Day 57 - June 18, 2012 (Episode 9)



Johnathan rocking some of his swag for our off day!

Today is a travel day and our last day in Oslo as a group.  It’s exciting to know that we’ve made it to the end, but it’s sad to know that no matter what happens this week, all of us will be going home and this journey will be ending.  Wow!  What an incredible opportunity and experience!  If it wasn’t for being gone from my family, I wouldn’t want it ever to end!

We got started at 10:30 and took our 4-hour car drive back to Oslo.  When we got there, we had a quick lunch and then about 4 hours to kill before dinner.  I had been avoiding buying souvenirs, so as to not jinx myself, but since we all will be leaving after this week, I figured it was time.  I spent about two hours hitting up all the souvenir shops and got something for everyone in the extended family.  Then, I came back to the hotel and got a 30-minute run in on the treadmill.  Finally, we met for dinner at 7:30.  It was then that we heard some bad news.

Apparently, back on the cruise/ferry, Jessica, in a drunken stupor, was so proud of herself for combining the two beds in her room, that she did some kind of jump onto them to celebrate, but landed right on the metal framing where the beds met!  She didn’t notice anything at the time, other than a somewhat sore back, but over the last couple of days it’s been hurting her more and more, to the point where she went to the doctor today.  Turns out, she fractured a rib or two!!  It hurts her to cough, laugh, and sometimes even breathe!  With that, she’s freaking out about any physical challenges that we may have to do.  I feel really bad for her!  However, if there’s one thing this season has proven, is that physical challenges are rare, so hopefully she won’t be affected.  As nice as it is to have an opponent at less than 100%, that is not how you want to win.  In order to be the best, you have to beat the best and you want them at their best, so there’s no question as to who the new best is!  (How about that for over-using one word?!)

With that, I figured now may be a good time to rank my final three competitors.  Probably the biggest change for me is C.J..  Looking back at my earlier rankings, I never gave him a ton of respect and have quickly realized that he may have been the best player here the whole time!  As we’ve seen, there’s been a ton of memory-based and intellectual challenges, which he has proven over and over that he will destroy on!  He may be my biggest threat remaining!  Second would probably be Jessica.  She too has proven herself to be a much better competitor that I originally gave her credit for.  She just doesn’t lose!  With that, I think she may be the best out of the three, but knowing that she’s having these rib issues makes me think that she won’t be as good as she typically would.  Finally, there’s Johnathan.  He may be my least feared opponent when compared to the other two, but it isn’t by much.  He knows the language, has proven to be able to compete physically, and, even though he plays it off as he doesn’t care much about the competition and just wants to have fun, he gets his game face on when it’s time.  The more that I think about it, the more I can see him being just as big of a threat as the other two.  In fact, all three of my competitors (and friends, which is such a weird and funny feeling) could be just as dangerous to me winning this thing!  I’ll have to have 100% focus on getting to the finish line, step by step!



Tilt! The greatest bar in Oslo!

Moving forward, we had dinner at a Thai restaurant.  It was really good and we should go to one in Indy.  After dinner, we went back to the hotel.  It was going to be our last night there, so we were going to go to our favorite bar, Tilt, but wanted to drink in the hotel first, to save money.  We all shared a bottle of whiskey and then headed to the bar.  We got there at 11:00 and at midnight, several members of the crew showed up.  We went on to have a really fun night and closed down the bar.  We all went back to our hotel around 3:30 and called it a night.  It was a great way to celebrate our last night there!



 

Day 57 Over!!



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