EP 168 - What The Amazing Race Is REALLY Like... (Joel & Garrett Interview)

[00:00:00] Tayson: Everybody, welcome back to the Live Ultralight Podcast, powered by Outdoor Vitals. Today, We have a very special episode that I really, really enjoyed kind of laughing and smiling and being inspired the entire time. So, let me introduce Our Guest today. Joel Strasser and Garrett Smith are friends from Idaho who competed on the CBS show, The Amazing Race. It's a reality competition show in which teams race around the world to do some Clues navigating foreign territories performing physical and mental challenges, and traveling by land air and sea to win the race and take home one million dollars. In Season 35, the pair got second place overall, in the competition. And without any sponsorship from us, they used a lot of Outdoor Vitals gear along the way. Joel is an autoclave training specialist who holds over 10 Guinness World Records, All involving the most objects stuck in his beard,

[Editor’s note: Show identity, placement, prize, and production details in this transcript are preserved as the speakers’ historical Season 35 account; they are not current CBS rules or claims about every season.]

[00:00:51] Tayson: which you'll see here in a second. We bonded over some facial hair aspects of this. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, you're listening to this you know, jump over to YouTube at least to leave a comment and see what these guys look like and Garrett is a delivery driver by profession. Not to be outdone with facial hair. In the facial hair Department, as his very impressive, mustache of his own. These guys were a ton of fun to have on the show. It is a slightly different show. In typical. However, there is a lot to be learned and it turns out to be a very inspiring story and just love the mindset of these two. And I think it could help people break down some barriers. If, you know, travel or chasing some of your goals is something that you haven't, you know, taken advantage of or like confronted head-on, maybe in besides just the entertaining Factor this podcast, I think you guys will get some, some benefit out of, you know, maybe it'll push you to actually pursue some of those goals you have or those bucket listing that are on your list. So, really enjoyed this. I hope you guys enjoy this as well. Go ahead and roll that interview right now. Well guys, I'm super excited to have you on the show and of course, we can't start this show. Those of you that are watching on YouTube, you'll notice that we have a beard. I guess coming at me. Here, you see. He's challenging and a mustache. I mean, both of these guys are rocking solid, facial hair, and I can't start the show without at least acknowledging that. So I imagine on the show that you guys got some, some attention for that, right?

[00:02:14] Joel: Yeah, I think stood out. Yeah. Actually, that's what our nickname came to be. Was either the beard grows or the mustachios. And so it's nobody's like the beard and mustache guy doesn't blow off the time. So, Beard grows, he doesn't have a beard mustachios. I have a mustache too, I guess, but they would, they would bounce back and forth on that.

[Editor’s note: Part of the team-nickname wording is unclear in preserved speech. The surrounding exchange supports only that beard-and-mustache nicknames were used; no exact corrected nickname has been supplied.]

[00:02:38] Tayson: I have to imagine that there's some element of even getting selected for this show that they're looking for some uniqueness, right. Like they want, they want attention and so I I have to imagine that that played in your guys’ favor, just a little bit.

[00:02:51] Garrett: It's actually kind of interesting because I've never been a facial hair guy. I've never had facial hair and about a year ago, Strasser challenged me to grow a mustache for a full year without shaving without trimming, anything. He said, you do that. Big things will happen in your life and what happened? I mean, it's crazy. I mean, it was a year long joke that turned into now I guess it's my thing.

[00:03:13] Joel: Yeah, you can't really.

[00:03:16] Tayson: I would say that's see, that is my biggest challenge with the beard. As like it's a, it's like an identity thing and it's a branding thing now and I, I feel as much as I love it. Like I don't feel like I could shave. It sucks.

[00:03:30] Joel: Yeah, but I really sure when you you had, you know, on YouTube a couple of years back where you cut it off and I can't remember it was it was either a fundraiser or if a certain goal was met or something you were gonna I can't remember the details but How weird you looked without it and then you grew it right back and that would be the same thing with me.

[00:03:50] Tayson: Yeah. Like so that was you followed us a while because I was like, 2018, when you're doing the The Loft tech jacket Kickstarter and we were at like 500 thousand dollars and like and raised funds right for the jacket and I said, if we raise, maybe it's just a little bit more and I was like if we raise another 100,000 dollars in the last two days of the campaign, I'll shave off my beard and we raised like 150 plus. And so, yeah, I had to had to cut it off and I jokingly said I didn't actually pull the numbers but I jokingly said that yeah we we raise you know, additional funding there but then Revenue went down for like a year because they didn't have the beard and that's a good point. I couldn't make ads that people could recognize me like that so who knows, who knows? But I feel like it's yeah. I mean if either of you guys shaved off your mustaches you wouldn't you'd be gone you know? I mean different humans. So yeah. Soon, as mine goes white, that's what I've decided when it starts to go white, which may not be as far off, as I think it should be. That's probably when it's gonna go. It's happening for me.

[00:04:55] Joel: I'm on a collision course, being Santa Claus. I don't know. There's no avoiding it. It's going to happen.

[00:05:00] Tayson: yeah, I know, I, I feel for you, I pluck all the white hairs I find and I claim that they're blonde, but anyways, um, I'm excited for this. I would like to approach this as if the audience just doesn't really know anything that happened in the season or just, you know, maybe has that basic understanding of like, okay, I kind of know what the Amazing Race is, but would love to approach it more in that sense of things, so that we can bring people along and talk through exactly what what it is. So first off, I guess let's talk about what made you guys apply to even go on The Amazing Race.

[00:05:37] Joel: So we've been friends for a long time. We met in the Army, back in the early 2000s. So it's been over 20 years since we've been buddies. And we both got deployed together to Iraq, but at the start of that deployment, he got hurt his shoulder got hurt and he had to get sent back home. And so we had this big plan of going through this adventure together and it didn't happen. I ended up staying in Iraq for the full deployment and Race came on TV on the Armed Forces Network. So I was able to watch it and that's where I first discovered the show, this was back in 2004 and I would watch it there and I would talk to my platoon mates, who didn't abandon me? And I'd be like, hey, we should do this. We could do this show together and I

[Editor’s note: This shoulder-injury reference is a brief personal history, not a diagnosis, treatment claim, or medical recommendation.]

[00:06:29] Joel: talked to a couple different people and it never really took off or anything, but what I didn't know is Smyth was at home and he was watching The Amazing Race also. And he was thinking the same thing, like, I could do this. I should do this one day

[00:06:40] Garrett: and I was very offended that he was asking other people when I was going to do this together. Yeah,

[00:06:46] Joel: so we talked about it but never were serious about it for years on and off. And I we both grew up here in the Boise area, but I kept traveling with work and living in different places and we never got serious about it until about a year and a half ago. I moved back to Boise now. We live in the same place and we're like, you know what we've been talking about this forever. Let's just make it audition video and just apply so we can do it. And I don't think that either of us actually. I think my belief that we were gonna get on the show.

[00:07:23] Garrett: You never believe. I mean, you always say oh, we'll never hear anything back, but I didn't have that glimmer of hope that, you know, maybe they'll reach out to us whereas I didn't expect to hear back at all. I thought,

[00:07:33] Joel: you know, this is, it's gonna be fun to make an application video and turn in and then that's going to be the end of it. I had applied for Survivor a couple times. Never heard back. I figure this would be the same thing. So when they got back to us about a month later, we were just so excited. Just to hear back. Like that was huge.

[00:07:52] Tayson: What do you think? I mean I touched on the Beards but was there something else in that process that you think made you guys stand out a little or get selected.

[00:07:59] Joel: You know, what's funny, is a lot of space. So I hold a bunch of Guinness World Records. They're all for holding things in my beard. Like, if you, if you can, every record that has to do with holding something in the beard, almost every record, I hold it. That would help us to get on the show. So when we initially applied, we talked about my world records in the application

[Editor’s note: The Guinness World Records statements are preserved as Joel’s historical first-hand account; no current record status is asserted.]

