Beauty Queen Upton Bungles "Race" Debut

Sarah Palin isn't alone in jotting notes on her palm. One team on "The Amazing Race" tried that in Sunday's episode, with disastrous results.

"We wrote on our hands at the beginning of the race 'details,"' said Bret Horne, holding up his ink-stained paw. "Unfortunately, mine kind of rubbed off, so I guess that's why we forgot," Horne joked.

Photos: Meet This Season's Teams

The "we" referred to his girlfriend and teammate, Caite Upton.

Upton started the race with some baggage. She is the former Miss Teen South Carolina, who famously flubbed a 2007 pageant question involving maps.

She and Horne were in the front of the pack on the CBS reality series' 16th season premiere Sunday, but they didn't heed instructions to ride a funicular train and received a 30-minute penalty, dropping them from second to seventh place.

But Horne and Upton weren't the only team to blunder. Daniel and Jordan Pious, brothers from Barrington, R.I., lost a brush during a house painting task, incurring a 15-minute penalty at the finish line. Another pair of brothers, cowboys Jet and Cord McCoy, from Tupelo, Okla., exchanged U.S. dollars for Brazilian reals -- even though they were on their way to Chile.

"Brazilian money," Jet embarrassingly acknowledged, "that doesn't work here."

Ultimately, married high school sweethearts Adrian and Dana Davis, from Arlington, Texas, became the first team to be eliminated. Husky husband Adrian twice attempted to complete the Roadblock challenge, which required contestants to scale a tightrope the length of a football field, but he tumbled both times, which allowed the ten other teams to pass them.

"For me to not be able to finish something like that, it was gut-wrenching," Adrian said.

Dating former "Big Brother" houseguests Jordan Lloyd, from Charlotte, N.C., and Jeff Schroeder, from Norridge, Ill., took the lead on the first leg of the race, despite Lloyd originally mistaking Chile for China. Attorney friends Monique Pryor, from West Orange, N.J., and Shawne Morgan, from Bowie, Md., snagged second place, while the McCoy boys came in third place.