and keep running. That’s probably the moment when I looked and saw that there weren’t any other teams there yet and everyone was going crazy and… It was just one of those moments where, even now, it doesn’t seem real.

RNO: What do you plan on doing with the money?

Rachel: Well, nothing too interesting. Just pay off a couple of bills and I probably want to get a few new outfits and update my wardrobe – fix up the house to make me feel better. It’s just going to really allow me to take time off of work, because I’ve always been stuck to work. Now I can be free and go off and do more adventurous things.

TK: Yeah, Rachel and I aren’t particularly – we kind of live modest lifestyles to begin with and aren’t particularly big money spenders. I’m really, really looking forward to Rachel being able to take some time off and for us to get some good travelling in together in ’08.

RNO: Not done with travelling yet, huh?

TK: No way! We got the bug!

RNO: Did you have a favorite moment on the race?

TK: I think my favorite moment was making that train in Taiwan. We knew we had made the 8:00 train, but we didn’t know if Nate & Jen or Don & Nick were still there or if they had made the 7:35 train. So, we got up to the platform and there was like three minutes before the train was leaving and we didn’t see anyone there. So we had this whole sad moment where we were like, “That’s okay… Who knows what’s going to happen in the rest of the leg?” But we kind of had the feeling that we had to make that train and we didn’t. And then, from far in the distance, I saw Nick & Don walking up the stairs. Aw, man! I was hooting and hollering and dancing! We were so excited.

RNO: Did you have a least favorite moment?

Rachel: My least favorite moment, just because it was the most difficult emotionally for me, I was afraid I was letting TK down, was when I took the bike into the market in Burkina Faso. I had to find my way out and I got all turned around and kind of got into panic mode, which was abnormal and really got freaked out—that was hard on me.

TK: For me, it was in Italy in the ultra glide. I really blew it. I didn’t know what I was looking for, you know? We had gone from being in first place to being dead last, and it was all my fault. So, if there was a low point both emotionally and physically, it was then. We hadn’t slept or eaten anything in like 30 hours.

RNO: That seemed like a brutal leg. Did you just fly past the Vinci word and just missed it? What happened?

TK: No. You know what? The clue said to go up in the plane and look for a clue to your next destination. So, for some reason, I was looking for red and yellow flags. We were flying all around looking seeing swimming pools and horse tracks and train stations and all these different possible places we could be going to next and I was looking for a big flag. I’m from Southern California and if you go out in the desert you see white rocks all over the place saying all sorts of different things. So, every time I went up I saw “Vinci” written with the white rocks, but I just figured it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for me. I didn’t really see it as the clue. I just thought some Italian guy had written “Vinci” there. I don’t know.

RNO: You saw it every time, but you just thought it was something that was always there?

TK: Exactly. Until, at the end, I just started pointing at everything. I had gone up in that thing I don’t know how many times, so I had a lot of time to think and open my mind to the possibilities. I had flown all over the place and now knew I was not looking for a red and yellow flag. So, we went up and saw the “Vinci” on the ground, and for some reason it clicked that time and it didn’t the times before.

RNO: Then it looked like you did a pretty good job putting the invention Detour together after that Roadblock to move you ahead of Kynt & Vyxsin.

TK: Yeah! I’m glad you brought that up. We were both really proud of that because we knew we were in last place and we knew Kynt & Vyxsin had a ten or fifteen minute lead on us, so when we got to that Detour – Invention or Tradition – and the Invention was right at the clue box. “Tradition” was down the road in town. So, we knew Kynt & Vyxsin hadn’t chosen “Invention” because they weren’t there. So, originally, we wanted to do the “Tradition,” but strategically we thought that if we had any chance at all we had to do the opposite Detour from Kynt & Vyxsin. So, that’s why we chose “Invention.” I was really proud of the fact that we kept a cool head and put that thing together.

RNO: Anything else you’d like to tell us about the race?

Rachel: Just that they don’t show as much of the down time or the full grasp of how well the teams are getting to know each other or just the time everything takes on the race.

RNO: Once again, congratulations and thank you for talking to RealityNewsOnline today!

TK & Rachel: Thank you!

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out these other recent Amazing Race 12 articles:

Teeuwynn is a professional puzzle, game and event designer. You can check out Teeuwynn's company, Lone Shark Games, at www.lonesharkgames.com. One of Teeuwynn's essays also appears in the just released “Hobby Games: The 100 Best.” To take a peek go to http://www.greenronin.com/store/grr4001/. You can reach Teeuwynn at Teeuwynn@gmail.com

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