[00:08:20] Garrett: When the guy reached back out, all I thought was, you know, if his Guinness World Records get us on the show, I'll ride those coattails all the way there. I don't

[00:08:30] Joel: Ya. But it turned out that didn't help at all. In fact, the casting producer was like, can you redo your application video for us? But not talk about the world records because they thought they wanted to kind of downplay that they were like, we don't want to, but we just want to regular guy. We don't want somebody who's done stuff or something

[00:08:48] Garrett: along those lines. I can't remember. Yeah, in the end, I honestly do think it is because he convinced me to grow this mustache, that we got on, because if I didn't have the mustache to counteract his beard, I don't know that the dynamic would have felt the same for them. Yeah. And so I do think the facial hair had a big play and as far as them reaching out to us to ask us more and then I heard our story, you know, with our military background, I have a daughter with special needs and we have a connection with our kids and everything. A lot of our story, I think they ended up just liking that story and then with the facial hair like, you know, how can we not get these guys on? Yeah,

[00:09:23] Joel: the guy, but it totally helped. And yeah, I do not think we would have made it or been as noticeable to them without them.

[00:09:31] Tayson: No, that's that's awesome. And a good story. Obviously, they want as many of those stories as they can, what made you guys think that you could succeed at The Amazing Race?

[00:09:40] Garrett: I'll be honest with you. I didn't have as much confidence as this guy. Did I? I want it, okay. It's previously, you know, we, we practice some things, you know, we watched a lot of Seasons, we watched them together to talk about what we do and so I did have that hope at the beginning, once we met all the other teams and the whole thing was about to start, that's what Feel like, oh my goodness, this is gonna be a tough battle for for the win on this. Oh yeah. Straws are still able to keep that confidence and and kind of be like, oh we got this, you know? And I was like, yeah, yeah, we got the

[00:10:13] Joel: It's funny because if you don't know who your opponents are on this show and you all show up in LA and they keep you kind of at a hotel together for the first couple of days before the show starts, and you see the other teams, but you can't talk to them strictly. It's like, if you could wave or do a thumbs up, that's it. And so they bring us out to the start line and we've not heard any of these people's voices, but we've seen them for a few days. And some of them are very intimidating looking and we're looking like to our right by yourself right now. Or I mean these are,

[00:10:46] Garrett: I mean, I don't know if you've seen this show but, you know, Todd is, like, a foot taller than everybody, and Ashlie just looks like a powerful woman, like she's gonna be able to just dominate everything. I mean, it was And Steve and Anna Leigh, we thought, Okay, that's just the old man and the little girl. Oh, my goodness. Such A

[00:11:06] Joel: so they were so tough and you got Yeremi and Liam. They're both veterans like us, except they’re actually in really good shape. They’re serious opponents. And it was it was very intimidating to see everybody that was like a blow to the confidence, but one thing that we tried to do is just like keep believing that we can do this focus on that next thing. Whatever the challenges in front of us, I can learn this, I can do this, I can figure this out and we just kept doing that and we just kept continuing. People kept getting eliminated, and we didn't and it was awesome. It was, it was, it was kind of an Underdog Story for that regard.

[00:11:43] Tayson: Yeah, I I had high hopes to, like, watch the entire season before this podcast, and I’ll admit, I didn't quite get there. So I was, I was cruising through, but there are some moments when I was like, oh, I think they got eliminated because I actually didn't know that you guys had taken second in this and I'm like, oh this must have been where they went out right here. You know. It's stuff like that. And yeah, I looked it looked very challenging but like coming back to that original thought they were like, what do you think makes someone good at this type of an adventure? Like what do you think, allowed you guys to go as far as you did.

[00:12:15] Garrett: Well, I think a big thing is, the can-do attitude like Strasser was touching on it. You know, if you let the negative thoughts, get in your mind, I can't do this. It's so much harder to accomplish things. So, instead, you gotta say, I can do this, I just gotta figure out how to do it. So, the mentality is a big part of it. Another big thing on the race, which we can thank you guys for is your gear. Everything that you have with you on the show, you carry with you the entire time. You don't leave stuff back in the hotel room that you're gonna get later. Know if it's, if it's not with you, it gets left behind the show. Won't save it for you, nothing. It's just, it's on you to keep it all. So for us, a big thing was, we want to pack as light as possible because you're right. Everywhere you go, you're gonna run. And so you want it to be light and tight on your body. So you can run long distances without getting tired, which I'm not in great shape. So I got tired. But that's a big focus, is the gear. Now, one thing that I think as far as Yeremi and Liam go, who are the tough, you know, the strong veterans and just both of them are just ripped. But they had big heavy bags and so that could have potentially slowed them down because they didn't pack as light as we did.

[00:13:22] Joel: I remember looking and thinking, whoa, they packed everything but the kitchen sink.

[00:13:25] Tayson: Yeah, there was a pretty big disparity, I felt like on bag size I would say like you guys were like in the middle or on the lighter end. There's some people that might have even smaller bags than you like almost just like book bags, right? And then yeah, there's like the guys like big Osprey sized, you know, internal framed bags. And I, you know, I thought we'd eventually get to gear, but you guys brought it up. So let's just roll with this. Like, what you're in your thoughts on this? Like, what? What made what was beneficial? Did you take too much? Take too little. Did other groups take too much? Take too little. Yeah. Just curious on that

[00:14:01] Joel: we so we didn't know what to bring. They don't tell you what to bring. Part of the game is what you bring. They only tell you what, you can't bring and listen to stuff. You can't bring isn't that? Yeah.

[00:14:12] Garrett: And you don't forget to be in a cold cold environment, a warm environment, you could go from one to the other. So you have to prepare for any type of weather. And so that's the thing is you want to pack as light as possible but still have warm clothes. Just in case you go to that winter climate, you never know what's gonna

[00:14:28] Joel: happen. We knew it was shooting in summer. It was June and July but there are places in the world that are cold at that time of year too, and the whole world is in place. So We. Yeah I had I had come across outdoor vitals previously, I used it there was a promotional a long time ago where you could get a free pillow and you just pay shipping and I was I haven't been following and looking at the gear and kind of dreaming about it before that I was like, I'm just gonna try out this pillow and then I From there to like a sleeping pad and then it, I started adding a couple things to my collection and so when we got cast on the show, I was like, look we need every Advantage. We can get, we're, we're not in the best shape. We're kind of an Everyman, you can say, but we're not in bad shape, either. We're kind of, we got dad bods, I can own that but I was like, if we can get light gear that can serve its function but not weigh us down. It's going to be a huge advantage and that ended up being the case. But yeah, to your question, we also brought stuff, we didn't need our packs were over packed and I think it was in Germany. So we're around the halfway a little bit past, the halfway point in the race where we came within a whisker of getting eliminated.

[00:15:44] Garrett: This might have been the part where you were thinking oh maybe that's flying part the glider part there. Oh yeah.

[00:15:49] Joel: And so we were like okay we kind of did an inventory of our bag. Like we got crap in here. We don't need to be carrying like it's something that's nice to have but it's not stuff we need and we left water. Shoes gloves, first aid kit, like all this stuff that we hadn't used that we could have. Um, we, we lightened our bags, quite a bit there in Germany and back to the point that somebody from the hotel, contacted the production of it said, like, one of your people, after a ton of stuff in the room. Did they want that room? They were like, no,

[00:16:24] Garrett: you don't say it for him. And yeah, so the guy that takes care of the rooms. She said he was so excited to get all this brand new stuff. We got left in the room.

[00:16:32] Joel: Yeah, so and we were ditching shirts, we had extra clothes, we had extra shorts. By the end of the race, our packs were so light that we just lighting them as we went. So we've been, we've been talking about, like, if they ever gave us the chance to do this again, like on an All-Star season or something. We'd be so much better prepared this time around.

[00:16:51] Garrett: Oh, yeah.

[00:16:53] Tayson: Yeah, just lighter and lighter up. Well, that's kind of like the key pieces that you kept in the back then.

