The Diary of Henry Reed: TARA 2 Episode One

CATCHIN' UP TO THE PAST



Hey Guys,

Wow!!! What a show!!! LOVED IT!!! I'd have to say my girl has the biggest personality out there. Sometimes big in a competitive way and sometimes even bigger in a "pull out ALL my hair, kick that fuckin' traffic barricade" sorta way. But all in all, it makes for an exciting life.

This one might get kinda long 'cause I have to catch up to the past with some of the stuff that happened in Singapore before the race started but .... my friends will understand and besides, I'm pretty sure the "delete" key can't be disabled so I won't be offended or even aware if you use it, so here goes.....

July 1st - Holy shit. I'm in a frickin' Mercedes!! This is cool. Who gives a shit if it's just the car that TARA2 sent to pick us up at the airport. It's still my first ride EVER in a Mercedes. Life is good. But then DAMN!! Once we get to the hotel, lock down AGAIN. This was our second trip to Singapore and on the first one, kinda like Mr. McKay, the producer of the show said on Racers Revealed, they wanted to make sure that the teams didn't get too close and chummy so they made sure we didn't sit with each other for meals, talk to each other as we waited for interviews or even have orgies in the hallways while waiting to see the doc. Oh wait, there're probably a butt ton of other reasons for that last one not happening ... heh heh. heh.

We spent a LOT of time in the room just waiting for the next event and we were warned, when they called the room to tell you where to go next, if you didn't answer the phone in 3 minutes, you got a 3 minute grace period, another call and if you weren't there, well you would be sent home before the race even started! They were not joking around about maintaining control. They even had some huge security dudes well versed in sleeper holds and death grips that would come to your rooms for random inspections and check for contraband.

As soon we arrived, they went thru all your shit and took ALL your money, credit cards, cell phones, compasses, cigarettes, or anything else on the list of banned items or stuff they weren't sure about and had to be evaluated later. Oh yea, that's right, they took cigarettes so if you were a smoker, as of July 1st, you weren't any more. I'm not a smoker but guess who is ... yep, my wife! So as the stress level hits the roof and beyond, kinda imagine what it was like for and with an involuntary x-smoker .... Ay Naku!!!

Kinda reminded me of boot camp back in 1982 ... well, with out all the yelling and with out all the cleaning floors on your knees with socks on your hands or cleaning bathrooms with toothbrushes or without all the marching with rifles .... oh hell, it was NOTHING like boot camp ... heh, heh, heh but it was definitely controlled.

So now all my friends and family know why when we went to Singapore for "vacation" a few months ago, we didn't bring back any gifts or stories about how great Singapore was. We didn't see any of it!

That first day we got all our shots. A few in the arms and one in the butt. Terri told the doc that he "poked her in the butt and she didn't even feel it!!". How's that for an ego boost ... but hey, if you're a doctor, I imagine your ego is just fine. My wife was in fine form with the doc and we were crackin' up the whole time. It was a circus!! The doc totally lost his professionalism and finally said to me, "Doesn't your wife EVER SHUT UP?!! She must talk in her sleep!" .... If he only knew ...........

Now that I think about it though, all those shots may have been placebo’s and meant to only scare the shit out of us as we tried to figure out what strange countries we were gonna go to that had diseases that needed all those shots!

July 2-3 More promo stuff, interviews, detailed review of the TARA2 rules .... more on that later ....

July 4 Hey, almost done ... hang in there just a little longer .... on the 4th we all got together in a big room and got to test a lot of the sponsor products that we might use during the race. It would really suck if the clue said, "Use the Sony Cybershot X69 to take a picture of Osama Bin Laden's anus" and you couldn't figure out how to turn on the camera, right??? That was fun but even better, I think it was the first time all the teams were in the same place at the same time and we kinda got a chance to size up the competition.

Marc Nelson and Rovilson Fernandez are NUTZ! The sponsors were giving us very detailed and specific instructions on how to operate their products. As an ex US Navy Nuke, I was diggn' this shit. For Marc and Rovilson, it was kinda like setting a kid loose in Toys-R-Us and giving him specific instructions not to touch anything ... those guys are knuckleheads but 2 of the coolest dudes on the planet.

Rovilson was even giving me a few lines to help me with my 'game.' "Hey girl, you may be late, but you're worth the wait" or "Girl, I don't need sugar for my coffee, just dip your finger in my butt and it'll be mocha marvelous!" or something like that. I may have mixed up a few words in that last one but that's why I got no game ... heh, heh, heh. I think I'm gonna need a Rovilson Refresher course.

July 5 Ready, Set, Go!!! ........... STOP!!!!!! AUUUUUUGGGHH!!!!! Our race started terrible! The clue on the backpacks had a picture in it and we had to find a cab within a 300M radius of the Singapore museum that had the dashboard ornament that matched the picture to get the next clue. Well, one team took another teams cab ... so the team without the cab was unable to match their picture 'cause the flowers shown on their picture were gone. (You didn’t hear it from me but on the show, you could see Marc and Rovilson in a cab with flowers on the dash. That was the cab for Ed and Monica. Marc and Rovilson were supposed to take the cab with a bookmark with a ‘picture’ of flowers on it.) Another team (Arelia and Sophie) took the clue but not the cab. That’s why they were the only team in a pink cab and all the other teams were in identical silver cabs. They told us later that the driver refused to take them and told them he had instructions to stay there and they had to find another cab. Sure, the production people probably told him to “stay there” … that is until the team with the right picture got there … duh!! But those cabbies in Singapore barely spoke English so in my opinion, it’s possible that they had some fuckups.



So there was a cab left at the start without a clue in it and finally, the cab marked with our picture was nowhere to be found!! There was a cab with a Merlion paperweight but NOT the Merlion glass ball that we were given a picture of. We tried to get him to give us the clue a couple times during those hours in the sun but he refused. Incidentally, I am the only person from the show that still has the picture from that first clue ‘cause ALL the other teams had to trade their picture for the clue. Oh wait, Ed and Monica might still have theirs … I don’t know. Anyway, I was hoping when I watched the episode that I would see us obliviously walking past our cab for hours and then I could say, "yea, we fucked up!" but that didn't happen. Now, I'm 95% sure the cab was not there. We walked/ran around that place for over 2 hours looking .... it was about 35C in the Singapore sun and we almost killed our camera crew from exhaustion. They ran outa water and were starting to get a little glassy eyed. It was really a fucked up situation. Finally, phone calls were made and Terri and I were given directions to the location of the next clue since we ended up taking the cab that Sophie and Aurelia were supposed to take and they had already taken the clue. The good news … we were back in the race. The bad news ….that 2-3 hour delay caused our teams to miss the first flight to Manila and we were the bottom 2. The next flight was 3-1/2 hours later and NO team beat Terri and me by 3-1/2 hours in Manila. We coulda shoulda woulda been in first place ... but hey, that's life, right?

Our post leg interview at the pit stop was VERY tense. I was pissed!!! We were credited 30 minutes by Michael McKay but fuck, that bullshit cost us 3-1/2 hours! I felt like that shithead McKay giving us 30 minutes was a real slap in the face!!!

The good news, Philippines is home, we're still in the race and we can definitely catch up!!!

One of the craziest, stressfulliest, amazingiest things I've ever done in my life! AWESOME!!

Holla,

Henry