A very complete weekend!!
Greetings from Sturgis, Kentucky
and then Muskingum, Ohio
and then Northwood, Iowa
and finally Omaha, Nebraska
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Union County Fairgrounds Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,710 Muskingum County Speedway Dirt road course – long Lifetime Track #2,711 Muskingum County Speedway Dirt road course – short Lifetime Track #2,712 Worth County Fairgrounds Dirt figure 8 Lifetime Track #2,713 Worth County Fairgrounds Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,714 THE EVENT Editor’s note: This report gives you a look at my entire weekend of trackchasing. First racing in Kentucky, then Ohio and finally Iowa. Then the trip took me to Omaha for the college baseball World Series! I travel this way so you don’t have to. How does that work? I tell you how I travel and then you get to decide if that’s a good idea for you. Fair enough? Now get out there and go somewhere. Covid is in the rearview mirror and getting smaller every day. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with Carol and son Jim at the NASCAR Cup race in Austin, Texas). I live in San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Trackchasing for me is all about three things. First, I enjoy auto racing. Secondly, my hobby requires a good deal of overnight travel. When I venture out to see a race at a track I’ve never seen before I do not want my trip limited to racing only. The very last thing I want when I’m done trackchasing is to have memories of only racing. I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Those visits in many cases will provide more long-lasting memories than whatever I saw on the track. Finally, I want to create a logistical plan that allows me to accomplish the two points mentioned above without depleting my retirement account. That’s trackchasing for me. I’ve been able to see the world doing this. If you’re interested in exactly what I’ve been able to experience all around the U.S. and the world I recommend you click on this link. Trackchasing Tourist Attractions After each and every event that I attend I post a YouTube video, a SmugMug photo album and a very detailed Trackchaser Report about the experience on my website at www.randylewis.org. My trackchasing contributions generate a good deal of interest in what I am doing. My YouTube channel (ranlay) has more than 1.3 million views. My website gets more than 20,000 views every month. Because I have seen racing in 85 countries at this point I am considered the World’s #1 Trackchaser. That’s good enough for me. Now I encourage you to drop down a few spaces and read about today’s trackchasing adventure. As you discover what went on at this track just think about the idea that I’ve done this more than 2,700 times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. It’s just fun! If you’re interested in looking back and seeing where I’ve been the following link is for you. If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Friday/Tuesday, June 18-22, 2021. I thought I would take a moment today to give you some background on how I plan my trips. For those of you who have been following my trackchasing hobby for a long time this might be a repeat. For others it could be new and hopefully educational and entertaining information. Let’s get started. A “normal” trackchasing trip for me includes seeing racing at a track I have never visited before on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I live in Southern California. How exactly do I decide where to go on one of these trips? As this is written I’ve seen racing at 2,709 tracks. Is that a lot or not too many? To try to put it into perspective I will tell you that my nearest trackchasing competitor in the worldwide trackchasing rankings has a trackchasing total somewhere in the “1800s”. There are about a dozen trackchasers who have seen racing at more than 1,000 tracks. There are literally hundreds of people who have seen racing at 100 tracks or more. Because I’ve already seen racing at most tracks in the U.S. I need to put 100% of my concentration and effort into finding tracks that I haven’t seen before. Luckily for me, I have the full resources of the Randy Lewis Racing research department. We have a staff of in-house people who are constantly scouring websites and Facebook pages and racing forums to identify tracks I’ve never been to. As important as the Randy Lewis Racing research department is and certainly more important, is a group of people stationed all over the world constantly giving me new track info from their local area. Local people know what’s happening in their area better than anyone else. If it wasn’t for these folks my track total up to now would be significantly less. I really appreciate the time that