[00:16:58] Joel: Everything that we got everything we bought from outdoor vitals, we kept and part of that, by the way, was I want these pants. Here tonight but we didn't use the pants till Sweden.

[00:17:10] Garrett: Yeah. So when we did the skydiving, that it was a little cooler and it was overcast. It started raining on us. And so it was nice to have that, it light gear seal, but it kept us warm, you know, the pants that we had the dragon wool hoodie. Yeah, that stuff we could throw on and I mean, it gave us the warmth we needed, but it wasn't anything that was too heavy to carry. And so that's definitely stuff that we are happy that we had stuff that we weren't gonna get rid of because, you know, you never know where you're gonna go next. So, we gonna have something that can keep us warm by all means, Sweden was the coldest part of the

[00:17:42] Joel: whole race and we were going on in a boat, on the, in the Baltic Sea. I think. And we got water spraying all over us. As we went and I had all I was wearing, was the sun Hoody and the, the windbreaker and that breaker then, I worked that's all we needed. Didn't have anything heavier than that and it was it was good. And then by the end of that leg, we were running so much. I ended up stripping off the, the windbreaker and stuff. But yeah, that was it came in very handy. We made a lot of good decisions early on when it came to packing I did. It benefited Us big time and

[00:18:25] Garrett: the bag that we carried. I mean, it's just so Easy to use. Like there's Pockets everywhere. Easy to put stuff in and out. I love the fact that you can unzip and open it all the way so you can access anything in the bottle that digging it was just everything was just so convenient. I feel like it helped us, you know, when it came time to oh we need to throw on this warmer gear. You know, it's easy to get everything out and get on and get moving without having to have too much delay.

[Editor’s note: Three phrases in the preceding gear-and-pack run—‘that, it light gear seal,’ ‘that breaker then, I worked,’ and ‘in the bottle that digging’—are unclear in preserved speech. Surrounding context establishes only that light layers provided warmth, a sun hoodie and windbreaker were sufficient, and the fully opening pack made gear easier to access; no corrected product, function, or access wording has been supplied.]

[00:18:50] Tayson: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. The KotaUL is definitely kind of a pet project of mine that I I'd wanted to do for a long time, just for my own traveling and trying to be light and fast and and have access. So I think this scenario was probably just a great scenario to, to fully benefit and use the packs. So, I'm glad glad to hear it. Glad to hear it worked out as you're talking about this, though, like one of the interesting things about the race, right? And Sometimes it's hard to see if like this is just how they're producing the show or if this is like the reality, but it sure seems like it's a hurry up and wait scenario a lot, right? Because you gotta catch flights and it seems like that's like the log jams, right? So I guess talk to me a little bit about what like you're talking about like running all the time and and different things. So, describe what that scenario was like like because it sure seems like do you really have to hurry because you're going to be on the same flight or you know, stuff like that. But I guess you just never know. Or

[00:19:45] Garrett: yeah. So the thing with the flights though is you they might a lot. Some of the flights production has a flight booked for us but you can Still switch, flights. And find a flight that's available and so they have a guaranteed flight just in case. So that way It has something. So it's not all sold out but it's up to you to try to find a flight. So if you can be the first one to the airport, you might get to the airline and be able to switch to an earlier flight that only has this amount of seats available. So you're the only one that gets that play. You never know if you're gonna get some sort of Advantage by being there early. And then also, when you get to the airport, you know, you might go around and talk to people about your next destination and say, hey, we're on our way to Dublin Ireland. Can we look at your phone and just see some of the places there that we might end up doing going to and just try that Advantage too. So you're trying it is kind of a hurry up and wait but at the same time it's hurry up. So you have more time to you know, investigate your next destination or whatever people some people don't know, but there is

[00:20:41] Joel: no phone. We, we turned in our phone before production even started and we didn't see our phone again until the very end. We should also means no contact with our families, anything. We were completely unplugged for this whole filming process. So yeah, I remember being in the airport in Mumbai and we knew we were headed to Germany but we and we knew a few things about what we were going to see there but that's it. And we're just going around to different strangers. Be like, hey can I buy your phone for a minute? We're looking up a castle. We're gonna head to trying to find the best route to drive there. So even in the time when you have a break you should be using that time at the same thing happened. At the very beginning, we knew we were headed to Bangkok, but we knew about what Temple we were going to first. We knew the name of it, that was it? And so one of the teams Went in a travel store, this is Steve and Anna Leigh. They bought they bought a Bangkok book and they bought it and you have limited funds. By the way, you can't use your own money, you use the money they allot to you. And Steve and Anna Leigh were so smart. They were trying to rent the book out to different people in the airport—different teams to be like, if you give us five or 10 bucks or whatever, you can use this book for an hour and we were like, hmm. So we didn't pay Steve and Anna Leigh to use their book. We went to the travel store and we found another copy of it, and just in the store, we spent like an hour going through that book, taking notes, write down stuff and then when we were done we put it somewhere else in the store.

[00:22:08] Tayson: So I did. That's what I was thinking. I was like, I would buy out the books, I know limited all, I guess

[00:22:13] Garrett: when he brought the Mumbai airport though, it reminded me whilst ran into CeeLo Green while we were there and that's a little bit with him, so that's pretty cool.

[00:22:20] Joel: I don't know what he was good. We talked to him for like, 45 minutes.

[00:22:25] Tayson: Know, that's that's way. Awesome. What is what is sleep like on this show?

[00:22:30] Joel: Sporadic.

[00:22:31] Garrett: Yeah, you just take it whenever you can get it. A lot of times the sleep, you get is gonna be on the airplane, flying to the next destination. And so you try to get as much as you can. He mentioned that travel pillow that he had with him on the race and so we, you know, we had these pillows and we had face coverings and just tried to get as much sleep as we could. Once a leg ends, then you might actually get some time to rest. But you never know what that time is going to be, they'll tell you that night, okay? You gotta be up at this time in order to make your next, the next start. And so you take you take the sleep as much as you can, whether it's on a plane a train you know whatever you can get and then you hope that at some point you actually get some down time where you can get some good rest but it's like

[00:23:12] Joel: a month. Long of constant jet lag. You're never settled. You're moving and so it is weird. You never really know what time it is. We the funny thing is we had wristwatches on, but we never looked at them. Yeah, because it didn't mean anything for some reason. Mike. People will ask sometimes like how long did this part take, how long did that part take? And we can only estimate. Like I don't even know how long the legs were it's. So if what's the legs starts? It's like a blur. and you're, you're in a different mindset, you're in a somewhat panicked, but It's not, that's not the right word, it's just an

[00:23:52] Garrett: adrenal. Yeah, you run on adrenaline, for sure.

[00:23:54] Joel: And time becomes really strange. We never, we almost never ate during the legs of their race. Even if it was an all-day thing, we would drink when we could, but everything's strange. It's so hard to describe what's with the race is ongoing. But Yeah, it's it's weird. Like between the legs. Would you get like

[Editor’s note: The sleep, food, hydration, fatigue, and adrenaline passages describe these contestants’ historical filming experience; they are not health or recovery guidance.]

[00:24:13] Tayson: would you get like a full night of sleep? Or were you actually getting a couple days off type of thing?

[00:24:18] Garrett: It just depending on the leg, you know, there's a lot of the legs, you get a 12-hour break and when you get that 12-hour break, that's from when you stepped on the Finish Line to, when you start the next leg. Now, between that time, there's interview time, they’re gonna interview you for a while, then they're going to drive you to the hotel, then they're gonna, you know, order dinner and give you dinner. And so by the time sleep and then you have to wake up ahead of the start time. The next day you might get six hours of sleep. There was there was one particular leg. Where we had? I think a 36 hour. Stop.

[00:24:50] Tayson: Wow.

[00:24:51] Garrett: That one we actually were in the hotel room. You know, the full next day and napping throughout the day, you know, trying to learn Cricut because that was all that was on TV in India. But I mean it's just it's just a matter of in that moment, it's like, okay good, my knees are aching. I need this rest time and so you just take as much as you can get in that moment and you

[00:25:12] Tayson: a lot of time on feet. I imagine.

