‘The Amazing Race’s’ Tim and Rex made ‘more like 30’ attempts at ‘hell’s bells’
Team T-Rex became extinct on the second leg of “The Amazing Race 34.” Though they started out the leg well, Tim Mann and Rex Ryan struggled with both tasks in Wednesday’s episode in Austria: the yodeling Roadblock, performed by the former New York Jets and Buffalo Bills coach, and the bell-ringing Detour, which took them at least 10 tries. Not even Quinton and Mattie temporarily being in the wrong country or Rich and Dom having to return to their car to retrieve her hat was enough for the golf buddies to squeak by.
So why did they have so many problems with the bells? Find out below.
Gold Derby: What was it like watching the episode last night?
Rex: The worst part about it was you knew it was gonna come to an end. You’re just kicking yourself, seeing opportunities that could’ve been had. But it was a great experience and a lot of fun, but you knew the end was coming.
Tim: I think it put a lot of closure on it, knowing that the cheerleaders did their dance in one attempt. … It was like, “All right.” They were just so good at the dance that it helped with our decision to do the bells and they deserved it. They were better at it than we were.
Gold Derby: Do you know far behind you were?
Tim: No. They showed the 10th attempt at the bells, but I would say it was more like 30. [Laughs] We knew while we were doing the bells that we were pretty much out of it. This is not gonna be good!
Gold Derby: Yeah, the editing really made it seem tight between the three teams. Did you know about the hat drama with Rich and Dom?
Rex: We had no idea that that was out there or really anything else. We just knew we were taking forever. Even though they never showed what time we were talking to Phil [Keoghan], he was like, “Well, what place do you think?” And we both looked at each other, like, “Last!” [Laughs] And what they don’t show is what made it so tight was we actually got turned around and we lost a clue. So that’s what killed us. It was maybe 45 minutes that we lost. We knew the cheerleaders were right behind us, so when they got it on the first try, we had no chance. As Tim said, he called them hell’s bells because that’s really what it was. And during the bell thing, one of the funniest ones — they never showed it — Tim goes, “I got a better chance of playing that thing” — pointing to the guy’s accordion — “than I do playing these bells.” He was right! We had no chance. It was rough.
Gold Derby: What happened with the lost clue?
Tim: When Rex got done yodeling, he looked at me and goes, “All right, I got where we gotta go. Are you ready?” I said to him, “I don’t even know where we are right now.” I didn’t even look at the map of where we were because we followed Michael and Marcus, and I was just looking at the view of being in the Alps, just taking it all in. [Laughs] So we drove and asked a guy on a motorcycle … and we saw Abby and Will drive down the street. We should’ve just followed them, but we didn’t. And we think when we asked the guy on the motorcycle, we may have lost the clue there because we pulled the map out. We’re 90 percent sure that’s what happened. So when we got back to Innsbruck, we got lost, we went east when we should’ve gone west, we find the parking ramp, we had to drive down a bike path, we couldn’t find the clue, and we were running around through a meat market. They didn’t show any of that. And we saw there was one clue left and that definitely took off a good 45-50 minutes. That’s where we allowed the other teams to catch up.
Gold Derby: When Marcus and Michael left the yodeling, I was like, “Oh, no, they’re leaving you guys behind.”
Tim: We even said that. “There goes our ride!”
Rex: But we had told them before, “Hey guys, don’t wait for us.” We would’ve waited for them, strategically, because we would’ve hopped right on their bumper. [Laughs] I don’t care if we had gotten [the yodel done] first, we would’ve waited for them. They’re good guys. We really like them. We hit it off with them immediately. They’re two military guys we really respected. I think Michael is a fighter jet pilot and Marcus is a tank commander. These are two pretty good dudes. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do our part — I couldn’t do our part in staying up with them. They’re much better at yodeling than I was.
Gold Derby: You didn’t do too bad. You left in the middle of the pack. You beat Claire.
Rex: Yeah, we were actually at some point in sixth. They never showed it, but I was the next one to go when Abby finished and was right behind her, and we were in the parking lot together. We went out first, thinking we’ll just go to a grocery store a gas station and find out where to go, but we saw them go by. And we should’ve just followed them, but it is what it is now.
Gold Derby: What went wrong with hell’s bells? Why did you guys have so much trouble with it?
