Editor's note: We will follow the progress of Encinitas residents Steve and Allie Smith, a father-daughter team competing in the CBS reality series "The Amazing Race." The show airs at 8 p.m. Sundays.
Having finished in second place in each of the last two legs of "The Amazing Race," Steve and Allie Smith were poised to make another big move as the series headed toward midseason. The duo finished second again last night and is now one of only seven teams competing for the $1 million prize
awaiting the winning team.
The teams traveled from Hamburg, Germany, to a town in southern France, and were assigned to buy a French baguette at a specific bakery. Steve was ready for another chapter in the race.
"I'm 57, the oldest guy in the race, and I feel like I'm 25 again," Steve said.
"You're still rockin' it," Allie said.
Next, though, a real challenge: Did they know the meaning of the word baguette?
"It's a long piece of bread," Allie joked. "You didn't know that?"
"I knew," Steve said. "I was just making sure you knew."
Contestants found a clue inside the baguette, sending them to the town of La Main de Massiges, a World War I battleground. And if "The Amazing Race" wasn't considered "a war" before now, things changed. Contestants were ordered to dress like doughboys, crawling through trenches and under barbed wire to attach a message to a carrier pigeon, then send it off into the sky.
Did we mention that "bombs" were falling during this exercise and the sound of "gunfire" filled the air as the contestants performed this perilous assignment?
We'll assume it was all staged, even the Red Baron-style fighter planes zooming through the sky.
Next, teams were told to suit up in old-fashioned bicycling uniforms and re-enact the original 1903 Tour de France on a challenging four-mile race. Steve and Allie looked sporting in their old-school outfits.
"Nice mustache," Steve told Allie.
On a closeup, viewers saw Allie wearing a fake mustache, perhaps eager to fool opponents with a secret identity. Or maybe it just came with the suit.
With only one team ahead of them, Steve and Allie enjoyed the French countryside as they glided to their third-consecutive second-place finish.
Funny business in this week's episode arrived when contestants Jeff and Jordan drove in a European loop intersection famous for confounding American drivers. More funny stuff was seen when dating models Brent and Caite approached the WWI battleground and peered into the sky at the fighter planes.
"Oh baby, look, they're up in some sort of flying things," Brent said.
Another mission accomplished, Steve and Allie earned their stripes yet again, and marched on toward another week.