[00:25:13] Joel: Yeah, you go in into this, you just have to be in the mindset of. I'm just gonna be fluid, whatever happens, I'm gonna roll with it. I always felt like I would have wanted a longer rest here or sometimes in a less rest here and you're just off balance the whole time. That's just how it if you accept that you're going to be fine. Yeah.

[00:25:36] Tayson: So let's talk about the most challenging part of the race for you guys. When did, when were your what other backs against the wall or Just like, or just the hardest challenge even if you weren't like in last place. What do you guys think of? When you think, like the darkest time of this race for you guys? For balls up for each.

[Editor’s note: The final words of this preserved question are unclear. The immediately following answers independently establish that both guests identify dance challenges—and Joel’s Riverdance attempts in particular—as the low point. No corrected question wording has been supplied.]

[00:25:54] Garrett: Well, I think it's It slightly, but I think we both agree. That dancing is the worst. Yeah, yes, worst child, you can get neither one of us are dancers, neither one of us wanted to dance. We're all going to try to push the dance on to the other person, if it came to it. Yeah, but in the end, we both did have to do it dance, right? And we okay, so there were three dance challenges and

[00:26:16] Tayson: if they're always at least dance challenges, yes, That's that's just cruel and unusual punishment.

[00:26:22] Garrett: Well one of them they claimed was a sword fighting right? But I mean when you look at it the dance it's a routine you have to learn. So we

[00:26:30] Joel: did that first one that sword choreographed sword routine. Dance, we have avoided because you had a choice about and we chose the the torturous Thai massage and it was torturous and really I massage was awful. It was so painful and I had to do a physical therapy for my knee because of that.

[Editor’s note: Joel’s knee and Thai-massage comments are his personal historical account; the transcript does not establish medical causation or provide treatment advice.]

[00:26:53] Garrett: Yeah.

[00:26:57] Tayson: Just say like, I love love deep tissue. Like I like if I'm not in pain in a massage then I'm like this is useless. I'm not looking out of it.

[00:27:04] Garrett: Yeah, some of it was enjoyable but you got to take into account, the fact that they're bending you into a president to your ear, like it's yeah.

[00:27:13] Joel: It was, it was more contortion than massage in my book, okay? And we avoided the sword dance. But then a couple legs later, we had a roadblock so the roadblocks. Only one person has to do and it was a dance in India and it was my turn and I was like have fun with you? Yes.

[00:27:32] Garrett: Well and the thing is you don't know what the challenge is gonna be. They just give you a little clue. So this one says who who's got balance or who's ready to balance or something like that and I thought I've got good balance. I could walk across the beam, you know? Whatever the whiskers for balance too. I'm like oh this will be easy and so I tear open the clue and it says I'm gonna dance with bowls. Bounce on top of my head I'm like oh great. And he was like

[00:27:54] Joel: so at this point he's doing the bowl dance in India. Now this is our second dance and I'm thinking it's over the Rest the rest of this race is smooth. We've done two dance challenges. We're good. And then we get to in the second to last leg, we're in Ireland. And this was definitely to your question of the hardest part of the whole race. No question. We're standing in front of the famous river, Dance Theater. There's River Dance posters everywhere. We tear up in the clue and it says, who wants to get their steps in? And it was a roadblock, so only one of us had to do it. I don't think.

[00:28:32] Garrett: In front of the Riverdance, Studio at the time, Riverdance theater at the time. And so I heard him. Yeah. So the damn,

[00:28:38] Joel: here's what I was picking

[00:28:39] Garrett: my thought when it's the steps I thought. Oh, this is probably a dance routine. But me, I was, I was, here's what I was picturing.

[00:28:46] Joel: I knew it was a theater, and for some reason, I pictured that this theater had a big pile of sandbags in the basement that needed to get to the roof for some reason. And then I was gonna go up and down stairs, the sandbags and I was like this challenge is built for me. I was like, this is perfect. I will get my steps in. So I volunteer for this Challenge and then I read the rest of the clue because you can't read the rest until you decide who's gonna do it. And it says join the river dance routine and my heart just like fell out of my chest. I was like

[00:29:18] Garrett: a river dance.

[00:29:19] Joel: Oh, you're I mean, what river dance was. I see a little bit. And I'm like this could they could not. Find a challenge harder for me. There's nothing they can do. Even if they were like we got to get Joel out of this race. This was the thing. And so there's only four teams left at this point, and we got to the Riverdance theater. Second, we were doing pretty good in this league but we left their last by far. I had to do that dance, so many times, it was so complicated for me, the first two teams that got there John. And I mean, the first team is the finish it. John, and Korey. Finished it fast. They were both very good at dancing. This was in their wheelhouse, and then it was me and Steve that were left and Steve. He knows how to

[Editor’s note: The preserved Riverdance passage combines the names ‘John’ and ‘Korey’ while describing the first dancers to finish. Surrounding speech establishes only that two other dancers finished before Joel and Steve were left; it does not support a corrected team name, so none has been supplied.]

[00:30:07] Joel: cut country line dance. That's the extent of his dancing and I don't know how to do any dance. But Steve finished it up, he's gone. I'm the last one there. The show was super kind in the edit because they made it look like it. Only took me seven or eight times to to try it. It took me 15 times. In fact, it took me so many tries. You see in the show, they hear. You see me say, I'm gonna take a three minute break and I'm gonna come back. What you didn't hear was the show said that the dancers needed a break. Yeah, like I wasn't even take a break. I was just gonna keep these guys need a break my way of controlling how long it was was saying, okay, I'm gonna take three minutes, I'm gonna get some water, and I'm gonna come back out here. So I have tried over and over again. And I finally did a good enough job to pass it, but I mean, we're only one leg away from the finale at this point, and in my mind this was the thing we talked earlier about having the right attitude. All about the right attitude, because everything in my mind was, you can't dance. You suck at this. You're never going to get this done. Like that kept coming at me, but I wouldn't listen to it like constantly, I'm just like, oh, yes, I can. And yes, I will. I will learn how to do this. I will figure this out. And so one, one little step at a time, I kept getting just a little bit better at it, until I can finally pass that thing. And when we left that theater, the team, the last team to leave left about 20 minutes before us. So, we've got some uphill battle to come up with, and we managed to catch up with and pass Steve and Anna Leigh, and make it to the finale, but it wouldn't have happened. If I would have listened to that negativity because it was tough. The mental part was the hardest part of that dance. It wasn't the physical. I mean, learning the steps was tough, but the mental was way harder. And

[00:32:00] Garrett: as his Teammate and friend, you know, I'm like you got this, Strasser. You can do it. He doesn't have this, there's no way he's good.

[00:32:07] Tayson: Are you getting the studio watching it?

[00:32:10] Garrett: Yeah, so we were just, I was just sitting in the theater walking in the Ever every attempt and a man, I could see it in his face how much he was battling within himself, like, I can do this, like, I can do this, but it, I mean, I'm telling you. If I had done that challenge, it wouldn't have been any better. That was a tough dance. And it was so fast. And I mean I was proud of him in the end that he was able to get it because man, it was a tough thing.

[00:32:33] Tayson: Yeah, I'm definitely watching this episode now. I gotta see this.

[00:32:37] Joel: I just don't have too hard at me, I'm pretty sure. I busted a button on the shirt too.

[00:32:44] Garrett: Oh yeah.

[00:32:45] Joel: And I I just looked, I was just in so much distress.

[00:32:49] Garrett: Although there wasn't as bad as Steve at one. They didn't put this in the show. I don't think. All right. Steve's, SpongeBob. Underwear started showing out of the back of his pants were coming down,

[00:33:00] Joel: SpongeBob boxers.

[00:33:03] Tayson: That's awesome. So if that's kind of the low Where do you feel like you guys excelled the most or like the high of the show for you guys?

