Last Week for Scoring

This is it - the finale is coming!

Episode 11, this Friday, "Hooping It Up", is your last chance to score points towards the finale.

So far team Pomegranates is the only team to have 3 of their teams left - nice work!

All previous bonus opportunities are still available as well as any Been There! bonus points you've been holding out of. 

If I've missed posting any of your bonuses, let me know please.

Good luck to you all!

No Race Tonight

For some reason there is no Race tonight. So during this mid-season break, check the stats, find some pictures for a Been There! bonus and get ready for next week.

Bonus Points

While we wait for next week, I'm going to give out bonus points. I'll give you 15 points if you give me a couple paragraphs of text which would be your considered your audition to The Amazing Race. Instead of a video submission, you be giving me a text submission. However, if you feel so inclined to send me a video - I'll be impressed and give out 35 points. Get to it!

For a quick 10 points, tell me what car this is that raced in the Targa Floria - the course the teams raced the go karts on last week.

Good luck!

Adam E.

Been There! Bonus - United Kingdom

Bodhisattva is letting us know that he's been to the UK.
I never really took him for the tea type....

Regardless of his taste in beverages, I've added 15 points to your account - congrats!

St. Ninian's Isle Treasure

From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Ninian%27s_Isle

The St Ninian's Isle Treasure was discovered under a cross-marked slab in the floor of the early St. Ninian's church, on 4 July 1958 by a local schoolboy, Douglas Coutts. Coutts was helping visiting archaeologists led by Professor A. C. O'Dell of Aberdeen University at a dig on the isle. The silver bowls, jewellery and other pieces are believed to date from approx. 800 AD.

Professor O'Dell, writing in December 1959 in Antiquity magazine, recounts that:

"... the church on this site was described early in the 18th century as being still venerated by local people although it had been abandoned at the Reformation in favour of a more central parish church ... ... from the sandy spit, which has formed between the mainland and the isle, gales have carried sand and this, together with the accretion of a graveyard in use until c.1850, buried the church remains and all knowledge of its exact location had vanished from living memory ... At the occasion of the first Viking Congress in 1951 Dr W. Douglas Simpson suggested a search might prove rewarding and this was undertaken in 1955 by a party of my students under my direction. The results in this and succeeding years have exceeded expectations. ... The medieval building with its massive mortared walls, main altar and a side altar had made the excavation noteworth before 4 July 1958, when the hoard was discovered. Close to the southern chancel arch foundation, and missed by inches by later burials, was found a broken sandstone slab, 10.5 in. by 15 in., lightly inscribed with a cross and, below this, was the hoard. It had been contained in a larch box of which a few splinters, impregnated with metal salts, had escaped decay. The bowls were upside down and the brooches and other objects tangled together, showing it has been hurriedly carried and buried with the top down. In with the objects was the porpoise jawbone and this, the only non-metallic object, is strong evidence of its ecclesiastical connection, although the brooches suggest a secular link ..."^[9]

Cliffs on St Ninian's isle

The treasure is the best survival of Scottish silver metalwork from the period, some pieces gilded. As Prof. O'Dell says, there were pieces for secular use such as a series of different penannular brooches (some of them probably as unfinished half-ware) and different chapes from sword scabbards, pieces which might have been used for religious ceremonies and rituals like the bowls, spoons, and "thimbles" and all of those joined with some pieces of unsure meanings like the heavy ring chains or collars which are referred to as "power symbols of Pictish chieftains" by some scholars. The brooches show a variety of typical Pictish forms, with both animal-head and lobed geometrical forms of terminal.^[10] Two of the scabbard chapes and a sword pommel appear to be Anglo-Saxon pieces, probably made in Mercia in the late 8th century; one has an inscription with a prayer in Old English. One of the mounts has a triple spiral design. We know of exchanges of gifts between Anglo-Saxon and Pictish rulers, and generally "weapons are among the objects which travelled most widely in the early medieval period".^[11]

The treasure was donated to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) in 1965-6 and is currently in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, whilst replicas are held by the Shetland Museum.^[12]

Been There! Bonus - London

Travellers by Couch is on a roll with Been There! Bonus points.
First New York and now London.
But not only has he been to London, he lived there for a time - way cool!

15 points have been added to your account.

Been There! Bonus - New York

Travellers by Couch is adding some points by submitting this photo of him in NY.

Week 2

Standings after week 1

Pre-finals Standings
355	grizzlyadam
285	The Lightning Pandas
280	Pomegranates
270	Fun@Grandmas
255	Astropopgirl
255	Reemus
230	SoccerMom
230	The Peanut Butter Nunchucks
225	Rickshaw
220	I <3 WILD
200	Chuckapuck
200	Travellers By Couch
170	Birdog Pilot
160	AuctorPHILia
140	Goodoleboy007
120	Mulan
80	Sitruk
70	goodolegirl029
70	Tyler Durden
55	Bodhisattva
-30	Charlie Brown

Tonight the teams leave the Virgin Islands and make their way to London, England. Hopefully they'll drive a MINI or mini!
Be sure to give me your Philimination guesses before the show starts for bonus points.
Been There! Bonus points: If you've been to any of the places the teams have been, send me proof and you'll get more points.
Thank you Wikipedia for the map below that tracks the teams route this year.