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The Amazing Race Ambassadors of Laughter: David and Cherie Gregg

Yakkity Yaks had the opportunity to spend sometime yesterday with David and Cherie Gregg, the second team eliminated from The Amazing Race 20. The interview started out with a HONK HONK as a welcome from the Ambassadors of Laughter. I would like to let you all know that they are just as exuberant and full of joy in person as they appeared on TAR!

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The Yak: Did you get to celebrate your 20th Wedding Anniversary while racing or was it afterward?

Both: It was afterwards.
David: it was actually February 16th.

The Yak: Wonderful 20 years congratulations, what a milestone.

Cherie: Thank you and we survived the race still married!

The Yak: I never had any doubts about that! You were one of the teams that got along better under stress then any others this season and previous years also.

Both: Thank you!

The Yak: Would you do it again if TAR invited back?

Both: Oh Yes!
David: 110% yes, definitely!
Cherie: Call anyone you know that you think could get us back on, definitely. It was too short for us.

The Yak: What was your favorite task to complete?

David: I would say of the entire thing was building the solar kitchen; it was such a joy to get to work with Cherie on a task together.
Cherie: We do well together we are just not good separated.
David: Divided.
Cherie: Divided… laughs… no pun intended with the division! But we enjoyed working the solar kitchen together. I thought you (David) were going to say skydiving for yourself.
David: Oh no, no, no I liked working with you.
Cherie: I wanted to skydive.

The Yak: What was it like to watch the other on the roadblocks where you were doing things separately?

Both: It was hard.
David: When I was getting ready to skydive going up in the plane my thoughts were on Cherie and how she was going to get to the drop site and find me…
Both: …and drive the stick shift
David: Luckily she did it flawlessly and we were able to pass up 3 other teams at that time. All I had to do was use gravity as my source (laughs).
Cherie: Watching Dave struggle at the cattle was so hard! I was so glad he didn’t get upset and could fall back on his humor to keep going. If he had gotten really upset it would have upset me even more because I felt helpless not being able to help him. We work really well together because we are two halves of one person; we don’t function well divided. Dave does everything… he cooks, cleans, does dishes, grocery shops, driving….
David: Cherie does all the math.
Cherie: The clue was “where’s the beef?”
David: I thought I was going to eat a cow!
Cherie: so who had any idea it was going to have to do with math; if we had thought it would have to do with math I would have taken it. Roadblocks were a twist because if it was like who was better with directions, Dave would have been and I would have gotten to skydive. Most people were tricked and the person that would rather not skydive ended up skydiving. Roadblocks had twists and it was crazy watching people try to deal with them!
David: It was AMAZING!

The Yak: How did it make you feel to see the other on the show completing their task?

Cherie: It was really cool. I was jealous watching him diving and he looked great doing it. I did get to see him come down because I found him really quick, so I got to see the end of it, but seeing him go out the plane was really cool and that will be a great memory.
David: It was very exciting to get to be able to watch each other do the individual parts that we weren’t part of.
Cherie: Watching him struggle with the math again on tv was not fun.

The Yak: What city did you like best?

David: Buenos Aries was absolutely beautiful.
(The Greggs enjoyed the drives thru the countryside as they traveled between locations and expressed it as some of the most beautiful views.)

The Yak: You were on the bus that broke, how did the window break?

David: We’re not sure and would love to know the official answer. I think it had to do with stress; it was a double-decker bus and in the afternoon what happened was the lower section of the window where we were was getting very hot. The attendant came down and noticed it was getting hot and it sounded like they turned off the whole AC system and put it back on and it cooled down relatively quickly for about an hour and a half… but then the window just exploded….with a bang sound. I think it was stress of the temperature change it couldn’t take, luckily it was safety glass.
Cherie: It didn’t blow in right away so the people sitting back there were able to get up and then it blew in. I thought something hit it, I don’t think the science way Dave does.
David: We were driving 60-65 mph down the highway so I don’t think anything could have hit it that hard. We really don’t know.
Cherie: It was right behind our heads and so we didn’t get very much sleep. Then Dave trying to do math on very little sleep did not help… on the highway the wind would catch the tape and rip the plastic open. Then we would stop again and you would hear (insert tape ripping noises) of duct tape all night long of them re-taping it up. Then we would go again, then stop again, so it made a really long bus ride that started out as 18 hours. It ended up more than 20 hours and we weren’t able to sleep very well. It was a nightmare.