[00:33:13] Joel: What do you think is the Sweden leg? Do you think that was? I mean there's so many good moments. Yeah. So

[00:33:19] Garrett: the Sweden leg was a big one. The finale to an extent. I felt that too. But yeah, I mean the Sweden, there was a lot of things throughout the show where we just felt like we excelled at but in the end it didn't turn out well for us or as well. But Sweden for sure. I mean we just had a fun time in Sweden we we got to the skydiving first so we got to do skydiving before everyone else. First out of the plane, we led that leg for a good portion and then we got Passed up and, and we still just kept that positive attitude. We got, we dropped back to Fourth Place. Yeah. And we still kept that positive attitude. And we're like, you know what, we're gonna get this done. We're, we might end up in fourth place, but that's all we needed. Because there was five teams at the time. Yep. So the fifth place team would be eliminated. So as long as we keep fourth, we're safe, And at one point, we saw a couple of the other teams ahead of us, but then we didn't see him again. And so at this point we're thinking, you know, we're fourth place. But that's okay. That's all we need.

[00:34:14] Joel: Yeah, and we turned out our navigation saved us, which was the thing that saved us, many times actually. But in Sweden, it was we had to work at the end of that leg. We completed the challenges and now we just had to make it to the pit stop and Phil's waiting for us at the mat. And from fourth place, that's where we jumped into first. The three teams ahead of us. They bunched together. That was their mistake. They were all like keeping together trying to figure it out together trying to keep the other two teams behind them. And so they made mistakes together and they went the wrong way together and we got good directions. We got on the subway, we got exactly where we needed to go. We found a shortcut and we got to the mat and we're expected. There's no other teams there. We

[00:34:59] Garrett: all thought we were in fourth of this point. We have first second third because they were far enough ahead of us. They could be finished and gone by the time we get There. And so we're expecting to get fourth place, which we're happy with, because we, yes, we're staying in another

[00:35:10] Joel: legs. So we're okay, we're okay. If Phil hasn't told us what place we're in yet because he loves to drag it out and on the show, you don't know. But in on the mat you talk to Phil for like 15 minutes every time and they show you about 20 seconds of it in the show and they pick whatever 20 seconds on the show. We're talking to Phil for a while, we're having a good time. We're talking, we're waiting for him to tell us, we're in fourth place. And when he told us, we were first place that we finished the lake first. You could have knocked us, we were so excited. We told us we won a prize, we want to trip because you know, the winner of every leg gets a trip as well, and we're just ecstatic. And then the other three teams come up and we're just like holy cow. How did we ran out? They ran up just shortly behind us too and so we we passed them up and and beat him by just a few minutes but

[00:35:59] Garrett: And we were in shock, we couldn't believe that we had passed them up. In fact, all of the production that was standing around the mat off-camera, they all were loving it because they knew that we thought we were in fourth place the entire time. And so they were like, oh man, that was such a good reaction because you guys had no clue. You got into first

[00:36:15] Tayson: that's awesome. What, what is navigation? Like, I just, you know, pulling that back. Even to more General audience, I think that so many people don't travel because they're so nervous about, you know, getting lost or navigation. Or how am I going to get here? How am I gonna get there? And I mean, you guys are doing this without phones. So it's a, it's the next level, right? Because honestly, I just say, you know, download Google Translate, you can do anything you ever need. Yeah, like there's no need to really have fear. There's good people that'll help you everywhere. And so that's always been like my stance. But would you take the phone out? That's, that's a whole Next Level, right? So, talk to me a little bit about navigation, I'm sure it was hard, but like, I don't know what surprised you about navigating in the way that you had to navigate.

[00:37:02] Garrett: It depends on what country you’re in, because you can stop somebody in the street and asked to borrow their phone. Now, you can only write directions down. You can't carry the phone with you and walk to where you're going, take off running with But in some of these countries, like when we were in Thailand in India, you know, they don't use the our alphabet and so you're trying street names. Your, I mean, you don't know what they are. And so we're kind of just writing. Okay, you know, we'll go up three streets and take a left and we just write down everything we can. But the great thing is almost every time we ask somebody for help people wanting to help us and so like to fall. Yeah. Like you said, there's good people out there. Yeah. Sometimes to a fault where there's such good people that even though they don't have any idea, they want to help you. So they say oh go that way.

[00:37:48] Joel: And that's not.

[00:37:49] Tayson: But you get the guys, they like they want to help you but you're like, you know, you're white American, so they're expecting you to pay him and you're gonna have money right? Hop on my scooter, I'll take it and you're like, can't because I know you're gonna want money and I can't do that. I can't pay you

[00:38:06] Joel: and yes and you're up. We could find people who spoke English pretty easily but in Asia know you know Vietnam, Thailand, and India English was hard to come by and but drive when we got to do the self-driving and you don't do that on every leg, I think maybe four or five legs, we were driving ourselves. That's where we would find our advantage. We we were okay. So Smith is a UPS driver and so I thought going into this he will be The Driver.

[00:38:38] Tayson: Yeah, of course

[00:38:39] Joel: and but we actually went out of practice and I think we practiced a lot more than the other teams did. Like there's a lot to say about preparation. We did a ton of preparation going into this and one of the things we did was we would go out into a part of the part of this area that we're not familiar with. The only thing we could use our phone for was getting text messages from our wives, who would send us a destination and we had to find that destination and then send them a picture of us there and then they send us the next one. And we found out pretty quickly that he's a better Navigator so my better Navigator than I am so it actually worked better for me to be the driver and him to be the Navigator and that worked really well for us. And there were other teams trying to figure this out. They were switching and we knew going into this, what was going to work the best and it helped us. So, we would, we would find our way and Smyth’s a confident navigator too. Like, when I would be like, I don't see the road. He's already like he's like, it's coming up. Just chill out. We'll we'll find the road and it works.

[00:39:42] Garrett: Yeah. But He's out, you know, started giving me down at times, like, I don't know, I think we've gone too far. I'm like, no, we're fine. It's a little further. He's like, are you sure? Cuz I'm really, I'm like, well now, I don't know if I'm sure maybe. I'm not sure.

[00:39:55] Joel: Other thing was paper maps. Most young people don't know how to read a paper map. ah, they've and both of us in both in our jobs and in the Army, we learned how to read paper maps So when we had paper maps, we were just rocking.

[00:40:09] Garrett: Oh yeah.

[00:40:10] Joel: Like in Ireland, that's the only reason that the Riverdance didn't eliminate us. Was we had a map book of the streets of Dublin and we were able to navigate better than the other teams were and that that made the difference.

[00:40:24] Tayson: Are you able to buy like a paper map wherever you go? Or is it not allowed? Or just not a funding,

[00:40:29] Joel: you can use your funds. However, you see fit. And so you got to just just to find yourself, because If you are places with maps for sale, then there were 10 15 years ago, not every gas station. Even has paper maps anymore, you know, but it's up to you to decide, but yes, you can use the the allotment that they give you for maps if you want to,

[00:40:52] Garrett: but the risk is, you know, you go buy a map and then you get inside of a taxi and you have money to pay the taxi. Because The map. And so it's really a battle of trying to decide what are we going to spend money on and what are we gonna see? But just in case we need it later and and yeah. So do you like I'm just wondering if this one of the things that are not allowed,

[00:41:10] Tayson: are you not allowed to bring maps with you? Meaning like could you bring I don't know. Like The 100 most, you know, popular cities in the world and just like a, like a, like a one page, you know. Just a regular page. Or is that not allowed?

[00:41:25] Joel: Not allowed.

