Well, after leaving the Pit Stop, teams then had to find a bag of onions in the town of Lucea and deliver it to a jerk shack (as in "jerk pork". It wasn't a shack full of jerks, dumbass). Ron and Kelly were first to leave, and while they fetched a taxi, Kelly once again teared up in an interview as she re-emphasized her desire to simply get married. Honestly, Kelly, give it a rest already. Part of me thinks she's less enthused about getting married to Ron than she is about receiving a grandiose reality wedding like Trista & Ryan and now Ramber.

Later, when Ron and Kelly had snatched a cab, they got lost trying to find not only Lucea, but the place with the onion bags. "It's like a needle in a haystack of needles," Ron explained. Well said, Ron. And by the way, here is your certificate of redundancy certificate. By the way, is it actually possible to have a "haystack of needles"? Wouldn't that be a "needle stack" instead? Shut up, Ron.

While Ron and Kelly drove around the island, Rob and Ambah found the onions and then the jerk shop relatively quickly. Once there, they learned they'd have to chop up fifty onions before getting their next clue. The two immediately got to work, and after some time, were joined by Ron and Kelly. Yes, the ever exciting mincing competition. Personally, I was surprised that Ron didn't pipe up and say, "This kind of reminds me of when I was on KP in the army. Actually, I wasn't on KP, but I remember one night thinking about onions in my bunk. Hey, did I ever tell you I was in the military?"

Meanwhile, newly impoverished racers Uchenna and Joyce couldn't even entertain the idea of finding the onions (or needles in haystacks for that matter) because they had no cash. Even worse, their Pit Stop was relatively isolated, and despite being in a resort, at 3:00 AM, there weren't many people around to beg money from. Luckily, the two managed to hitch a ride to the airport where they figured they'd have better luck finding people with spare change. This strategy didn't pan out so well as the two spent what seemed like hours begging for cash. The real problem was that Uchenna did all the talking, instead of sweet Joyce. Honestly, he just had no game. At one point he offered to perform tricks for money. "I can do cartwheels. I can do a jig," he said, adding "Basically, I can do any sort of racial stereotype."

Well, Joyce lost faith in the entire exercise, and as Uchenna hugged his crying wife, we cut away to commercial. I have to say that there were a lot of crappy commercials last night (unfortunately, I was watching live, so the Tivo was of no use in this department), but I was particularly impressed with a Botox spot that started with a woman boasting, "I got back into my favorite jeans." Because of Botox? What did she do? Botox her ass? Anyway, this commercial was eventually followed by Los Angeles's very own KCBS promoting its eleven o'clock news with a story about traveling to Cuba. The anchor teased us by saying "Visit the forbidden paradise The Amazing Race couldn't and find out why most Americans can't go there." Uh, let me guess: a forty year embargo? Fidel Castro? I'm stumped. But seriously, thank you CBS for reporting on breaking news from 1965.

But back to the action. So when we last left our teams, Ramber and Relly were chopping onions at the jerk shack. Well, they were still there, and Kelly was getting a little cocky. "Martha Stewart, watch out!" she joked, looking away from her knife. How funny would it have been had she accidentally nicked herself, sending a torrent of blood all over her onions. Okay, maybe it wouldn't have been funny, but it surely would have been interesting.

Anyway, Rob and Amber finished first and headed to their next clue at a place called Rose Hall. There they found the Detour which was a choice between Pony Up and Tee It Up. In Pony Up, teams had to engage in horseback swimming. Basically, they had to ride a horse into the ocean, and when it started swimming, teammates had to dismount and grab onto the horse's tail. Wow, what an incredibly odd sport. Kind of like water skiing before the era of motorboats. In Tee It Up, teams simply had to change into golf clothing and hit balls on a range. Once a team's ball landed on a specific (and small) green, it could receive its next clue.

Ramber predictably chose golf, and in just two short seconds, our innocence was lost as we watched a doughy Rob undress to his skivvies for the challenge. But hey, at least he was fast, unlike Ron who took even longer to change than his beauty queen girlfriend. I'm not really sure what the holdup was, but I'm thinking he probably had a POW flashback. Maybe the Iraqis tortured him with Titlist apparel?

Posted by B-side on May 11, 2005 5:16 AM