Positive Attitude is Key: An Interview with The Amazing Race 4’s Dave

Air traffic controller Dave lasted until Episode 5 of The Amazing Race 4. In that span, he and his partner Steve managed to keep the audience entertained until their departure by not only having fun with the race, but with each other as well. In this interview, Dave talks about what he saw during the race, to whom his team felt the closest, and what he would do if asked to be in an All Star season.

RealityNewsOnline: Which one of you had the idea to apply for the race and was it hard to convince the other to do it?

Dave: I think it was pretty much a mutual thing. Steve and I are both fans of the show and have watched from episode 1 of AR1. We had previously applied for AR3, but didn’t make the grade, I guess.

RNO: Did either of you do any training to try to prepare for the race?

Dave: Lots of little chocolate doughnuts. Boy, was I surprised when the “little chocolate doughnut eating” challenge didn’t show up! Actually, Steve dropped a bunch of weight, and I quit smoking. We also did a lot of walking around the parking lot where we work.

RNO: It seemed that most of the time your team came in next to last place. Each time you were just barely not eliminated, did you think it was the end? I know you said you never gave up, but did anything inside say it was over?

Dave: Hey now! Only on two legs did we finish next-to-last. On one we finished first, on another fifth, and then there was that last leg… On the Venice-Vienna-Gmunden leg we were convinced we were last. We were both saying, “Dead Men Walking!” as we approached the checkpoint, and were shocked when Phil told us we were still alive. For some reason, we knew we were OK on the next leg even though we again finished next-to-last.

RNO: This is geared more towards Steve. When the models were told to go to the front of the line, and you told them to “check [their] tires,” did you later realize that was a poor choice of words or do you still stick by what you said?

Dave: And while you’re at it, Mr. “Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt-In-My-Mouth” Steve, why don’t you explain why you were looking around for a blackjack after the door-holding incident at the train station outside Cortina, huh?

RNO: Did being air traffic controllers give you any kind of edge over any of the other teams, or do you think that everyone was on the same playing field?

Dave: Had we done a little more flying in those first legs, perhaps it could have helped. As it was, the only time we tried to work the system a bit (flying into Orly instead of DeGaulle), it backfired on us and we got caught in the traffic jam. I’ve read in a few places that people thought we should have booked a nonstop to Amsterdam via KLM (as that is their hub airport), or some other such nonsense. We knew that Air France had the flight that arrived the absolute earliest into Amsterdam, but the connection from Marseilles to Paris (DeGaulle) was sold out. So we got creative and tried Orly, and you saw the results…

RNO: Sometimes racers make bad choices and regret them later. Were there any poor choices that you think you may have made? What could have been done differently to have made things work out to your advantage?

Dave: It’s always a lot easier to look back and kick yourself for making one choice instead of another, but I can honestly say that during the race the choices we made were what we thought to be the best at the time. I’ve heard (or read) that we shouldn’t have trusted the local who told us that we could catch a train to Vienna from Padua – at that time, there was nothing open in the Venice train station and he was the only one there we could talk to. We were pretty sure that no one would be able to get to Vienna in order to accomplish the tasks that day, so why not take a chance and let the other teams wonder where we were? For what it’s worth, even though we appeared to get to the sewers in Vienna later than everyone else, we were fifth or sixth in line waiting to go down, so our move didn’t hurt us. Some have said that we should have dug through the cow dung in Amsterdam rather than take the cheese option. The distances to each weren’t that different (25 km vs. 15 km or so), and we had no idea that the clues would be right near the surface of the cow dung. Lugging 500 Kg of cheese sounded like a smarter idea (and it wasn’t COW SH*T). Right off at the start of the race we made a few enemies (of people who weren’t even affected, strangely enough) by having Steve & Josh buy us tickets on SwissAir. In hindsight, we probably could have handled that better, but I think it was still a good strategic move. Whew! In summation… I guess what I’m trying to say is that we ran what we thought to be a reasonably good race. Sure, we could have done some things differently, but we’re pretty happy with what we did do.

RNO: So then you think it would have been easier to go and pick through the poo instead of carrying all that cheese?

Dave: In hindsight, with the benefit of the knowledge I have now, maybe. Remember that all we knew was that we would find clues in a 15 foot tall pile of manure. A pile that high is probably as big around (at least at the base) as it is tall, and the clues could have been in the center. Now that we know the clues were mostly near the outer edge of the pile, sure it would probably have been easier. But at the time, the potential for digging 7 feet into a 15 foot tall pile of manure seemed nowhere near as easy as toting 500 kg of cheese.

RNO: I think it is fair to say that your team used the Fast Forward option pretty early in the race. Was there ever regret for that and was it both of your choice to go for it at that point?

Dave: At the time, we were both a little banged up from that mountain in Cortina – me a little worse than Steve. It was a joint decision, and one that I would make again given the same set of circumstances.