[00:41:26] Garrett: Yeah. When you first get down to La like before the whole thing started, they search your bag for everything. So I'll go through the entire bag. See what you have, you can't have any of your own money. You can't have, they take away your wallet, your phone, and they look for any sort of maps that you have and take those away. You can't have a language, dictionaries. You can't even. Yeah, you can't have a notebook with languages written

[00:41:46] Joel: in it for yourself. And my little notebook, I wrote down Can you help me with directions? Please in like 50 languages, and they tore those pages out of my notebook. What do you another point? He has that during this part where they were going through our bags. So we had taken our pack, our KotaUL, and we put a piece of Velcro on the outside. And we I made these patches of our families, just a picture of our family on a canvas patch, and stuck it to the outside of our backpack. And we thought that was going to be cool. And as they're going through our packs at the beginning, the security guys come up. and the security pretty hardcore and their whole job. You don't know this if you watch the show but we're always being followed and they have a team and they're

[Editor’s note: Phone, map, money, language-note, bag-search, and outside-assistance restrictions here are the guests’ first-hand Season 35 filming account, not a current or universal race protocol.]

[00:42:34] Joel: just there to protect us and make sure that if you that everything gets crazy that they're there for us but we almost never saw me either. They were like ninjas a very rarely, you'd see its spot them and realize I go, there is a street clothes on a bike following us or whatever, you know. But so the main security guy He sees our pictures of our family, our pack and he was German and he was like, you think that's a good idea. How picture of your family? Yeah. He's like, tell you what, I could break your family's neck right now in the race. You could see that you might spot, there's like black on the back of our bags, but it's just and if you never saw family,

[Editor’s note: Part of the preserved security-team sentence is unclear. Surrounding speech establishes only that a security team accompanied contestants and could be hard to spot; no corrected speech or broader security protocol has been supplied.]

[00:43:25] Tayson: Yeah, I was just thinking like like military, you know, like you guys were putting other things on the pack, or you just had an idea for something like that, right? Like,

[00:43:34] Garrett: yeah,

[00:43:34] Tayson: military packs with MOLLE or Velcro or things. So yep, that's pretty cool. Um man. What a, what a race. I, I just sounds. It sounds crazy. Exciting. Sounds like a lot of ups and downs. That means you guys made memories for a lifetime. Was there anything? I mean, it sounds like and maybe maybe, maybe, maybe I'll have to ask what the second thing was, but it sounds like, you know, your attitude is kind of your number one, takeaway out of this. But were there other like big life lessons that you'd want to share from from this experience?

[00:44:09] Joel: There's so many one thing is a lot of people on this show. That you'll see them. Say I came here to win a million dollars, not to make friends and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win and we had no expectation of walking away with a bunch of friends. We didn't say like that but we kind of we kind of were like yeah. We're if we have to play dirty here or there, we might we didn't really know. But it turned out playing fair or I don't know. Good sportsmanship helped us a lot, and we did walk away with a lot of friends. Like all the other teams are like, lifelong friends for us now, We would mess with them. Sometimes there was even Anna Leigh. when it came to travel like Anna Leigh was always working every angle she could and we would act like we got on an earlier flight than her just To there and watch her like the steam

[00:45:06] Garrett: come out of her ears and then I got messing with you but it's funny too because when we did that she was like, you know, I actually needed that. and I mean, it goes to show you In places to have fun, you gotta find places to laugh. You know, there's a couple times when we were in Germany and we thought for sure we were going home. That point we still were in a hurry. But at the same time, we want to enjoy our last few moments before we get sent home. And so we there, we were giving some sausages and we're just standing there eating the sausages. Having a good old time together later on. We're building this Dragon Puzzle in a cave and we're roaring like a dragon. Like, I mean, like just being stupid, having fun. And, and I feel like those moments where you can lighten up the mood even in stressful situations that helps you get through the stress and and just make it, I don't know your attitude

[00:45:52] Joel: Improvement, really goes a long way. You get a lot of people not, not even just our season, but in the whole history of the show, the show is trying to break you down or push you to your limit, I should say and you'll see a lot of different reactions to that and it's very Common for people to start yelling at each other being like, well, if you want to have told me where to turn and like all this different stuff and we never did that. I'm not going to say that we're perfect in that, like, I would say, If I went on this race with my wife, I love her very much. And I'm glad I didn't go on the race with her because I'm still married to her. And we got on this race together. We wouldn't stay married. But I found a way to be positive the whole time. Be happy have fun and still push it. Like we were, we were just messing around. We were very serious about trying to do as good as we could. But we had to have

[00:46:53] Tayson: You guys still there?

[00:46:54] Joel: Yeah, I think it froze for a second but we're back.

[00:46:58] Tayson: Yeah. No, I actually think that that was your guys's Advantage right? Because for some reason, as humans were kinder to people that we know less and were meaner to people that we know more, I feel like so like You know, you could be meaner to a spouse per se and not not that you're trying to be mean, but like, you will say things to a spouse that you never say to a friend, someone or a brand new acquaintances, right? And so, I could see that kind of working in your favor, like not being like, you met in your head, be like, what the frick did you just do? Like, come on, but you're not gonna like say that. Like, all right, Garrett, like we can move forward, you know, and stuff, but never mind you're like, gosh dangling, you guys is Advantage for sure. So, talk to me a little bit about the finale, right? So you come in, how many teams are still there?

[00:47:46] Joel: Three teams left

[00:47:48] Tayson: three teams left.

[00:47:49] Joel: Yeah,

[00:47:50] Tayson: you're playing for first. Is there any reward for anything? Besides first?

[00:47:54] Joel: There is it's not much it goes down drastic. First place. So the Winner of the race gets a million dollars but you split. Yeah, so if you that's a benefit of going with your spouse because somebody else you got half a million

[00:48:10] Garrett: or three quarters is what we decided with us. I would get three quarters; he’d get one quarter,

[00:48:13] Joel: it's not

[00:48:14] Garrett: Will. Just

[00:48:15] Tayson: do my beard ways?

[00:48:16] Garrett: Yeah, so yeah,

[00:48:19] Joel: In second place, you get 25,000 dollars to split—significantly less, but nothing to sneeze at. I'm accepting my half of 25,000 happily but we go into

[00:48:30] Tayson: the big difference. Oh yeah, drops big.

[00:48:33] Joel: A lot of people assume that like the second place, maybe they get a couple hundred thousand or something which I would. Yeah, but

[00:48:39] Tayson: that's not the case. So even 100,000 it's like 10th of the million. I just tell something.

[00:48:45] Garrett: Yeah,

[00:48:45] Joel: but we go in and the finale went great, we go to Seattle, I used to live an hour south of Seattle recently like just a couple years ago. I lived in the Olympia Washington area for about five years. But the thing was, I didn't like Seattle and I avoided it and once I found out the finale was in Seattle. I was like how I should have got there more often, but we get there

[00:49:11] Garrett: and it's a scramble. We did actually find a map in the airport though that we did buy with our leg money. Yeah, for Seattle. Yep, in the hopes that would help.

[00:49:19] Joel: He's got that in Dublin. We actually found in a bookstore Seattle. Travel book with a pull out map and that did help us. Yeah, so we get there and we got to perform three tasks in any order we want to and it's the glass blowing task the setting up, a grunge band and then doing a trapeze. And so we, we did great of the three teams. And by the way, these three teams didn't make it to the end because they were a slower. These were very top tier teams, Rob and Corey, Greg and John. Excellent. You know, just just being in their company was like a huge accomplishment to be in the finale with them. And we get to the glass blowing. Greg and John had already been there a few minutes. They got

[00:50:10] Garrett: nobody gets to do that. I do. I do have a slight fear of heights. So, a lot of these Heights challenges, I'm like well, hope everything goes well. Yeah.

[Editor’s note: The opening words of this turn and the preceding unfinished phrase are unclear in preserved speech. The surrounding finale account supports only Garrett’s stated fear of heights and the later trapeze task; no missing task detail has been reconstructed.]

[00:50:17] Joel: That was crazy. That's an experience that you can't pay to do. That's not an option that tourists can do, but we're anyway, we did the glass blowing. We finished it faster than Greg and John we showed up after them, but finish it before them, we get to the next challenge. We're setting up for the grunge band and we had to set up all their instruments, all of their sound and all their equipment was, we had a diagram and we just had all of the instruments were out on the street, in cases, we had to bring him in, and figure out how to set it up, according to the diagram parts of it were a little tricky because the diagram wasn't specific enough intentionally. I think, He figured that one out fast. We got out of there first and then we went to the trapeze. The trapeze looked like it was going to be a lot better.