The Yak: Was production able to help occupy your time or do something for you to make use of it?

David: Not really, we sat there and waited for repairs to be made and pretty much everyone was anxious for them to get it done as quickly as possible so we could get on the road to continue on the way.
Cherie: We were speculating about the other teams that could be on the third bus… about how much time we were losing
David: But we had no idea quite frankly.

The Yak: Was there any one team you felt a sense of camaraderie with more than the others?

Cherie: In the very beginning, in the first leg, Art and JJ came up to us. They were a little annoyed because they were being called middle aged and they were like us old folk got to stick together but then they were so far ahead of us all the time we never really had any long periods of time with them. Then we were shouting with the twins and the NY boys because we were all on the lower level of the bus. We got along with everybody. We didn’t really have any issues with any teams; again the clown in us is to see everybody for who they are and we only judge people by what they show to us… if they are nice to us we are nice back. We had no problems with anyone.

The Yak: Would you want to keep in touch with the other teams?

Cherie: Yes, it is something that when you go through an experience like this it is a bonding experience.
David: It is a bonding experience!
Cherie: It is like working in the circus with people from all over the world, you now have a rare shared experience.

The Yak: Are you back on the road with the circus?

David: We are back as the Ambassadors of Laughter for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.
Cherie: We are traveling about a month ahead of the circus and going to schools, libraries and hospitals bringing free educational programs to the community; to kids that might not get to go to the circus; to hospitals where kids might not be having the best day and letting them forget reality for a while. We are going to be heading up to Kentucky… Pikeville… next we will be leaving Mobile Alabama. We are touring all over, we keep saying we are so lucky to have each other and lucky to have a great job entertaining people and bringing free community programs and lucky to have the opportunity to be on The Amazing Race. We do wish it could have been longer, we wish we could go back again, but we have been very lucky (David was agreeing as Cherie spoke), lucky that Dave survived cancer twice… just lucky people… We know how lucky and valuable life is.

The Yak: Any future plans to do any other reality shows?

Cherie: The dream was always The Amazing Race. Something we could do together and have the adventure of a lifetime and see the world. We have been traveling the country with Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for 12 years now and wanted to get out to see the world. TAR is the best reality show to us! It is not about fighting and politics, it is about yourself and how you are going to handle your challenges.
David: Yeah, overcoming obstacles.
Cherie: How you are going to handle the challenges and other people, foreign countries and things like that… so it was more about working as a team.

The Yak: Dave expressed interest in going to Japan and Cherie to Australia, any plans for either of those trips?

Both: Hopefully!
Cherie: One of the next dreams is to go to all the Disney Parks around the world.
David: …and do a little sightseeing in between.
Cherie: …and sightseeing the countries as well. There is no Disney in Australia but I still want to see it, it is suppose to be really beautiful. We slowly do our dreams in 10 year spurts; it took us 10 years to get into Ringling Brothers Circus.
David: Hopefully we will do the traveling a little sooner this time.
Cherie: Especially with the TAR dream coming true 10 years later, we always tell people don’t give up on your dreams, you need to make them happen; we will get to travel more. Hopefully we will be able to do another Amazing Race!

The Yak: Do you have children?

Cherie: We love children… everybody else’s.
David: Sugar them up and send them home!
Cherie: Entertain, make them happy then send them home. I would worry too much if I had my own children.

The Yak: I am sure that everyone else appreciates all the love you share with their children. whether they are your family or not.

Cherie: It is our honor and privilege to be able to do that. We feel so lucky to be able to make people laugh and forget reality for a while and have fun and do this for a living. We are just very lucky.
David: Very fortunate.

The Yak did ask if David and Cherie had any information on how to locate the programs or how to contact for possible visits from them. Information is available at http://www.ringling.com/ and Ringling also has a facebook page. David and Cherie report that they are generally in a town about 1 month before the circus arrives.

David and Cherie, thank you for sharing time with Yakkity Yaks; best of luck on all your future endeavors and a very Happy Anniversary!
David and Cherie signed off with a thank you and HONK HONK!!

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So what do you think? Disappointed to see the clowns have an early exit from The Race? Let us know below!

