Reality Exploits - Reality TV

Interview With Don & Nicholas, the 3rd Place Team on The Amazing Race

by Lynn on January 21st, 2008

As promised, here’s my interview with 3rd place team, Don & Nicholas from The Amazing Race 12. They were also fun to talk to and showed their lively sense of humor during our conversation. Here’s our discussion:

So how do you guys explain the tattoos when you got home without giving anything away?

Don: Our immediate family had to sign the same agreements we did, not to disclose anything. I have little swimming pool in the back yard so my wife saw the tattoo right away. She’s a big fan of the Race so she knew it meant Fast Forward right away. She didn’t bat an eye and ask, “What is that?” or anything. Other than that, I kept it covered so other people wouldn’t see it.

Nick: I just told people it was something from my experience on the show and I didn’t go into any detail. I just had one person, a co-worker that I was swimming with, guess about it. He saw it immediately and asked if it was a Fast Forward. I just shrugged my shoulders. I’m not going to lie. Aside from that one guy, absolutely no one knew what it was. I only had about 3 or 4 people see it in total so it was a big surprise for everyone.

Don you did a great job representing the more mature racer this time, and you were great! What do you want to say to all the other people out there who think they may be too old to do something like The Amazing Race?

Don: (both are laughing…) Yeah, they probably are. (now all three of us are laughing) No, I think that physical fitness is something that can help them use as a guide to decide if they could actually do something like this. I started working out at a health club early in the year and I found that it really helped me a lot on the Race. Maybe I couldn’t run as fast as some of the 21-year-olds, bit I had the stamina to do some pretty physical tasks. I think I could have actually done them without going to the health club but I don’t think it would have been as easy for me.

Let’s talk about that pole vaulting challenge.

Don: You mean my claim to fame there? (we’re all laughing)
(follow the jump for the rest!)

Yes. What are your thoughts, looking back on that?

Don: Probably, I wouldn’t have done it if I had known what I know now. When we viewed this, Nick and I were quite a way away from the water. I didn’t actually see how wide it was. They had people there demonstrating how to go across. I thought it would be simple for me. But when I got there, I found out that was not the case.

Nick: That was a very, very difficult time for me. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m taller and had a better perspective looking down on it from a distance, but I thought it looked pretty hard. We saw Kent take a big fall and Hendekea made a big splash so obviously, it wasn’t easy. Don is just very high-strung and he was upsetting me a bit at the beginning of the Race because he was so set in his ways. You know, what do I say to him? I couldn’t say, “No, you’re too old and I’m going to do it.” I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “Go for it.” I didn’t think it was good thing at the time and I think my grandfather would admit it, looking back on it.

But it was the one time that we got to see some real stripping down on the show.

Don: (laughs) Yeah, it got a good reception.

Nick: He really impressed me during that though. And there were other times that his strength and endurance impressed me. It was his drive to keep going that was great. I told him afterwards, it wasn’t shown on TV, but he went over that thing at least 35 times. He was doing that for 45 minutes. He did not stop. He didn’t say, “Oh, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do this.” I was sure that he wasn’t going to be able to do it, but I didn’t say anything. I tried to stay as positive as I could to keep him motivated, but he just kept going and kept going and kept going and finally he made it and that was really amazing!

Don: Well, they call it The Amazing Race. (chuckles)

You both come from a different generation, obviously, so what did each of you learn from the other?

Don: From my perspective, there are just a lot of technical things I don’t know. If it wasn’t for Nick being able to get on the Internet and check out sites we were going to and checking on tickets and everything else, I would have been lost. I wouldn’t have been able to get as far as we did on the Race because I’m computer illiterate. That’s what I learned about youth and about Nick, that these are things I should really start learning for myself.

Nick: for me, it was a good feeling on the Race knowing that there were going to be a lot of wild, random things thrown at us. You never know what you might be doing the next day. You might be mining for gold or dealing with animals and it’s always a reassuring feeling, and not just in the Race, that he would know what to do. My relationship with Don is that if anything goes wrong in my life, like my car breaks down or I’m thinking about how to invest for retirement, he’s the guy you go to. He’s the guy you call. He’ll give you advice on whatever it is. And far as the Race, whatever was going to come up, I knew that he would have a solid approach. If I had been with someone else, I might have felt more vulnerable. I knew that Don’s experience would really pay off, and it did.

Don: I’m thinking of starting a show and I’m calling it Ask Don! (laughs)

So how behind did you become when you left the equipment at the store in the last leg?

Don: I was a little upset about it. We screwed up there, but it really didn’t put us that far behind. When we got to the glacier, we were close enough that I could have touched TK. We were right there.