[00:51:00] Garrett: That's where the yeah. The negative thoughts are going into your mind. Oh I don't know if you can do this one.

[00:51:04] Joel: Yeah we're having a swing by our knees and then get successfully transferred to the guy who catches you and swings you across.

[00:51:10] Garrett: Yeah,

[00:51:11] Joel: it only took us each three tries to do it. Yeah,

[00:51:14] Garrett: we got through that fast. So I was shocked at how well we did the

[00:51:18] Joel: and so we're in first place, we're like gonna win this thing and we get to the final challenge now. Every season ever since about the sixth or seventh season, they've had a memory challenge at the very end. It's the last thing you got to do and it's a, it's a like summary of everything you've done up to this point. But you don't know what form. It's gonna take. It's always different. And so we had it right here. We have this notebook with taking very thorough notes. Throughout the whole race of what we did. And we studied Crap, out of this thing, we quiz each other on the plane ride and everything. We didn't just sleep on a planes. We were talking about. Let's go through these legs and everything we did. So we get to the final memory challenge. And it's a bunch of kayaks that I'll have words on them that represent tasks that we did in the race, and there's all these racks. But we got to set them up on the rack and then there's paddles, too, that are taking apart that have the name of a country and the picture of the country. You got to Put together and then put them with the right kayak. So there's about a hundred elements that you have to get, right? It has to be in the perfect order

[00:52:29] Garrett: and the kayak just have the phrase of what the challenge was called. Like who wants a bird's eye view? For example, why did you have to use that example? That's what trip is up in the end. So,

[00:52:39] Joel: there was one task called, who wants a bird's eye view? And there was one task called, who wants to be on top of it all. He wants to be Above It, All

[00:52:47] Garrett: Above It All, yes. And so both Heights related above it, all and bird's eye view. And so

[00:52:52] Joel: very similar names. And one of them represented, the tightrope walk in La at the very beginning and the other was the glider plane in Slovenia towards the end. And that was

[00:53:05] Garrett: the thing.

[00:53:05] Joel: The reason we didn't win The Amazing Race is because who wants a bird's-eye view and who wants to be on top of it all were flipped. We

[Editor’s note: The preserved memory-task passage consistently gives ‘Who Wants a Bird’s-Eye View?’ but alternates between ‘who wants to be on top of it all’ and ‘Above It All’ for the other label. Surrounding speech establishes only that two similar height-related labels were flipped; no canonical second task title has been supplied.]

[00:53:12] Garrett: basically have the whole thing set up. We were finalizing. The final few kayaks win Greg and John showed up, and they were in second at the time. A significant lead on them, they looked over and they saw us pretty much done when they showed up. And so just that one mistake where those two kayaks were flipped and we just couldn't figure out what a mistake was. So we

[00:53:31] Tayson: yes, we're like, you get, you get told and then you're like, okay, now what do we do? We start guessing second

[00:53:37] Garrett: guessing? Yeah, they say you're wrong and then we gotta figure out, where is our mistake? Like you said, there are about a hundred elements, then we start thinking of these little tiny details. That don't even matter, like the handle of one of the kayaks that fall under the ground. We're like, oh maybe we just snap that back on the kayak, as if that means anything, you know, like just overthink in the whole thing. Yep.

[00:53:59] Joel: That was its, by the way, this was for me, the hardest part to watch because yeah, you're right

[00:54:05] Tayson: there. One missed.

[00:54:12] Joel: My wanted to put the kayaks in the correct order. And I was like, oh no. That's the tightrope, that's the glider. And I'm the one that put him in the wrong order, and then, and then

[00:54:23] Tayson: Garrett's to your friend. Why is he cost him? 500?

[Editor’s note: This preserved joke is unclear. The next turn independently establishes that Garrett also accepted responsibility for the flipped labels; no corrected joke wording has been supplied.]

[00:54:30] Garrett: That's not the worst part either. Because then later on I was like. Now you're sure that a bird's-eye view is the tightrope and he's like he's like yeah I'm sure I'm sure like okay so again I mean if I if I knew that it was wrong I would have flipped it and so I didn't I didn't I mean, I still had some doubts myself. I just that was the thing that I was like, oh, maybe that's it. But I didn't know for sure either. And so it's on me just as much as it's on him.

[00:54:53] Joel: He's a good friend to say that. And so, then Greg and John finished. Corey and Rob showed up and started theirs and Greg and John left about five minutes before we finally got it, right? So now we're headed to the end, the final, the finish line and we get our last clue by the way. It's it's late at night, it's

[00:55:13] Garrett: like three. I think it's

[00:55:14] Joel: yeah maybe

[00:55:15] Garrett: three.

[00:55:15] Joel: It's it's it's the middle that I. So there's not like people around that we could ask directions and stuff but we know where the Finish Line is now it's at this park at this mansion and it's called Marymoor Park. I never heard of it before and where do you go in the middle? Of the night. If there's no one to ask, you go to the Jack in the Box, what are you drive through? And there's a car in the drive, you're getting their food, and we ran up to that car, and I’m like, forget the food. We need help with, where the heck is Marymoor Park. And these people started freaking out like, oh, this is The Amazing Race. I recognize the show right away.

[00:55:49] Tayson: Oh, they're gonna say, they're thought they were getting robbed some beer. Yeah, Frozen sit there caught.

[Editor’s note: This brief joke after the Jack in the Box directions story is unclear in preserved speech. The surrounding account establishes only that the occupants recognized the camera crew and helped with directions; no corrected joke has been supplied.]

[00:55:56] Joel: It was like a car full of dudes in their 20s. Probably college

[00:55:58] Garrett: kids. It helps that we have a big huge cameraman following us with a camera on his shoulder,

[00:56:02] Tayson: okay. Okay. Because I was gonna say like, I feel like that would be intimidating the whole time like a disadvantage for you guys the whole time, but just like it being approachable, right? Like right, you know, if you're something like 100 pound, little girl, like people will talk to you a lot more than a 6-3. 200 pound guy with a big beard, you know, like,

[00:56:23] Garrett: Germany, where we asked? there's a couple girls walking on the Street. They had. We use her phone for directions. Yeah, that's fine. They're super friendly. And then all of a sudden they look over and see our camera guy and they're like, nope. Nope. And they just walked off. They didn't want to be like, okay,

[00:56:38] Joel: but yeah. So we get directions to Jack in the Box, we speed to the park. We don't know this at the time but we were, we were less than two minutes behind Greg and John and we ended up finishing. They don't tell you the exact time but we ended up finishing between 1 and 2 minutes after them, which is one of the closest margins of the end of the show and the whole history of the show. But we go running in there. I mean it was still awesome. I didn't feel bad at the time. I was excited that we got second place. I was happy. I was and Greg and John earned it and I was giving up like great job, you guys. But it was kind of tough to live with a kind of after that like knowing that one little thing is what

[Editor’s note: The one-to-two-minute finish margin, its historical ranking, and the service-dog fundraiser are preserved as the guests’ February 2024 first-hand account; no current record or fundraising/training status is asserted.]

