Well, Tim’s
old roommate, Troy’s wife contacted him one day at the end of 2007, saying they
needed to plan an outing. Shortly thereafter Troy came into town for a
visit, from Colorado. They sat about one night trying to find an
adventure, and amidst a large quantity of consumed alcohol they stumbled across
Dukesfest.
Dukesfest
is a trashy festival celebrating the Dukes of Hazard T.V. show,
hosted by some of the original cast members. What a perfect,
pointless trip. A Dumball Rally? Ahh, but they thought it needed something to make it
better. The festival is in Atlanta, GA - why not take a road trip to the
festival? How do we get others involved? A plan was hatched to organize a
rally and run beater cars. A route from Denver and rough format was
created and the idea was sent to a list of friends.
There
was good initial interest, but no one was willing to commit. Tim called his
friend, Adam, one day and asked if he had any ideas to make this rally idea
work. Adam thought that all the interest was from people around the Portland
area and they were gun shy to the idea of starting in Denver and ending up on
the east coast. It was just not practical to drive to Dukesfest. He suggested trying to do it on the west
coast. But where to go? San Diego, L.A., Mexico, Las Vegas? Yes! Las Vegas!
Dukesfest
was scrapped and the new idea was sent out with a much more positive response. Adam’s
wife Courtney is an event planner and started to get everyone organized. We
started to involve others to form a committee and to keep it affordable. To
keep things unpredictable, we decided the car could not cost more than a
grand. To minimize speeding, and reckless behavior we choose to focus on
points based activities, and less on time. A route off the beaten path was
chosen and a series of ridiculous challenges was agreed upon to amass points. As our Dumball Rally came together, the original Dukesfest idea was kept in our hearts to maintain the spirit.
On June
25th, 2008 a group of seventeen people gathered in a WalMart parking
lot in seven very unique vehicles to embark on a journey into the unknown. Late
on June 26th, the same group (minus 2 cars) rolled into Vegas tired
and weary from the trip. As we disbanded, there was congratulations abound not
only to the winners and finishers, but to the fun and organization of the
rally. It was unanimous amongst the participants that they wanted more.
Amazingly,
thanks totally to our friends, we pulled off the first year. Funny but in
our second year we have international interest. One British couple is
coming from Germany, to do the rally, for the gentleman’s first trip to the
states.
Now we all know we are not the first ones to do a Dumball Rally and will not be the last, but we do hope to leave our unique mark on it.
