On April 23rd, SCCA Northern New Jersey Region presented this year’s version of Second Hand Roads. Sanctioned as a Divisional Tour and a Regional event, the 92-mile Time-Speed-Distance RoadRally utilized the Competitor – Richta GPS Checkpoint timing/scoring app. Twenty-nine teams competed in the Regional event; only three teams entered the Divisional Tour (for National Championship points), competing in Stock and GPS. All 60 controls were scored for both versions of the route instructions.
The Region would like to thank our members behind the scenes: Rallymasters Satish Gopalkrishnan and Savera D’Souze for the event, their second year for Second Hand Roads. I served as the Official SCCA Safety Steward. Joanne Schneider, a familiar name in our road rally program and one of our latest SCCA Members, for Registration, pre-checking the route, and helping at the finish. Her only reward was lunch at the old-fashioned dinner in Blairstown.
Second Hand Roads is an event originally conducted by Raritan Valley Sports Car Club (RVSCC), which has operated in Central New Jersey since the early 60s. “Back in the day,” there were over a dozen rally clubs conducting events in the area, hosting both TSD and Gimmick rallies, and the all-night New Jersey Monte TSD Map Rally, which ran in the dead of winter on a moonless night, how things have changed. These clubs included Triumph Sports Car Club, Greater Rockaway Sports Car Club (GRASS), Mustang Club of North Jersey (later rebranded as Motorsports Club of North Jersey), MG Car Club, Corvette Club, and in the ’70s, the Z-Club.
The idea behind Second Hand Roads, hosted by RVSCC, was to provide the club an excuse to recycle leftover trophies from prior events and use an old set of rally instructions for the route layout, refreshed for current road conditions and signage.
Working with that theme six years ago, SCCA-NNJR and RVSCC got together to resurrect the event. For the first couple of years, scoring was done by closed-staffed Timing Controls; a set of two teams worked two controls each, which allowed a total of four timed locations along a 65-mile route. The events had a short break at a County Park to give contestants the time to socialize and give the control teams time to move from their first control location and leap-frog ahead of the rally teams. Crews needed to time-in all 30+ cars at their first location, close up their control, drive to their second location, and be set up before the first rally car arrived, hence the need for the short break at the County Park.
Second Hand Roads is advertised as a Novice or Beginner event. The route instructions are easy to follow, with mileage to every turn and many Official Times in the Route Instructions to keep everyone on time. Official Times, aka Key Times or Car Zero Times (CZT), are the mathematical/calculated time for Car Zero to pass a specific location. Since cars start the rally one minute apart from each restart location, a contestant must add their car number to the Key Time to get their perfect time at that location. The Route Instructions even have a unique column to the right of the Instructions to write in the contestant’s time at each instruction.
Second Hand was divided into two sections, with an ice cream stop in the middle. The Rallymaster provided the exact mileage and ‘Key Time’ to each Timing Control, yet as the event progressed, they provided the mileage to each Timing Control yet not the Key Time, and near the end, they hid the Timing Controls along the route, so the rallyists needed to stay “on time, all the time” to get a good score at those locations.
Contestants utilized the Competitor – Richta GPS Checkpoints app, which is available as a free download for either Apple or Android Smartphones. They locate the event in the App, and a ‘hidden’ file downloads to the contestant’s phone for scoring; they enter their assigned car number with the team members’ names and are ready to begin the rally. The Longitude and Latitude and the Official Time of each scoring location are tagged in the Rallymaster – Richta GPS Checkpoints App. As the contestant follows the written route instruction, the Competitor App pings their phone when they pass a control location. It provides instant feedback on their score and a running total for the event.
Other features of the Rallymaster App allow the Rallymaster to track each car’s location along the route. The companion Scoreboard – Richta GPS Checkpoints app in the ‘Richta Cloud’ keeps track of everyone’s leg scores for easy download at the end of the event. A Rallymaster no longer has to worry about staffing Control Locations, providing instructions for a Control Worker to get from Timing Control to Timing Control, which were, in a sense, several mini-rallies, or have to be concerned about doing the ‘math’ at the end of the event to see who gets the trophies.
The 2023 rally route started at Subaru World of Hackettstown and had an 11-mile odometer leg ending in Allamuchy, NJ (the township’s name comes from the Native American word “Allamachetey,” meaning “place within the hills”) utilizing some of the same roads as the 2021 event but in a different configuration. We drove the entire length of Shades of Death Road, up Jenny Jump Mountain, and then used the narrow twisty roads on the west side of Jenny Jump State Park before heading into Johnsonbugh. It originated as an important stagecoach stop, as it was an east-west route that carried mail from Dover, NJ, to Stroudsburg, PA, and a north-south route carried mail from Albany, NY, to Philadelphia, PA. Both routes crossed at right angles at this location; a post office and tavern were built, with the tavern becoming an important meeting place and where elections and caucuses were held. Then we were off to a 30-minute break for Ice Cream in Blairstown, NJ, at the world-famous Blairstown Diner.
Blairstown, NJ, is not only home of the Blairstown Academy (founded in 1848), a $65,000+ per year Boarding school for grades 9 – 12, with its 18-hole golf course, it was also featured in the original version of Friday the 13th, which introduced Kevin Bacon to the movie-going public and also Jason Voorhees who terrorized the ill-fated camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake which filmed in Hardwick, New Jersey. The setting for Camp Crystal Lake was Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, the private property owned by the Northern New Jersey Boys Scout Council, and it is only open to the public on official tour dates.
After visiting downtown Blairstown, the route doubled back north on Route 94 to the Paulinskill River Valley, which features excellent narrow twisty paved roads with elevation changes not seen in other parts of the state, to end at the Long Valley Brew Pub, which has been used in the past and was the ending spot for last year’s Roads of Home National TSD Tour event hosted by the Northern New Jersey Region.
