Gonzo Road Trip Rally

Roadside America started as a book, became a website, and now takes the form of a fantastic iPhone app (Android in development). Here at Rally Headquarters, we’re proud to be giving a complementary copy of the app and all its regions to our teams this year.

With an incredible archive of over 10,000 oddities and homespun wonders around the continent, the RA is a perfect fit with the Gonzo sensibility of the Rally. (Check out their entries for Indiana alone.)

The Gonzo Road Trip Rally sends multiple teams in cars zig-zagging 2,500 miles across America, equipped with cameras and constantly-connected mobile devices.

Teams embark on road quests that would make Horatio Nelson Jackson sit up in his coffin and salute.

As a driver, you’ll careen off the highway, make tons of u-turns, wrong turns, missed turns, meet personalities — and capture it all as you go in photos, videos, and self-broadcasting of all sorts.

The focus isn’t on high-performance cars (though they aren’t disqualified), or speed records. Instead, there’s a focus on the adventure of being on the road, inspired by the discoveries of other teams, egged on by online followers.

Back at home, your trip will be the ultimate in vicarious adventure, as friends and family follow you and the other teams in real time while you pillage the countryside. Every day you’ll post the kind of American road stories everyone who isn’t dead yearns for.

Here are more details:

1. $150 Fee per car (via PayPal). It’s so low because we want this to be as close to free as possible — the goal is to keep folks focused on developing their plan, and following through.
2. Teams will be provided with 6 Waypoints (oddball roadside attractions to help each team hit their minimum mileage) that they must visit before arriving at the official Rally Finale in Phillipsburg, Kansas.
3. Each team should also record a minimum of 5 Discoveries (persons, places, or things of interest that have no entry on Wikipedia or Roadside America).
4. In order to be eligible for the winning vote, and the Championship Belt Buckle, a team’s submitted Discoveries must be approved by a consensus of competing team members.
5. Official travel activity can only occur between June 29th, 2012 and July 6th, 2012.

Wanna be involved? Find a car and a teammate and join the drive!

Here’s just part of the drive that inspired founder Jeff Diehl to start the Gonzo Rally…