they take to tell me about new trackchasing opportunities. There is a trackchasing group out in Pennsylvania that creates what they call a “census”. Different members of this group share the status of tracks in the U.S. and Canada that will be racing in 2021. Over the years I have also used racing papers and the National Speedway Directory to identify new track opportunities. Unfortunately, many of these resources are not all that helpful at this stage in my trackchasing career. Why? The Internet has pretty much replaced racing papers and the National Speedway Directory. There are only one or two racing papers still in business. They don’t advertise the kinds of tracks that I need to see at this point. The National Speedway Directory focuses on permanent oval, road course and drag racing operations. You already know that trackchasers don’t count drag racing. Of all of the permanent oval and road course tracks that are listed in the NSD I’ve seen all but about 20 of them in the United States. I subscribe to a racing magazine called the National Speed Sport News. They publish monthly. In each edition of their magazine, they have a double-page spread, done in very small print, listing all the racing dates from major organizations over the next couple of months. It’s common for 300-400 race dates to be listed here. It is also common that I have seen virtually every track on their lists sometime in the past. I get an update on the trackchasing census on a daily basis. The astute observer might say, “I thought you were not a member of the Pennsylvania-based trackchaser group. I thought trackchasing commissioner Guy Smith removed you from his distribution list”. All of that is true. Nevertheless, I get the census daily. How? Not all questions can be answered in a public forum. Right now, the census had identified a bit more than 1,300 tracks that have raced in 2021. About once every two or three days I will see a new trackchasing opportunity identified by the census. That’s helpful to me. I appreciate my “sources” more than you can imagine. Oh, one more thing. I can identify IP addresses that visit my website. Over the years Guy Smith has been on my website more than most gleaning information. So far this year I have seen racing at 43 new tracks. Some 26 of those 43 have never been seen by anyone but me. Before I visit those tracks, they do not appear in the census. Then, somewhat “mysteriously” the next week those tracks, that only I have seen, appear in the census. Amazing huh!? However, more often than not, I see someone submitting information to the census that states that a track will be racing and I absolutely know that is not the case. I see more errors identifying tracks that really are not active than I do seeing tracks in the census that I haven’t been to yet. I don’t know what type of researcher would submit a track that just isn’t going to be racing or going to be countable in the trackchasing hobby. When people do that, to me, their credibility is significantly reduced. I told you I’ve seen racing at 2,709 tracks. I keep a database of tracks that have raced sometime in the past. Some of these tracks are scheduled to race in 2021 or they might race in 2021. This list totals about 300 in the U.S. and maybe a bit more than 100 in Canada and Mexico. I have been making an extra special effort to contact these potential tracks to confirm they are racing. I’m in the midst of that process. If I had to guess there are probably only 200 tracks plus or minus that will race in 2021 that I haven’t seen. That’s not very many considering I’ve averaged seeing racing at more than 100 tracks each and every year for the past 24 years! Nevertheless, I can only see what I can see right? Each time I see a track schedule for a track I haven’t been to I add those race dates into a huge Excel spreadsheet. Right now, that Excel spreadsheet shows nearly 1,000 race dates. It is this spreadsheet that I use to try to decide where I’m going to go on the next trip. There are several parameters that need to be considered when I am planning a trip. First, I have to have a race date. My spreadsheet tells me what my choices might be. Secondly, I need to make sure that I can get from Southern California to wherever the racing might take place. Probably 90% of all trackchasing opportunities for me are in the Midwest or the east. That means I’m going to have to fly a couple thousand miles or more from Los Angeles to begin the trip. I have some quality airline sponsorship which helps me out in this area. Thirdly, I’m going to need a decent weather forecast. If you’re a racing fan you already know that almost all racing takes place outdoors. For the most part, racing doesn’t take place in inclement weather. When I look at my database of tracks still to be seen I