Christie Volkmer and Jodi Wincheski had what it took to be the first all female team to win The Amazing Race. The duo was in shape, worked well together, and were airport experts thanks to their jobs as flight attendants. Unfortunately, while they excelled at tasks they were lousy at non-plane transportation. After coming in second to last on numerous legs, they were the final team to reach the pit stop during a non-elimination round. Sunday night, they hoped to redeem themselves. Unfortunately, a confused taxi driver led them in the wrong direction and, despite a stellar performance on the tasks, they were unable to avoid elimination. The upbeat duo told fancast why they have no regrets.

How did you get so behind at the beginning of your final leg? Was it because you had to stop for gas?

Christie: No! It looked like it though. Our cab driver took a 30 minute detour because he wanted to take us to a place called Pushkar because everyone else that had been to India recently went to Pushkar for this religious ceremony. So even though we told him about 40 times where we wanted to go, about 30 minutes later we passed by the airport that we left.

Jodi: By that point he needed gas and directions because he was still lost. It looked like [in the episode] that it was the gas station but it was because we were on the way to an entirely different city.

Jodi: He spoke English. He wasn’t fluent by any means, but he did get that we wanted to go to a village. He had just gone to Pushkar like a million times during the week. He had it in his head that that’s where we wanted to go.

Christie: We kept asking him, “Are you sure? This doesn’t seem right.” He called another taxi driver who said, “Dude they’re not going to Pushkar, they’re in a race,” because the other taxi driver, we think, had racers in his car. He just turned around with this look on his face. He felt really bad. I think he was just nervous. We were mad but we felt bad for him because he didn’t do it intentionally.

It seems like the two of you had a lot of bad luck on the Race, despite excelling on the task. Why do you think you had so many problems?

Jodi: It is what it is. There’s a lot of skill involved with the Race but there’s also an element of luck and ours just didn’t really go the right way. There were some other teams that seemed like they were struggling and they’re still in because they had better luck with taxi drivers.

Did you background as flight attendants help you with the air travel portions of the race?

Christie: We made a lot of smart decisions when it came to flights. We were disappointed that they didn’t show more of that. That, and our communication skills and being able to approach anyone really did help out.

Jodi: On the last leg there were no flights available and the airline ended up calling corporate and reclassifying their seats as economy so we could buy the seats and get on the flight.

Was that for everybody or just the two of you?

Christie: We got there and there were no seats left. We just kept asking, “Is there any way? Can you call someone?” We weren’t demanding because we know with out jobs that demanding isn’t going to get you too far. We were trying to be polite and courteous.

Jodi: And pathetic, helpless.

Christie: It did pan out because we made it on and then we just got the bad taxi driver.

According to the editing, despite having to complete a Speedbump you actually finished the detour before Mark and Michael. Was their task closer to the pit stop than yours?

Christie: We got in two minutes behind them because they were a mile and a hald closer to the pit stop and there was a lot of traffic.

Did it feel good to realize that you’d managed to catch up to them, or was it frustrating to come so close and still be eliminated?

Jodi: It was a great day because we enjoyed the tasks that we did in India. It was frustrating because we started 30 minutes behind and we knew it. From the moment we landed we were like, “Today we’ve got to make up time. We’re going to kick butt on the tasks.” And then we started with the deficit from the taxi driver. And then the Speed bump added at least another 30 minute delay. We were quick with the elephant but the traffic getting to and from the elephant was tough. We were proud that given all those obstacles we were still within two minutes but that made it tougher.

Are there any other moments of your race that you wish had made it onto the television show?

Jodi: A huge one is when we made the train choice in the second episode we definitely checked the arrival times. Everybody thinks that as flight attendants we should have known to check the arrival time. We did! We made a choice based on the fact that the faster train also stopped in Customs twice and changed trains twice. The day before Customs was a problem for Preston and Jennifer. The train arrivals were supposed to be within fifteen minutes of each other. We were playing it a little conservative which was definitely our fault.

Christie: We would have liked for them to make it clear that our roller bags converted to backpacks. They only showed us running with them once but you had to really pay attention to see. We got a lot of flack from people saying, “It’s great now but what if you had to run in sand or snow?” We’d thought about that which is why we purchased roller bags with the backpack capability.

Were the convertible bags helpful?

Jodi: Yes. I have a bad back and carrying around a backpack for a month would have killed me. We can run very fast with the backpacks. It saved us from being tired from carrying around the backpacks.

Christie: This season they took a lot of the airport scenes out. So they didn’t show us sprinting by other teams with our bags. Just getting outside the airport first was helpful.

Jodi: My biggest problem with the last show is, while we were doing the camel task, at one point I grabbed two buckets and carried both all the way back to my camels. They would have been my last two buckets too dump and I would have been done before Mark and Mike. They only let me dump one bucket. There was nothing in the clue that said you had to dump one bucket at a time but they said it was designed to have to go back and forth. That’s frustrating, especially when you come back to a two minute deficit at the end.

What advice would you give to future competitors on The Amazing Race?

Christie: It’s a lot more physical than you would expect. I think this season they upped the physical aspect of it.

Jodi: Prepare as much as possible. Know your geography. Learn a little bit of foregin languages. You need to go to the gym. You need to run.

Christie: Stay hydrated. There are so many times I had cotton mouth because there was no time to get water.

Jodi: Bring some kind of powerbar or granola bar because you do not eat.

Christie: A lot of times you’re afraid to eat. Jodi got sick and we think it was slight food poisoning. In all of these other cultures the food isn’t bad, but you’re not used to it and maybe you’ll react to it differently.

Jodi: The last episode I threw up for about an hour as we landed in India.

Kynt and Vyxsin are fancast’s celebrity Amazing Race bloggers. They have this question for you: Girls! After seeing you two swiftly and skillfully apply Make-Up to the largest land creature on earth, we have to know: are either of you interested in pursuing a post-Race career in cosmetics? Or is it back to the friendly skies as Flight Attendants?

Christie: I hope my make-up doesn’t look like the elephant’s!

Jodi: We were painting with the equivalent of a popsicle stick.

Christie: It would be nice with Aveda or L’Oreal but not fingerpaint.

How did going on the Race change your lives?

Jodi: It’s a huge sense of empowerment, of being able to conqure your fears, of being able to get through so many situations in a very stressful environment. It teaches you that you can do anything. It shows you what’s important in your life. There are so many adventures out there, but it’s all about your family.

Christie: Seeing all these different cultures was an eye opener. These people are so opposite of us but we still have the commonvalues of family and friends.

Jodi: People in horrible exonomies that have zero money were giving us money and helping us out. It really shows you a lot.

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