Tim: You have two guys that never played an instrument before in their lives, no music background. The bells are an instrument. And the fact that we had to do it together along with the accordion when we both can’t carry a tune, except for Rex when he’s yodeling, we were in trouble either way. Everyone says, “How come you didn’t pick the dance?” We didn’t pick it because you’ve got eight other couples with a dance background and cheerleaders. Music or dance — it was definitely not our leg.
Gold Derby: I think you guys made the right choice, although it may have been funnier to watch you guys dance.
Rex: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s true. It really couldn’t have been worse than the bells though. We would’ve finished the dance way before the bells.
Tim: They didn’t show it, but there was one time when Rex gave me a little bit of a pep talk and used some colorful words. He points at the guy with the accordion and says, “Hit it again, maestro!” [Laughs]
Gold Derby: You’re just calling on your coaching background there.
Rex: Yeah, I was super nice early. “Hey Tim, the C and E, those are your favorite.” Give him a little positive motivation and then at the end, I just lost it. [Laughs]
Tim: I was even asking the instructor that was helping us and Rex goes, “No, don’t listen to her! She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” So I said, “So you’re telling me I should call her on fourth and one, not you, right now?”
Rex: And that’s what was so funny. I was like, “Dude, we’ve sat here for an hour. She’s been talking to you the entire time. Would you stop? Let’s go already!”
Gold Derby: Was it frustrating that all of these tasks were music- and performance-based?
Rex: Yeah, that was frustrating for real. I will say this though: The first leg was up our alley. We did the keg roll, the sawing, Tim smashed through the block ice. The physical things — that was in our wheelhouse. Unfortunately for us, they stacked up two music ones in a row and that was our downfall, without question.
SEE ‘The Amazing Race 34’ episode 2 recap
Gold Derby: Rex, you lost 50 pounds to prepare for the race. How else did you guys train for this?
Rex: One of Tim’s friends had a stick shift in a Jeep, so both of us learned how to drive stick. We decided then I would be the person driving and Tim was going to be the navigator. I got pretty good at it. I actually borrowed his neighbor’s Jeep for a week.
Tim: I’m on the road quite a bit for work in law enforcement. So rather than use the GPS in the car, I was using maps. … But like Rex said, you can learn how to use a map, but when the map is in a different language, that throws another curveball at you.
Gold Derby: Rex, how’s your road rage now back in the States?
Rex: Oh, man. Very defensive driver over there. I was 10 and two. It was a new me. But I’m back to being me. I love driving. I have a Maserati, so I let it rip. [Laughs]
Tim: He’s also got a golf cart that goes faster than everybody else’s.
Rex: It’s true. It’s like twice as fast. Like I always say, you’ve got one rule: Respect the cart. Respect the cart and we’ll be good.
Gold Derby: You said your buddies will blast you for getting out second. Have they given you a hard time?
Tim: For me, it’s not so much a hard time. It’s more people telling me they want more Rex yodeling. I feel like a lot of my friends feel sympathy because they see those bells and are like, “Man, those bells look like they were no joke.”
Rex: His friends are much better than my friends. Mine are like, “You’re terrible! You guys stink!” They’re laughing like crazy. But it’s so fun. My daughter-in-law loves the show. She’s like, “I’m great at navigating, I can sing, I can swim.” She was a college athlete. She said, “Why didn’t you take me?” I said, “Why? Because there’s no way.” If she were with me, the pressure — there’s no way I could handle it. I only had one guy I could do this with. And if they ever ask us to do it again, we’re doing it again together!
Tim: We gotta do Team T-Rex the sequel!
Gold Derby: Rex, is the race harder than coaching?
Rex: It is for me. Coaching for me, that’s what I did all my life. I know the game. It’s in the same language I know. That was much easier. I think I’m much better at telling people what to do than actually doing it myself.
Gold Derby: I know you guys are probably rooting for Marcus and Michael, but besides them, who else are you rooting for?
Tim: Luis and Michelle. We were pretty close with them too. Just nice people. Michael and Marcus are our guys. Everybody on the show was so nice. You kinda get this friendship afterward that you’re just close to these people you were on the show with.
Rex: Yeah, and the other one too is the twins. It’s hard not to pull for them. Hearing their story, being a twin myself, I can’t even imagine their situation, separated at birth and finding each other. It’s impossible not to be cheering for them.
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