focus on those tracks racing on Friday and Sunday. I figure if I can find some quality racing or any racing for that matter on Friday and Sunday, I can probably fill up the weekend with a Saturday race day. Saturday is the most popular day for racing in the United States by far. This is where Google Maps comes in. I’ll plug in the locations of the races that I might be able to see. This weekend’s trip is seen above. Sometimes I will fly from the Friday race location to the Saturday location and then maybe fly again to wherever the Sunday event will be held. More often than not I will probably drive. If one track is 10 hours or less from the next track, I consider that doable. Because I’m flying into these race locations, I’m going to need a rental car. I very much enjoy rental cars compared to using my own car. In any given year I will drive 30-40,000 miles in 50-75 rental cars. I certainly wouldn’t want to wear out my own vehicle running up and down our nation’s highways in the pursuit of trackchasing. That could get really expensive. During a summer weekend, I might have six or seven Friday options and maybe four or five Sunday trackchasing options. At the same time, I might have 10-20 Saturday racing choices. It is from this relatively small group of racing locations that I must fashion a workable trackchasing adventure. With all of the above in mind, I came up with this plan. On Thursday I would fly from Los Angeles to Kansas City and drive to Columbia, Missouri. Then on Friday I would drive from Columbia, Missouri to a race in Sturgis, Kentucky and drive all night to the Saturday events. Saturday’s morning destination was Dresden, Ohio. At Dresden, I would get a same location trackchasing double. After Dresden, I planned to drive over to Peebles, Ohio for an evening event. Finally, I would drive overnight for a second consecutive night to see another same location trackchasing double in Northwest Iowa on Sunday. Are you tired yet? I don’t seem to get tired. Sunday night after the races I would drive to Des Moines, Iowa. Then on Monday morning, I would head over to Omaha, Nebraska to see a 1 p.m. college baseball World Series game at the TD Ameritrade Park. I had never been to this stadium but had seen a college World Series game back in 2004 at Rosenblatt Stadium. Following the afternoon game, I would drive down to Kansas City and catch a 10:30 p.m. flight back to Los Angeles. Early on Tuesday morning I would land at LAX at 12:30 a.m. and be back home at about 2:30 a.m. which would be 4:30 a.m. in the Central time zone where I had been for the past couple of days. I guess none of my trackchasing trips are exactly “normal”. This trip is sort of close to normal in my new world of having very few tracks left for me to see. The remaining tracks left for me to see seem to be pretty far from each other! I will drive my rental car more than 2,000 miles in four days. Because of the track locations and starting times I would do something that I rarely do and that’s go without a hotel for two consecutive nights. I would be driving overnight for those two nights which also is another thing that I very rarely do. During these trips I will dictate a diary of sorts. These I don’t contribute to the trackchasing census. I am not a member of the Pennsylvania-based trackchasing group. Nevertheless, it never ceases to amaze me that after I discover a track that no one else knows about it and then I post something about that experience on Facebook or on my website that track appears somewhat magically in the census in the next week or two. It’s freaking amazing. Does the poster give any kind of credit or acknowledgment? Nope! That’s one of the reasons I have no interest in being part of this group. I will also take the time to post a YouTube video and a photo album that includes on average 100 photos or more of each of these adventures. The college baseball World Series game on this trip is an example of what I call a “Trackchasing Tourist Attraction”. I get a lot of questions as I travel about with my trackchasing. The most common questions might be what is your favorite track, have you ever raced, how do you pay for it all, etc. There is one question that sort of surprises me that I almost never ever get. That question is, “Are there other people who trackchase”? Of course, the answer to that question is a resounding “yes”! However, there have never ever been any other trackchasers who trackchase the way I do. They don’t have to. Most Trackchasers live in the east or the Midwest. They are right in the heart of trackchasing country. They could simply use their own cars to drive to the race tracks. There has never (ever!) been a trackchaser who has flown to the vast majority of their tracks. In 2005 I saw racing at 182 different race tracks. That