Nick: It put us 15 minutes back, I would say, but regardless, we all did the challenge and Chris go there about 20 minutes ahead of Rachel and we were about 10 minutes after that. Maybe it would have changed the order in which we arrived a little bit, but there was a point for about 45 minutes when Rachel, Chris and I were all trying to do that Road Block and we were all stumped. Any one of us could have pulled ahead, and it was Rachel. She did the best job and they won. Anything else in the Race…it just came down to that Road Block. We all had a chance.

Don: Like Nick said, that puzzle was really difficult. You’d have to ask Nick, but I don’t think 10 minutes would have given us enough time to really make a difference.

Was there a leg of the Race when you two were certain that you would be going home?

Don: Not really.

Nick: Remember when we were lost between villages in Burkina Faso and you said, “Here we go to sequesterville.”

Don: Yeah, we were lost out there in those villages in the middle of Africa. There was a monsoon, pouring rain. We couldn’t see anybody and we didn’t know anything. That was pretty disheartening. I kind of forgot about that. Nick’s right. That was a disheartening time because we didn’t want to get eliminated.

Nick: For me, there were three times. When Don was doing that pole vault, I thought we were gone. (Don laughed) When he finally made it across, that was like a second life. I was so grateful. And that hair salon in Lithuania, I thought I was going to lose. There’s also another point in that leg that wasn’t shown on TV. We tried to get on a Lufthansa flight and Lufthansa said they were sold out. We just conceded that we were going to show in Lithuania 5 hours after everyone else. So we walked up to another airline ticket and asked what they could do for us, just randomly trying things. The other airline sold us a ticket for Lufthansa after Lufthansa said it was full. That brought us back into the game.

It just goes to show that you can’t quit until it’s over.

Don: That’s correct because you never know where everyone is. You’re not sure. You’re thinking that you’re last but you don’t know.

Is there anything you two would do differently, if you had the chance?

Don: From my standpoint, I’d say no. I think we would have raced the same way over again. We tried to get the best flights. We tried to do the best tasks as quickly as possible. We tried to choose between us which of us would be best suited to do it. You have to remember that one person can only do five things, so you’ve got to split it up. You just can’t let one person do everything. There were things that happened, and they happened to a lot of people we passed by.

Nick: I really regretted not watching the show a bit more beforehand. Rachel, and especially Chris had watched the show more than I and they knew that in the final leg, there was some kind of all-encompassing task. The one season I’d watched, season 7, I didn’t get to watch the last two episodes. I really should have sat down and watched multiple seasons and realize things that were common each time, recurring themes that would probably happen in our season. If I had known that, I would have been keeping sort of log of things that were happening to us. I know that Chris was keeping a journal and Rachel was as well. Maybe that helped them going into the final leg. I really felt like my memory was solid of the entire show, but that one gun. They had me on camera yesterday saying, “This gun is a piece of ****.” I just could not remember that gun.

It looked like a hard puzzle, even if you knew all the items.

Nick: Sure. It was one thing could be changed for another thing. And all of the things could have multiple uses. Everything was connected. It was just very difficult.

Which of the tasks on the Race were your favorites and which were your least favorites?

Don: My favorite was Alaska. I know it sounds crazy, but gutting the fish and looking for a clue and going up the glacier, that was right up my alley. There was beautiful scenery, wonderful country. You’re out in the wilderness and that was perfect for me.

Nick: My favorite one was in Africa with the kids. It was just such a depressing country to be in with the extreme poverty and going to sleep in the middle of the street and hearing babies crying, kids without parents. It was devastating. Then to go into the room with all the kids and they all seemed so happy and eager. To see that kids are kids wherever you go, that was very heart warming. It was fun to work with the young people who were so eager to help you with your challenge.

Maybe my least favorite was that row boat. It wasn’t too fun. I wasn’t very good at it and Don was pretty tired. He was exhausted and his face was purple and he refused to drink water and we were fighting a little bit. We were afraid that we were going to get eliminated and the whole day had been really tough and we hadn’t slept in a long time. That was a pretty frustrating time.

Don: My least favorite was when Nick was searching for the beauty shop we had been the first ones there and it was nearly 20 minutes before anybody else came. Then every racer that came went out and completed their task. They interviewed me 7 times before Nick came back. I forgot about that. I thought we were going to be eliminated. The last team that went out was the blondes. We were last and Nick said, “Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll beat the blondes.” (laughs) That was reassuring to me. We had a two-hour ride after that to the Pit Stop. We ended up beating them there and we knocked them out. Anything can happen.

As you can see, they were a fun pair to talk to and thoroughly made my day. What did you think of Don & Nick on the Amazing Race? Leave a comment to share your thoughts!

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