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The Amazing Race: Misa and Maiya Share Their Experience

Known for their now infamous elimination in the first leg of the Amazing Race, Misa & Maiya Tanaka have a lot to share about their short lived adventure on the Race. The Yak had the privilege of chatting with Misa & Maiya Tanaka this morning and to describe them as full of life is not descriptive enough! Read on to see what they had to say!

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The Yak: Well let’s just start with this… If you were offered the opportunity to do it again would you?

Misa & Maiya: Yes in a heartbeat we would. We wouldn’t even need to think twice about it. We obviously need redemption. We made history for being goof-balls not seeing Phil so definitely we need redemption we need to prove ourselves… one of the biggest mistakes in TAR history and Phil kind of let us know that when we got to the mat…
Maiya: He made me cry.
Misa: ..And I was just standing there angry.

The Yak: I cannot imagine how frustrating it is to know you were so close and that they saw you.

Misa: Oh yeah, it was completely frustrating just the fact that they were right there & Maiya and I were running through all the mazes and ran thru another vineyard before finally getting to Phil and then realizing that we were in the right place to begin with was just beyond frustrating.

The Yak: One of our twitter followers, @mralmondbread wanted to know if you would have left your bags instead of picking them up if that would have helped you?

Maiya: I don’t think that it would have helped us much but we definitely considered that, that was our point in not bringing our bags in the first place is that they did kind of weighed us down. That is why we didn’t bring our bags in the first place and so we were in last place we fully intended to leave our bags if it was that close and we had to sprint to the finish line.
Misa: We knew we had some time since we made great strides during the empanada making challenge & knew Danny & Joey were kind of struggling a little bit so we knew we had a few minutes enough to go grab our bags and come back out.

The Yak: Are you guys Big Brother fans?

Misa: I’ve seen Big Brother, saw a couple of episodes, but never saw Brendon and Rachel on so I had no idea who they were.
Maiya: We knew the concept and we definitely think it is one of the coolest shows. But we had no idea, it looked familiar to me and I think I did see her on it but the fact that they were on it was kind of a little surprise.

The Yak: Yes, a good surprise for Big Brother fans! How about Survivor, are either of you Survivor fans?

M&M: Yeah!
Maiya: I love Survivor. I would struggle with having to eat fish or catch my food and eat that for dinner but I definitely think Survivor is a great show.

The Yak: Any chance either of you will be applying for that?

M&M: [laugh]
Maiya: No, we’ll have to wait & see.
Misa: I don’t know how many goofs we could make of doing that… Survivor is a bit crazy. We have already learned it does take a lot and it is physically exhausting being on this race and the reason why we didn’t see Phil is we were so dehydrated and so frantic that we had tunnel vision.
Maiya: You know the one advantage we would have is not looking for Phil on a mat so I mean maybe we would be a little more successful!

The Yak: On your preshow interview you had both expressed interest in going to Japan. Is that an adventure you will take on your own?

Misa: Yes, definitely! I want to travel with Maiya again so going to Japan is something we are going to do hopefully sometime in the near future. We need to make it happen that is one our dreams to go there.
Maiya: Our family is from there. We were born in US, our dad at least, we are the 4th generation here so the fact is that it is kind of like a lost culture for us. Our grandparents can speak Japanese a little bit and our mom can a little bit. We definitely want to learn a little bit more about the culture and where we come from so we really, really wanted to go there.

The Yak: What was your favorite part of the leg you participated in?

Misa: My favorite part had to be skydiving. I’ve always wanted to skydive before… I just needed an extra push where I just had to do it, had to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, but it was such an incredible experience to be able to see the view from up above and fly over Argentina. It was just incredible and you know what, my landing, I’m always going to remember that special moment my feet planted into home base.

The Yak: Any chance you will be dragging your sister up into a plane now?

Maiya: NO!
Misa: No, I don’t think she would do it. I would love for her to do it but she is afraid of heights.
Maiya: I am terrified of heights, there is no way I would have done that! We lucked out… that was the only lucky part we got! At least we did choose right in the fact that I was going to be the navigator and she was going to be the crazy one jumping out of a plane!

The Yak: Out of all the teams, are there any you would want to remain friends with?