was my personal best. In 2005 I didn’t have any airline sponsorships. In my very best year of trackchasing I did all the flying on my own dime. Since then, my airline trackchasing sponsorships have made things much easier to see the remaining tracks left for me to see. Nevertheless, from this weekend’s itinerary, you can observe that much of the trip centers around driving. There are only a couple of trackchasers who take the time to provide a summary of their trackchasing experience. Most trackchasers go see the track and don’t share any kind of information with any of their fellow competitors. Do any other trackchasers provide YouTube videos and photo albums from their trackchasing? No, they do not. So, that’s a little bit of background on how one of these trips is formulated. This has been an outstanding hobby for me. Trackchasing has certainly kept me busy as I approach my 20th year of retirement. It’s a definite challenge to manage the hobby, keep up with my other hobbies and be fully involved with life back at home. It’s a challenge I very much enjoy doing it all. THURSDAY Carol and I began the day with a birthday breakfast for our twin grandchildren, Astrid and Mitch. They just turned 13 years of age. We dined at Rose’s Sugar Shack in San Clemente. We even got to meet up with Rose the restaurant’s originator. It’s a good place to eat but they’re only open until 2 p.m. Don’t pass up the cinnamon roll. From there I was off to the airport. I was standing by for a flight that had 17 open seats and only one standby passenger, me. I would make that flight easily. However, by the time I checked in there were only two open seats and four standbys. That meant the immediate future of my trip was touch and go. Nevertheless, I’m happy to report that I made the flight. While I was walking down the jetway I used my iPhone to make a last-minute hotel reservation using Priceline. I snagged the Fairfield Inn and Suites for a most reasonable rate in Columbia, Missouri. I was lucky to get a comfortable seat on the plane. I spent most of the time listening to an iTunes movie that I had downloaded on my iPad. I use my wireless Bose headset in situations like this. Bose is a fantastic product. Then I spent just a little bit of time looking at my future trackchasing schedule. I’m always doing that. When I landed in Kansas City, I had a very important step in the overall success of my trip to accomplish. The Kansas City location at National Car Rental isn’t their best. It’s not as bad as Salt Lake but it’s not that great. I was going to be driving more than 2,000 miles on this trip. I really needed to get the right rental car. I had my heart set on a Toyota Camry. Unfortunately, there were none to be had. I did ask for a special request but they couldn’t accommodate me. I ended up with a Nissan Maxima. That’s a sporty little four-door sedan but it’s a little tight on the interior. It doesn’t get the gas mileage of a Camry either. At least the Maxima should be better than the Nissan Ultima which was also available. They had a couple of other off-brand cars but since I couldn’t get a Camry the Nissan seemed like the second best choice. From Kansas City I needed to drive about 6 1/2 hours over to Sturgis, Kentucky site of tomorrow’s autocross racing at the Union County Fairgrounds. No other trackchasers had ever trackchased at this location in Sturgis, Kentucky. If I can pull out this off it will be the 22nd new track that I’ve seen out of 39 this year in total where I was the first trackchaser to go there ever during the 2021 season. I’m pretty proud of that statement. If you were to look at all of the other trackchaser no one even comes close to that stat. By driving over to Columbia, Missouri tonight and arriving at 10:30 p.m. I could knock off more than two hours of tomorrow’s 6 1/2 hour drive. That meant I could sleep in for just a little bit and only have 4 1/2 hours to cover tomorrow. Sleeping in on Friday morning was important. I plan to be driving overnight for each of the next two nights so I’ve got to pace myself. FRIDAY I woke up in Columbia, Missouri this morning. Today was going to be a hot one. During my drive over to Sturgis, Kentucky I noticed the highest temperature on the car’s thermometer was 102°. That’s toasty and the day came with its share of humidity as well. I’m in the midst of trying to refinance my home mortgage. I know what you might be saying. “Didn’t you do that just about a year ago”? Yes, I did. Each time I refinance I think I’m getting the hottest mortgage deal ever proposed and the lowest interest-rate. That’s until I refinance again! I’m working on a 2.25% ten-year interest-only super jumbo loan. Our son J.J. got me enthused about doing this after he did the same thing. Nothing is ever final in the mortgage