Joe Bassidere and Bill Bartek (aka Team Guido) are one of the most notable teams in Amazing Race history. They were a significant part of what made the show a hit in its first season and they were welcome members of All-Stars. unfortunately (thanks to some brutal airport travails), Joe and Bill were eliminated from The Amazing Race on last night’s two-hour episode. Below, you will find both the transcript for the interview and the full audio file.
When you were contacted by the producers about maybe being a part of The Amazing Race: All-Stars, what was your reaction? Was there any hesitation on your part?
Joe: No, we had been hoping and anticipating that there would be an Amazing Race All-Stars for a couple of years and then we we were hoping that once it became clear that it was going to happen that we were praying that it would be us as one of the selected teams. We hopped on it right away.
Were there any teams that you had wished would a part of All-Stars that weren’t?
Joe: No, I think we were pretty happy with the group that was there.
Bill: We won’t name names, but before the race started we made a pecking order of who we thought could make it and who couldn’t make it. We felt we still had a good chance. Little did we know that we that we were going to have killer fatigue and knee pain so early in the race…we’re too old farts and it sort of played a part in our race.
Joe: I think we selected our list …we kind of whittled it down to 11 or 12 teams that we thought were the likely candidates, and, like Amazing Race 1, we were about 50% correct. And then the rest of them were surprises.
On last night’s episode, especially in the first hour, being stuck in the Kilimanjaro airport, was that the worst stretch of Race you guys had ever been on?
Bill: I’ll tell you what Oscar. We had sort of already had a really bad stretch coming out of Puto, going into Zqanaibar and Dar Es Salaam and that was bad but we were like “We can recover now, and we’re on our way,” and then to get hit with that and get stuck in Kilimanjaro it really broke our spirits, it was tough. Because we really would’ve been there during the day time with everybody; we would’ve been in 10, 11 o’clock in Warsaw. So, we knew we were going to really be way behind the other teams again.
Joe: That held us up for approximately another 8 hours. It was really bad news and when you see me running outside…the deal was Dani and I were just like going crazier about the situation than Joe or Eric. What I wanted to do even worse, what Dani and I actually decided to do…we were going to run outside and go up these staircases and into the airplane and talk to the pilot. And the guy with KLM, he wasn’t really helping us, he was just kind of giving us the brush off. And what it really comes down to is Air Tanzania does not cooperate with KLM with informing them that their flights are going to be late so KLM can hold their flights for the connecting passengers. So, Dani and I had agreed that we were going to run out there and talk to the pilot. I mean, we could see him through the window there. At the last minute when we went out she chickened out and Bill had reminded me that this was the same airport where Colin (of Colin and Christy) had almost been thrown in jail. I became really aware that I didn’t want to get thrown in jail.
Watching the episodes at home, was there anything edited out that you wish they had shown?
Joe: There was a lot more barfing than you saw. Oh boy, that was really…a couple of those beer barrels were half full.
Bill: Yeah, Joe was the only one who really just ate it and ate it quickly and got up and was fine. All of the rest of us threw up. There were complete detours that got edited out, last night and one other time before that. You know, there’s always things that get filmed of you that you either think are hilarious or really stunning or earth-shattering or whatever and it turns out that it doesn’t even get in.
You guys have anything coming up, personally, in the near future?
Joe: No, we’re pretty much happy to be in one piece after the race, and we’re going back to our gorgeous Southern Caifornia lifestyle, we love it there. We’re always open to any ideas out there, things to do. We’re always happy to be a part of charitable functions and organizations and that’s pretty much it. We’re just heading back to our great lives. We’ve been together twenty years now. We just feel really fortunate to have been included and we’re just going to go back to our lives and we’re done with it for now.
(Interview Conducted By Oscar Dahl)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
