TROG - The Race of Gentlemen

Jun 30, 2017 5 Replies

Hey, it's really quiet tonight, so I'll clutter the board with something that involves a lot of old metal and maybe nobody will mind.



We do car racing a little differently in NJ. This is the TROG -- The Race of Gentlemen -- which is held every year on the beach at Wildwood. It's a bit of traditional Jerseyana. The cars and motorcycles are *old*, and the speeds reach a scorching 70 mph.



The beach there looks a lot like Daytona Beach: It's really wide and flat, though the sand is not as firm. People have been racing there for decades. I have a photo of my dad on the beach for a race (they were all grudge races then) in his brand new 6-cylinder 1936 Plymouth.



Anyway, if you want to waste a little under 7 minutes watching it, it's kind of fun. I worked at flipping hamburgers on the boardwalk there when I was 21, and dated a girl who was about 5 feet tall and who rode a Harley in the Hell Hole, which was one of those vertical-wall wooden barrels where they go round and round to climb the walls.



If you like rat rods, you'll like these:



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Goodness. That's how it used to be back in the days of my youth :-)

Thanks Ed.

I wish I'd thought about it before it was over this year. I won't miss it next June.

Some of those old Harleys are real collector's items, and that's more rat rods than I've ever seen in one place. I'll bet they leave a layer of rust all over the town when they go home.

Nice. Thanks for the link.

Thanks for that, awesome! Makes me wish I had my dad's Indian Scout. Bored, and stroked to the very limits, lumpy cams and reshaped ports, it hauled ass. Dad and his best friend Jim, would have loved this event.

Jon

You can tell all those people are just out to have fun. I'm surprised how far some of them came for the event. "Sushi" came all the way from Japan.

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