business until it’s final. I’ll keep you posted. I’m dealing with one lender on this at this stage. We are in the final stages of the deal. However, I have left messages for other mortgage people just to see if I can get a better deal. Today I probably fielded more than a dozen calls. Nobody could beat or even meet the rate I’m working on. My strategy is to keep pushing for the very best deal until the deal I am working on is closed. Most of the day was spent driving the 287 miles from Columbia, Missouri to Sturgis, Kentucky. It’s good that I enjoy driving. I listened to podcasts all the way. Each time I stopped to pee or get a refreshment I walked 10 minutes. By the time I reached the Union County Fairgrounds tonight I already had three miles in the walking bank. Tonight’s racing at the Union County Fairgrounds in Sturgis, Kentucky was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. The fair website told me that. The race promoter’s website told me that as well. Somewhere along the line I was thinking I would lose an hour to time zone changes (central to east). With that being the case, I would arrive at 6:15 p.m. with plenty of time to explore the fair and then see the race at seven. That didn’t exactly work out. It turns out there was NO time change. Sturgis, Kentucky is in the central time zone which is the time zone I had been driving in all day. That meant I pulled into the fair at 5:15 p.m. nearly 2 hours before the race was to begin. I sat in my car with temperatures in the mid 90s with the engine idling while I assessed my options. There wasn’t a piece of shade within sight. The fair was small. There was no way I needed to be nearly two hours early for this event. I couldn’t let the engine idle too long. The low fuel light was on. I could almost see my gasoline dwindling. I had no choice. I needed to go in and check out the fair. Tonight’s admission to the fair, which included the racing, was 12 bucks. I asked if they had any senior discounts because I always ask. The ticket seller said, “Yes, it’s 12 bucks”. I thanked her for noticing! This was not my first visit to the Union County Fairgrounds in Sturgis. I came here in January 2020 to see some indoor racing inside the Dr. John A. Arnold Arena at the Union County Fair and Exposition Center. At the time that was lifetime track #2,603. That visit was during the winter. It was 35° when I came here in the winter. Today it was 95 degrees! This fair was small. Their FFA exhibit consisted of a display of various varieties of corn. That was pretty much it. I didn’t see any livestock exhibit. I did have a number of food options. One of the more creatively named food choices was the “beef sundae”. I could only imagine. I had to ask. No, this sundae did not involve ice cream. It was beef over mashed potatoes. Who knew? I also noticed that tonight inside the arena where I had seen the stock car racing last winter, they were holding a calf-roping competition. I walked into the building to check things out and immediately noticed the robust air conditioning. I would have to check that out later. With nothing else to do and already having my four miles of walking completed I went over to the grandstand. I grabbed a seat at just past 6 p.m. in the top row. They did have a roof for a shade over the grandstand. That was good. There was also a strong breeze blowing very hot air. I hung out in the grandstand for nearly an hour simply checking my phone. I can play with my phone for hours if not days uninterrupted. Then at about 6:55 p.m. I got the news. The announcer told the crowd that the show was starting promptly at 7:30 p.m. That wasn’t particularly good news especially since both the promoter and the fair’s website said they would begin at 7 p.m. It was what it was. I wasn’t going to get up and walk out because of this delay. Tonight’s event was being promoted by TNT Demolition Derby. There are three major groups for demolition derby headquartered in Michigan. That seems like a lot of demo derby activity for one state. Michigan has more fairgrounds that host racing of one sort or another than any other state by far. Whenever a promotional group schedules races quite a bit away from their headquarters they don’t seem to do too well. Tonight, the program was featuring a junk car autocross race. How many cars showed up? Only seven! Two of those seven pulled in at about 7:20 p.m. There certainly are some pluses and minuses to a seven car total field. Here’s a plus. I wouldn’t have to sit through boring time trails watching 50 cars to see who could drive fast enough to start every race on the front row. Tonight’s track was a small dirt oval. They had a couple of dirt mounds to be used as track markers. The cars would race around these two mounds in the shape of an oval. They did