From the start Nathan & Jennifer didn't seem serious. In a taxi, in second place, careening to the Umeda Sky Building, Nathan & Jennifer joked with an easy sway about TK & Rachel being over three hours behind. Ho, ho! The Final Three prize loomed as an inevitability. It was theirs. Ah, the sunny determination of youth...to live forever! These other fuddy-duddies? No problem.

By David W. Taylor (Email The Author)
Reality Reel Media
01.18.08

Contrast this with the first-place Ronald & Christina. Gloom etched itself on their faces - especially in the pained expression of Ronald who winced, "We gotta run this Race real fast..." There was no lighthearted gabbing, no light laughs in their taxi. They were all business. This reality gut check kept them ahead.

And then in Taipei, Taiwan — or as Jennifer & Nathan so skillfully put it: "Taaa-pie" — Jennifer glimpses the irritatingly serene TK & Rachel pulling-up, catching-up, as she and Nathan are pulling away from the "building with the hole in it." Jennifer, with a huff, brushes off this rude awakening, saying, "We just can't worry about them." But worried she should have been.

This apparent obliviousness to the coming-up-fast hippies continued at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Terminal as Nathan & Jennifer opt to do a money exchange instead of getting in the sprawling Immigration queues. Soon TK & Rachel waltzed past them with a couple of shocked, crooked grins. A startled, bug-eyed Jennifer roasting, "It was gut wrenching...utter shock. It makes me sick." What in tarnation?!

A bit later Jennifer spies the pair again and announces, "I'm sorry guys I'm not happy to see you." Her earlier lack of worry morphing into a raging hatred. Most of it oozing from a frustration at her and Nathan's own lack of foresight and strategic clarity. And, after all, heck, it was Jennifer's bloody birthday! Don't magical things just happen on that day?

Jennifer's headache deepens after TK & Rachel resume their heel-nipping after their farcical Speedbump shenanigans. Jennifer sees them in her perpetual rearview mirror again, nary a drop of sweat — this time at the Rail Station — and unloads: "I just don't understand why we're working so hard? TK & Rachel just slack off and they caught up to us...it's just stupid...."

With objectivity one can see the intense friction that was grinding down Nathan & Jennifer. If it wasn't the ghoulish specter of seeing the Three-Hour-Behind TK & Rachel at every turn — when you thought they'd still be hanging laundry in Osaka — and letting it give you an aneurism...it was these two needling each other until each exploded in a vein-popping fury.

The Nathan & Jennifer Smack-Down occurred just when they both needed to be cool and clear-headed. Standing in the center of a Taipei traffic triangle Nathan can't decide whether to travel by bus or taxi to the "Youth Park" and the "Earth" Detour (because of a local hinting at the horrible traffic snarls) and Jennifer badgers him into embarrassment. It's a big to-do. People stop and stare.