Join or Sign In
Sign in to customize your TV listings
By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.
After having being spared elimination twice on The Amazing Race, Bill and Cathi Alden knew their time was up when they lost an hour trying to find the homing pigeon location in Belgium. "We had so much trouble trying to find the wall and we couldn't imagine that another team had that much difficulty after they located the pigeons," Cathi tells TVGuide.com. "We were pretty sure we were last. It was so dark and late by then." But getting lost wasn't the only factor in their elimination. See what else they think contributed to their demise and how they stay in such great shape.
After having being spared elimination twice on The Amazing Race, Bill and Cathi Alden knew their time was up when they lost an hour trying to find the homing pigeon location in Belgium. "We had so much trouble trying to find the wall and we couldn't imagine that another team had that much difficulty after they located the pigeons," Cathi tells TVGuide.com. "We were pretty sure we were last. It was so dark and late by then." But getting lost wasn't the only factor in their elimination. See what else they think contributed to their demise and how they stay in such great shape.
Amazing Race's Laurence and Zac: The U-Turn and getting lost "pushed us over the edge"
Did you do the pigeon task? They didn't show you doing it.
Cathi: We got there and it was so dark that they didn't release the pigeons. They just gave us a card of the address of where the pigeon would be. That was just [more confirmation] that we were last.
Do you know how much time you lost trying to find the pigeons?
Bill: Probably an hour. We got there very late. The signage near the town — I don't know if someone turned the sign slightly or what — but that took us nearly half an hour, running back and forth. We went to the wrong spot on the wall, so some nice young kids directed us to the right end of the wall. It was so dark that we ended up going around the wall and finally we found the clues down below, which some of the teams drove up and spotted immediately. It helped to have a little sunlight. It took us quite awhile. Once we had that, we were able to head back to Brussels pretty fast. We lost enough time. We hadn't seen any other team. We figured it was about the end.
Why was it so hard to find the place?
Cathi: It was a very small place, but the actual wall is a fence kind of thing that goes around a small peak. It just meanders and it's clear on the back of the town. People would say, "You go here, you go here, you go here," but really, you had to be at exactly the right spot.
Bill: Also the roads don't go straight, so pretty soon you're headed back the way you just came and you're in more trouble. The people are nice and know the terrain pretty well, but they don't understand that when they say this, it doesn't make sense to you. You're taking the first street that turns off and they mean the main street that turns off way up the hill.
You seemed to have trouble with self-navigation. You lost time heading to Legoland last week and now this.
Cathi: I wouldn't say that we were bad at navigation in that we never went the wrong way on the freeway ever. We were very cautious, maybe too cautious. We stopped and asked probably more often than maybe some of the other teams. The other thing is, looking back, we weren't as aggressive in our driving as we probably should've been. In other words, we really did take them at their word when they said to go the speed limit. I think some of the other teams were more aggressive in their driving and could make up any error time. We just kind of kept it at the speed limit the whole time. Maybe if we had driven faster, we could've caught up with someone. We had great luck in Copenhagen with the directions and the driving, but no such luck here.
Amazing Race's Justin and Jennifer: It was a "huge mistake" not biking back
Why weren't you more aggressive?Amazing Race's Liz and Marie: Our cabbie ripped us off
They paid you more compliments than they did any other team.