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As if sensing the moment was upon us, the wind started to pick up and carried a sideways rain with it.

“Now I’m going to tell you what I need from you,” Phil shouted over the wind.

“Here we go bud,” I said to Zev under my breath.

Phil seemed to look everyone in the eyes all at once. He’s good at that.

“I need you… to bring me… Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services.”

Everyone looked at their partners, trying to process it.

Phil said it again, more slowly.

“Queensland… and Northern Territory… Aerial Services.”

As we had walked past the field of paper airplane-looking things, I noticed that each paper airplane had the name of an airline on it.

My mind went to work.

Queensland. Is that England? No – Australia…

…Australia… Airlines….What’s an Australian airline?

Suddenly Dustin Hoffman was in my head.

Rainman. Why is Rainman in my head?

QANTAS. An Australian airline. Queensland And Northern Territories Aerial Services. There it is.

“I got it,” I said quietly to Zev, breathing a sigh of relief.

“What is it?” He asked.

I leaned in close, making sure nobody else could hear.

“QANTAS.”

Another pound. The excitement was there, but now thankfully the pressure subsided a bit. We still had to find the thing, but at least we knew what we were looking for, which we were pretty sure put us in better shape than most.

Phil raised his hand. It was time.

“ON YOUR MARKS… GET SET…. GO!!!”  

His hand dropped. We all took off, scrambling as quickly as we could across the rugged dunes into the field of paper airplanes. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, sitting atop tall wire poles – but they were laid out in a grid of rows and columns to make them easier to move through.

Zev and I picked a row.

“You look left, I’ll look right,” I told him as we moved quickly but cautiously, taking care not to miss anything.

We could feel the other teams in there with us, but the adrenaline was pumping too hard and we were too focused on what we were doing to actually see anyone. We kept our eyes peeled, but as we approached the end of our row it seemed we had seen every airline except QANTAS.

Finally, at the very end of the row, I saw one – 2 rows over. I ran towards it, pulled it down from the top of the pole, and tucked it under my arm to make sure nobody could read it.

“Got it Zev!” I yelled.

“Yeah!” He yelled back.

Together we started running through the field back to Phil. We got to him second. Mel and Mike were already there. They were movie fanatics like us, but I didn’t have time to ask them if Rainman had led them to it also.

“Congratulations, here’s your clue,” Phil said after looking at our planes.

He handed clues to Mel & Mike, then to us. Zev and I hi-fived each other as we moved aside and ripped ours open, bumping ever-so-slightly into the Cowboys who had moseyed in behind us.

ROUTE INFO: FLY TO SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA AND TAKE IN ‘A SOUTHERN SWAN ON THE ROCKS’.

Australia was a spot neither Zev nor I had been. We were excited to be heading there, but as Zev would repeatedly point out, this was as much a business trip as anything else… It didn’t matter where The Race took us, we were here to win. 

We grabbed our backpacks and ran over to the first in a line of eleven brand new 2012 Ford Focuses. We had our tickets already, so getting to the airport quickly didn’t really matter other than for the purpose of getting seats close to the front of the plane… but it felt like getting the first car and leaving the windmill farm first and getting to the airport first would be a good way to let The Race Gods know we were in it to win it this time.

So we tossed our bags in the trunk of that first car – despite the fact that it was canary yellow – hopped in, and I floored it out of the wind farm.

We headed East on the I-10, back towards LA and LAX, where we knew we had a good 8 hours to kill before that first flight to Sydney.

But we didn’t care. The Race was ON.

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