[00:57:23] Joel: cost us the win. And we you know, there was a lot of time that passed between Filming and airing. We filmed it. I mean, ended at the start of July. I guess it wasn't that long because the production the show started airing, and in late September. So we only had to wait a few months but I thought about a lot like that, mistake that cost us the win, you know, like what could have been different, but there's been some really awesome stuff that came that wouldn't have happened. if we had one and what, what I was referring to is, In the second to last episode. In Dublin, they had asked us on camera, like what will you do if you win? And so, I talked about his daughter who has special needs, and that she needs a very Specialized Service, dog. Not just any old service dog. And he said, if we win, that's what we're going to do with the money is the first thing is get Brinley, her service, dog. And the viewers noticed that they like picked up on it. People on social media were saying like these guys don't win. We gotta make sure she still gets her dog. And after the finale aired, we got second place. I put out a fundraiser for her dog online and it blew up, people shared it like crazy people donated like crazy, we hit the goal in four days and it was just amazing so much love and kindness. People's messages that they put with their donations or that they put on social media. Like, none of that would have happened if we won, we would I mean, Brinley would still get her dog, but nobody would really even know about it and so much. Kindness like it. That's what kind of got me out of my funk as I'm thinking about. mistakes that cost us the win, seeing all that love. Like just made everything awesome and

[00:59:15] Garrett: That's why I'm still friends with them not just

[00:59:17] Tayson: like we talked to me again if I do this fundraiser.

[00:59:24] Garrett: The funny thing is, I didn't even know he was setting up the fundraiser. I had seen the outreach online. People saying, you know, we want to help help us out to get a service dog. But in my mind, I'm thinking, yeah, but how's that ever gonna happen, like, I don't. I don't know what's gonna happen. So he said this whole thing up behind the scenes without me, even knowing, and then he published it live and said, hey, I created this this fundraiser and I was shocked that within four days. You know, it reached the goal in order to get her a service dog.

[00:59:48] Tayson: And so it's curiosity like what what was the goal to be able to make that happen

[00:59:53] Garrett: throughout our research? The service dog that she would need was worth, I think, around 60,000 dollars, so to go out and hit that goal within four days And I mean yeah, it's just shocking how quickly that came together. And and so now we're in the process, we found a company that we're gonna have trained the service dog. And and right now, we're looking around for the perfect dog that can bond with Brinley in order to train it for a service dog. So,

[01:00:17] Tayson: wow, that is incredible. And that's, that's such a cool, you know, way to. It's such a cool consolation prize, I guess. Know, just I mean, so many cool takeaways, I don't know. I mean it's just it's infectious to listen to you guys and just your positivity about everything and and you know, ability to stay on the positive of everything. I could see. You know, you guys thoroughly enjoyed this. You took things away from it and I'm sure you've inspired, you know, millions of viewers as far as just Yeah, like same positive and then and then being able to even make some things happen after it was all completed like that. So really, really cool, really cool. Well we're kind of coming up on time here and I just wanted to give you guys maybe a chance to touch on anything. I didn't touch on or talk about anything you guys have going on. Now if you guys are I don't know you guys kind of have a YouTube channel you've been dabbling with so maybe maybe throw some things out there for for people to to know and like if I missed anything important you know, call that out too.

[01:01:24] Garrett: Yeah, we we do YouTube stuff. Every once in a while we like having fun and messing around, we've done some stuff on recapping the episodes and also how we prepared for the race. We talked a little bit about our gear and the stuff that we took with us and packed for the race. One big thing that's coming up for us, that we've been kind of working towards and we we've had some people reach out to us about just giving some speeches on positivity and you know how our attitudes helped us through the race, the stuff that we learned on the race so that we're kind of looking forward to doing that kind of a thing coming up soon. Yeah,

[01:01:56] Joel: we would prepare for that, and we're working on that. One, I know that this is maybe we've already kind of touched on this a little bit. But one thing that I said that I had forgotten that I said, which by the way happened all the time on the show, being myself saying and doing things that I didn't even remember and one of them I said something to the effect of you might not look the part and you might not even always act the part, but you can do the part. If you believe that you can and just keep working on it. And that's what we showed we we don't look like the team that came within a whisker winning this thing. We don't look like, I mean a lot of people when they looked at because people are into the show, are they look at the whole cast and they try to guess the order that they'll be eliminated and we were on everybody's list. We were one of the first teams to go out just because of how we look and act I guess but we we just had to keep believing and keep pushing and keep and then and then the stuff then it happens. Um, so that's a, that's a big lesson and a big takeaway for me, but yeah, you can you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on YouTube. The YouTube channel and my Instagram account is just Joel Nert—J-O-E-L-N-E-R-T. And then Smyth what's your Instagram?

[01:03:11] Garrett: I think my Instagram account is the Mr. I know it better than I got it. The Statue. It's too long.

[Editor’s note: Garrett’s spoken social handle is unclear in the preserved transcript, so no handle has been invented. The public resource list remains limited to the single verified episode allowlist destination.]

[01:03:20] Tayson: So I’ll link those as well.

[01:03:24] Joel: Thanks, but yeah, we It's all about having fun, that's what it all.

[01:03:31] Garrett: The lesson to learn is you're gonna fail in life. And when you fail, all that matters is you learn a lesson from it and get up and keep going. Or do you just let it hold you down and you can’t let it hold you down. Learn the lesson that you can learn from it. Get back up and just keep moving forward. Yep.

[01:03:44] Tayson: Yeah. Now I think that's huge and it's, it's funny to me that I guess this is the interview that I'm having this week because last week I actually went to a three-day training and it was a lot of it was just about like mindset and it definitely like pushed you to lean into areas where you’re not comfortable and Just interesting, right? Because it seems like in life a lot of times you're going to have to do it regardless and what you can choose is your experience of it, right? Are you gonna lean in? Are you going to lean out? Are you gonna resist or you gonna, you know, just just to make the best of it and There's so much. I think there's so many people in the world that could benefit from from just understanding that or, you know, building their own confidence in that. And, and there's the side of it too. Like, look getting up there and doing a river dance, like, that's so uncomfortable. I imagine like, like, I think about that. I'm like, that's like, put a tarantula on my back, I don't care. Like, Don't Make Me Dance publicly, right? Like, there's no way that's the worst thing he could do to me, but, you know, like being able to To push through stuff like that. I think it's huge and what it does. It builds confidence and confidence breeds confidence, right? And so, I think it's you. I love that. You guys are getting opportunities to talk about mindset. I think that that's to me talking to you guys. I think that's that's the gem here is, is that in being able to just lean in and, and, you know, I'm all in. I'm just gonna give it my best, and, and stay positive with it. And I think that attitude will just I mean, obviously it'll make a difference in your guys’ lives but I think it's gonna continue to inspire people going on, so that's really appreciate it. I really appreciate you guys sharing that being being who you are and showing up that way. It's huge, huge.

[01:05:24] Garrett: Thank you.

[01:05:25] Joel: Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate that. Appreciate you having us on. I've heard some of the other guests on this podcast and that wow. Why? I feel pretty pretty honored to have been included. So thank you for having us on

[01:05:38] Tayson: know, I was our pleasure. I I thoroughly enjoyed this. I don't know if that's like smile and just enjoyed the conversations just constantly just wanting to laugh through this whole thing. So you guys killed it really enjoyed. Having you on here. Yeah and if you haven't watched it, go watch The Amazing Race season 35. Obviously came down to a nail-biter. So what else, what else, could you hope for in a reality show like that. So and and I hope to that this does inspire people to push past some of their comfort zones. Maybe, do you know, some World Travel that you've wanted to Forever and just have held back on? It's, it's um, you know, there's a world of opportunity out there if you push past some of those those fears that you have. So thanks again guys. Really, really appreciate you coming on the show.

[01:06:21] Garrett: Thanks, thank you.

[01:06:23] Tayson: All right, there you have it. I hope you guys enjoyed that interview as much as I did. I really was just smiling laughing and being inspired the entire time and I hope you guys felt the same way. I hope that you guys take some of those goals that you may have, and go and pursue them with the right mindset. I think anything can be done, and I think it's often our fears, not reality, that keep us from from achieving being. So really appreciate these guys coming on, and just sharing that positivity, sharing those mindsets. And I think a lot a lot could be learned. So, Okay, with that. I just want to make sure you guys subscribe. Share this episode. That really helps us be found and just Inspire more people and make sure that if you have not yet, rated the podcast, please do that. All of those things really helped us with that. We'll go ahead and end it here and catch you guys on a future episode.