Our team name is The Rubber Duckies…and you’re probably wondering why.
Mongol Rally teams tend to pick something Mongolia or rally-related like “Genghis Khan’t Touch This,” “Between a Yak and a Hard Place” or “For Baatar Or Worse”…but we found our inspiration elsewhere.
It all goes back to Boy Scouts. Jeff and I (Pete) were members of Troop 38 in Owego, NY for entire childhoods and every single time we’d go on a scouting adventure, all of the vehicles in our caravan would use CB Radios to keep in touch on the road. Driving in a big convoy with CB radios immediately made our scout leaders think of the classic 1976 #1 hit song “Convoy” by C.W. McCall.
Convoy is the ultimate driving song, about badass truckers driving cross-country and evading pesky “bears” (cops) and smashing through toll booths all across the U.S.A. It’s also full of awesome trucker lingo.
The name of the trucker in Convoy is The Rubber Duck. Every time we went on a Boy Scout trip, Jeff’s dad would use “Rubber Duck” as the call sign for their blue minivan and blast Convoy. Now when I hear that song, I instantly think of our Boy Scout roadtrips and adventures.
When we started brainstorming names for our Mongol Rally team, “The Rubber Duckies” was one of the first suggestions, and it just stuck. And once we came up with our “Sponsor a Duck” fundraising gimmick, we were basically married to the name. Not to mention that www.therubberduckies.com was available, and it gives us a pretty awesome mascot character for our team as well.
Anyway, time to listen to some Convoy:
