Margie, Luke

To connect or not to connect? Instead of risking a 30-minute connection with Brendon and Rachel to Sri Lanka on The Amazing Race All-Stars, Margie and Luke opted to wait for standby tickets. Unfortunately, they couldn't get them, putting them 10 hours behind everyone and inevitably eliminating them. "We had a long time to process that we were going to be eliminated," Margie tells "We accepted it, but we were sad." Find out why the mother-son three-time racers chose to play it safe with the tickets, what Luke learned from his bartending meltdown last week and why he can't seem to handle liquid challenges.

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Once you didn't get the standby tickets, it was clear that you would be eliminated. Did you think there was any chance for you to catch up?
 We had a feeling that we were in dead last place after it happened. We were hopeful that it might be back-to-back non-eliminations. 
Margie: We had a long time to process that we were going to be eliminated. We were sad.

Why did you decide to do standby instead of risking the connecting flight, especially with Brendon and Rachel doing it? You would've had another team in sight.
 Well, we had tried to find the travel agency first. The cab driver, I think, had in his mind that he wanted to go to the airport and he couldn't find the agency. We lost about 45 minutes there. ... When we got to the airport, there was a young man with a computer sharing all the flight information. But we could not buy a connecting ticket from Singapore to Sri Lanka. We could buy one to Singapore, but because the time was so tight, they wouldn't sell us a ticket at the counter for the connecting flight. We would've had to go out through ticketing, out through security, purchase the second ticket and come back in. That was the only option for that second flight. If we had gone agency, they would've done it. We thought maybe we should get to Singapore and see from there. We knew there were a lot more options. But the feeling I got from the ticketing agent was he felt pretty good that we would get the standby seats. We had to weigh the options. If we had gone to the travel agency, we would've been in much better shape than we were trying to purchase tickets at the airport.
Luke: We should've gone for the connecting flight! We knew the risks and we wanted to go the safer route, but then we should have gambled with the connecting flights. It's hard to predict what could happen with the flights.

Did you know that Brendon and Rachel were doing the connection?
 They wouldn't share their information, but they were at the Singapore ticket counter next to us, so we figured they were going to Singapore. We just weren't aware that they were also doing that tight connection. 

How long were you at the airport before you got on a flight?
 We actually had to go to a different airport. We had to get on a bus and go to a different airport. We were there overnight. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6 a.m., but there was some kind of mechanical problem and didn't leave until 8. We were a good nine, 10 hours behind.

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No wonder you were so zen.
 Yeah! We were that far behind. [Laughs]

Luke, compared to last week's episode, your demeanor was vastly different and you calmly accepted that you guys were last. What did you learn from that breakdown?
 As soon as we could not get on the flight, I knew the game was probably over right there for us. I knew it was out of our hand. I thought we were probably already too far behind. There's nothing else we could do. There was no point of getting stressed out in Sri Lanka. We both really want to enjoy the scenery of Sri Lanka much as possible. I mean, how often do we get to visit Sri Lanka? The bartending task was definitely pretty stressful! We both wanted to switch the Detour task, but it turned out that the DJ-ing task was hearing-based, so the pressure mounted up from there. Pretty intense moment for me! I didn't want to let my mom down by getting eliminated from the race just cause of drinking task! I didn't want to go out in the same way!
Margie: We just talked about it. It was my decision to wait for that standby. I just said, "This guy will get us on." When we didn't, I was a little surprised, but we knew it was inevitable. We talked about it and we decided that we would go and have fun. How many people in this world have the opportunity to see Sri Lanka. We did the train ride. We were both OK with it.

Luke, why do you always have trouble with liquid challenges?
 I have no idea!

Which of your three eliminations have hurt the most? The first time you were in the final, the second time you were stuck on a challenge, and now it was a travel issue.
 Not winning the Season 14! It was very painful how we were so close to winningThe Amazing Race. I should've taken a minute to take a step back and look at the big picture to see what was wrong. It would be pretty awesome to win The Amazing Race! But again, being an Amazing Race three-peater is a pretty amazing accomplishment!
Margie: I think the travel issue was the worst because it was just a bad decision on my part. The tea challenge [in Season 18] — Luke tried his best. We knew he did everything he could do in that. He endured vomiting and fever. It was just horrible. We knew that he did his best. This time, it was just a stupid decision. In retrospect, there were so many more flights out of Singapore that would've gotten us to Sri Lanka. If we had to do it again, we would've done the connection in retrospect.

Did you do any of the challenges? They didn't show you doing them if you did.
 We did travel the whole route, but we didn't do the challenges. At each location was just a clue telling us to go to the next one.

At least Phil didn't have to come to eliminate you.
 That's right! We kept thinking every time we got to a place that everybody had checked in and he'd be there to eliminate us.

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What are you up to now?
 Just back to my normal life, working and living in Colorado, enjoying my grandkids and my new husband.
Luke: I'm working in marketing and fundraising ...and I still give speeches across the U.S. as a motivational speaker. I am really lucky to have a great job that Amazing Racehas opened the doors for me. 

(Full disclosure: is owned by CBS.)