The Diary of Henry Reed: TARA 2 Episode Four

RACERS REVEAL THE TRUTH

Hey Guys,

Whew!! That second day in New Zealand was kinda tough to go thru again .... but in fact, we did make it thru and the race continues.

Our first day in New Zealand wasn't too bad with the self drive. I think we actually found one lady that offered to let us follow her for almost 100km and her only question ..... "do you mind if we exceed the speed limit???" Well, hell no!! That was cool.

But this day started out at Spookers and we were delayed for a few minutes by some psycho Japanese care taker. He saw the camera crew with us and went nutz. He wanted to confiscate all the crew's gear and take our car. Well, I was in a pretty nice SUV so we did a little off roading around his car and got the hell outa there.

But this entire day, we had issues with navigation. I wasn't really getting the right input to navigation questions and when I wanted to stop and check the map, well, all hell broke loose so we did a lot of just driving around lost .... and it cost us big time.

Not sure why Diane called me "stupid" at the Caltex station cause I didn't touch "her" car. It was a close squeeze but no contact.

Sawaka's surprise at the Pit Stop was great. I woulda figured that after Spookers, it would take a lot more than that to startle any of us but ... hey, there ya go.

Much of the stuff in the race is time compressed on the show. I mean, some places took us hours to find and they showed us making it there in 5 or 10 seconds. Finding that freakin' hot sulphor pit took way too long but thankfully, the editing only showed a couple of the fights and that was that ... but ...

Aurelia and Sophie trying to put gas in their car .... Holy Shit!! On the show, it seems like it took them over an hour so it must have taken even longer than that. I think I noticed that when they got there it was light and by the time they left, it was definitely gettin' dark. I just wonder how long it really took????

On the detour for the weave, those 2 local ladies were just doing it over and over again as an example ... but they were going so fast ... especially with the part at the end when you had to split the leaves and tie them up the right way. Terri said that she was gonna do it .... I made the mistake of trying to help and ...... big trouble!! Then when I tried to just step back ... it was too late ..... Kinda like Marc and Rovilson ... that weave took a lot of patience and attention to detail. And it just wasn't happenin' for us. That's why we decided to change.

On the way in though, we met Diachi and he said that the dance thing was a piece of cake .... so I'm thinking maybe a little electric slide, the hustle or maybe even some form of hula. Wrong!! When I got there and I saw we had to throw sticks at each other ... I shoulda known better. Terri was already fired up and giving her sticks to throw at me was definitely not the best plan. It didn't take long before I decided that I couldn't do that one alone so it was back to the weave.

I tried to do the weave IAW the diagram and was making slow and steady progress even with Terri's "support." It was very rough. But the good news, I got it done and we made it to the Pit Stop ... not in last place.

I think Paula was exactly right when she said that our arguing slows us down. And when we're fighting all the time, we really don't appear to be a threat. But that's the Catch-22. If we were just a normal in love couple, we would not have been picked. But since we fight all the time, well, the producers decided we'd make good TV and I think they were right about that.

Well, not much else to say about Ep 4 .. it was rough ...

Holla later,

Henry