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Copenhagen, Denmark is the start of this week’s leg. And the first team out of the gate is Ernie & The Selfish One. The latter person took control at the end of the most recent league, making the judgment call to U-turn the team in second place for the least viable of reasons. Cindy wanted to win a leg after being denied in the previous one by Andy & Tommy, who had the audacity to beat her straight up in a race to finish line. The nerve of some people. Cindy seems to believe she is participating in The Everybody Let Me Win Race. But I digress because I hate her. They leave at 9:01 a.m., hopefully headed to The Bermuda Triangle.

The first heat of this leg requires players to race to a statue of Hans Christian Anderson, where they will get a clue that informs them that they must become thespians for a day. The chosen player from each team must memorize a set of verses then get on stage and recite them to an actor. If this absurdly garbed gentleman is satisfied with their performance, he will hand them their next clue. Not all challenges in The Amazing Race are created equal. This is one that anyone not named Nicolas Cage can do in their sleep. Cindy proves my point by accomplishing the task on the first attempt. If Cindy can do it without whinging any, this isn’t hard.

The order for the rest of the remaining contestants is as follows. Bill & Cathi depart at 10:34 a.m. Andy & Tommy leave five minutes later at 10:39 a.m. Amani & Marcus are over an hour behind them at 11:43 a.m. and Jeremy & Sandy start in the rear at 12:08 p.m. The gap from first to last place at the start of the leg is three hours and seven minutes with Jeremy & Sandy 25 minutes behind everyone else. Since there isn’t any bunching at the beginning of this leg, they are in some trouble.

As everyone follows in the steps of Ernie & Cindy, there are a couple of surprising developments. The first is that what I had presumed to be the no-brainer aspect of this challenge proves to be a stumbling block for some. Let’s take a moment to discuss why.

The contestants are required to ride a bike from the statue to the theater. This is one of those bikes made famous in the Olympics a while back; it has a solid wheel that makes it more aerodynamic. A map of the area is printed on the solid wheel. I had assumed that at this stage of the race, all the participants would have no problem reading a map. I was wrong.

Also, the reason why is a bit ridiculous. The position of the theater on the map depends upon where the wheel is turned when the contestant looks at it. In other words, if the map is upside down, a clever player would spin the wheel until they found the appropriate location. Cathi awkwardly leans down to study the map and rather than spinning it some, she drives off to find someone who could provide her directions instead. This costs her a lot of valuable time. Tommy’s situation is even worse as he gets so lost that he believes his location is not even on the wheel map. One of the aspects of this competition that never fails to surprise me is how often a minor tweaking of a standard situation such as reading a map can wreak havoc on the players.

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