M&M: [both agree] Yes we love all the teams!
Maiya: We socialized and talked to pretty much everyone on a regular basis and it’s such an experience that only a select few get to go through so we can all kind of relate to just being in that situation. We were all there at one point and it is just an amazing feeling to get to share with these people and we are really happy that we are friends with everyone.
Misa: Yes we are going to keep in touch with these people forever, they are like our extended family so just to be able to relate to that experience… no one ever knows what you exactly go through unless you are actually on the show, so we definitely formed a fast bond with the contestants and I look forward to getting to see them again. We’re going to keep in touch. We are looking forward to watching them and seeing what they go through now that we can call them up and give them a hard time too!

The Yak: How was it to watch the one another on the segment where you’re driving and then you’re skydiving… how was it to see your sisters’ take while you weren’t there?

Misa: For me watching Maiya getting stuck in the sand was so heartbreaking and I felt so sad for her. You know it’s funny, it’s one thing when you know what has happened based on what Maiya has explained to me but then watching it and what she went through, I could just picture myself and how sad she was and the amount of stress she went through being in that position (getting stuck in that sand) so I actually started tearing up watching her.
Maiya: For me it was easy to watch her jump out of a plane because that has been something she always wanted to do. I was really happy for her and almost elated to see her! I kind of got an adrenaline high getting to see her do something she always wanted to do and her little comment at the end of “Yeah we did it” was really cool! I was liking that part not so much when I was stuck in the sand.

The Yak: Maiya were your rescuers’ just local Argentineans’ that were there or was it someone sent from production to assist you?

Maiya: Once Phil says go you are on your own so it was definitely not anyone from production or the race. Basically I had to flag down people from Argentina and it was a huge team effort. The first guy I saw was a guy on a motorcycle who happened to have some rope but he spoke zero English, but he was able to understand me and my begging. I was like “por favor”… used a little bit of the Spanish I learned in high school and he understood me enough and I kind of knew what he was saying. He helped me flag down another car which ended up being too small to pull me out and snapped the rope in half, then we had to call in another car that happened to have steel wire with him… then eventually we flagged down a truck who was able to have enough horsepower to pull with the rope/steel wire combination to pull me out of the sand. So it was a team Argentina group effort there and I was just really… it was a blessing in disguise basically. Even though it was very unlucky I got stuck, I got to interact with the locals; I got to see the kindness of strangers and everyone was so willing to help me… even though you saw at the end that the guy was pulling my car out we ended up hitting his car with my car a little bit in the corner. It scratched his bumper and everything and kind of dented it in, but he didn’t really mind… and he knew we were in a hurry to get to the next check point I guess.

The Yak: We don’t see all that so we didn’t realize how traumatic an ordeal it was for you.

Maiya: Yeah it was a pretty lengthy ordeal but I wasn’t about to give up. They didn’t show the part where I was literally on my hands and knees placing rocks and whatever I could under the tire digging it out! I hadn’t had much experience in the desert sand besides the sand traps on the golf course you know. If I had my sand wedge I feel that I would have done a lot better getting out of it but I was out of my element for sure.

The Yak: You had an amazing come back from that! I am just so sorry you two were eliminated!

M&M: Thank you. We made up a lot of ground but it wasn’t meant to be in the end.

The Yak: Thank you so much for spending time with me today and good luck on all your future endeavors!

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So what do you think? Unhappy that they were eliminated first? Who are you rooting on to win? Let us know below!

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Woah Woah Woah! Phil Eats Yak Meat? Say it ain’t so!

The Amazing Race’s host, Phil Keoghan has a new web series called “Phil’s Diaries”, depicting behind the scenes footage of The Amazing Race. The videos are actually very interesting. Phil, who absolutely loves to travel, is able to share all of his travel wisdom with us, as well as show us behind the scenes tidbits we would have never known.

As you know, last week in China, our Yak himself starred in one of the challenges the racers had to face, allowing the racer to ride on his back down a waterfall to receive their next clue. We saw pictures of the racers on their back, even a picture of Phil with the Yak. Well, turns out riding Yaks is not all they do over yonder in China, they also grill them! Seen below is Phil’s video diary of the trip, where he tries grilled Yak meat for the first time. We will give Phil credit here for saying that he doesn’t feel all that comfortable eating the animal he just tried to get a good shot (picture) with, but to Barry the sound guy, we say SLOW YOUR ROLL!

We are just glad that our Yak got out in time. Leave the Yak a comment below to show your appreciation for the dangerous mission he was sent on, just for the entertainment of us!