Once the teams made it to the airport, all but Mariana and Julia made it onto the first flight to Dublin. From there, six teams made it onto the flight to Amsterdam, with Ronald and Christina and Nick and Donald vying to make it on standby. Both were at side-by-side ticket booths and while Ronald made sure to be polite, Nick didn't extend the same courtesy and was a bit crass. But it paid off -- Nick and Donald made it onto the flight, but the ended up getting a *very* stern talking to from Ronald. Ouch. But the moral of the story? Rude works.

A word about Ronald. He was hard to watch this week, if you ask me -- he was constantly lecturing or criticizing his daughter when he could have been doing something productive like, um, I don't know, the task at hand? I think it was mentioned that he is in sales and I can see that -- he doesn't seem to ever stop talking. He describes himself as optimistic with real truth flavour, but I would call him nitpicky. However, I loved his shirt -- it read 'Who's your daddy.'

Once they got to Amsterdam, the groups headed to a bridge (didn't catch the name of it) and encountered a detour. They got to chose between rigging complicated knots and hoisting furniture up to a fourth-floor window of a Dutch house, or combing through thousands of bikes to find two with specific colours, then riding them to the next clue. It was pretty well divided -- half the teams chose the furniture and half chose the bikes. Shanna, one half of team blond, did a pretty impressive job on the rope-rigging and furniture hoisting, I must say, as did Vyxsin (I've noticed that she usually does the physical work on team Goth. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- just sayin' ... )

After they completed this task, they headed to a rural area where they encountered a roadblock. One team member had to pole vault across a muddy bog to retrieve the next clue. This was by far my favourite part of the show -- it was like watching some Japanese blooper reel, since so many people fell into the muddy water. I got the most satisfaction out of seeing Jennifer of Jennifer and Nathan fall butt-first into the canal on her first try -- her constant banshee-like shrieking at Nate is really starting to get on my nerves. I felt bad for Grandpa Donald because he had such a hard time with it, but he did provide some comic relief by stripping down to his ginch. Kynt was very hesitant to vault across the pond -- afraid to ruin his makeup or muddy his fishnet arm thingies, hmmm?


Next up, teams had to ride to the pit stop, Durgerdam. Well, to be precise, one team member peddled and one rode in a big bin in front. Vyxsin, of course, did the peddling, until she got fed up and insisted Kynt do it. Jennifer and Nate's ride was, as expected, filled with more shrieking, interlaced with dirty talk about other teams -- she called Shanna a 'little b***h' for being a better pole vaulter.

Lorena and Jason made it first and each won themselves a speedbike. Jennifer and Nate were second, followed by Jennifer and Shanna in third and Kynt and Vyxsin in fourth. Kate and Pat were last, and though they weren't my favourites, I felt kind of sad for them because they were one of the only teams this episode that seemed to be getting along and enjoying the journey.

All in all, I was thoroughly entertained by this episode -- there was a great balance between drama and comedy. Your thoughts?

(All photos from The Amazing Race Official Website)