start “on time” at 7:30 p.m. The announcer told us the first event would be a power wheels competition amongst kids driving their electric plastic vehicles. Luckily for me, I am not a fan of power wheels in the least, there was only one entry. The announcer told us that that one entry would get his trophy and move on down the road. Tonight, there would be two heat races starting four cars and then three cars. They followed this with a “B” main event. The B main had a full field of just two! Finally, the seven car feature took to the track. This was a halfway entertaining race considering they were only seven cars and the track might have been a 10th of a mile or so long. The track was a little rough. That caused all but two of the cars to blow their right front tires. I hope that you take a look at the YouTube video I produced from the experience. Between tonight’s two feature events I walked over to the John A. Arnold Arena building to take a look at the calf-roping. A few people inside the arena were enjoying the Arctic type air conditioning on a 90° evening. I watched five or six entries rope their calves. It seemed as if everyone got a penalty of some sort for leaving the gate early or, however they get penalties for with calf-roping. With the myriad of food choices, I chose the eight-dollar “brisket”. In point of fact this was a brisket sandwich and just about as dry as the Sahara Desert. Poor choice. I slapped myself for making the poor choice. Next up for me was going to be the overnight drive from Sturgis, Kentucky to Dresden, Ohio. That’s a driving distance of 431 miles. I would have about four hours to sleep in a highway rest area. Whenever I don’t have at least seven or eight sleeping hours available I forgo a hotel and sleep in my car. Don’t worry for me. I’ve done it before. It just turned out that a major rain storm was passing through the area at about midnight. I spent a good deal of time in some very heavy rain trying to keep it between the white lines. I even had to use my emergency flashers from time to time to make sure nobody ran over me. Add a little past 3 p.m. I pulled into the Jeffersonville, Ohio rest area along interstate 75. There I leaned back my driver seat and set my iPhone timer for four hours. I was reasonably comfortable given the circumstances. A little bit before my timer expired, I got up to pee and was soon headed on down the road toward Dresden, Ohio. SATURDAY This morning I woke up in an Interstate 75 highway rest area. I pulled in last night at about 4 a.m. I set my alarm for four hours of sleep but woke up a little bit earlier than that. I was just an hour and a half from the Muskingum County Speedway in Dresden, Ohio. I’d like to make a couple of points of clarification. First, I do not sleep in my car overnight in a highway rest area or any place else to save money. I do it because there isn’t time to get a hotel. I’m not gonna check into a Marriott hotel and stay for two hours. There’s no doubt about it though. I secondary outcome of sleeping overnight in a highway rest area is saving money on hotels. You probably know that I went to the Muskegon County Speedway back in July 2009. At the time their high-speed oval track was my 1,461st lifetime track where I had seen racing. A few days ago, I talked to Tristan Moran who promotes the off-road racing in Dresden. Tristan is the son of Donny Moran. You may recognize Donny Moran as being a very accomplished dirt late-model racer. How accomplished? He won the “Eldora Million”. Yes! That was one million dollars to the winner of the dirt late-model race in Roseburg, Ohio about ten years ago or so. Tristan confirmed with me there would be racing on two different tracks today at the Muskingum County Speedway. Of course, the main track Muskingum County track is a 3/8 mile banked dirt oval. However, today they will be racing on two different off-road courses. The racing on the “large” off road course would go off at 11 a.m. This was a track configuration that utilized the woods. Much of the racing would be in the woods and therefore out of sight of spectators. Then the Muskingum County Speedway off-road “short course” would take to the track starting at about 2 p.m. I pulled into the track’s parking lot at 9:30 a.m. I had a couple of admission choices. I could pay $20 and walk into the pit area. Then I could watch the races from either the pit grandstand or the traditional spectator grandstand. Alternatively, I could pay nothing and watch all of the races from the spectator grandstand which is what I chose to do. Since I was an hour and a half early for the race on the longer course, I took the opportunity to sleep in my car for about an hour. It always takes me a day or two to catch up on my sleep following an overnight highway rest area slumber adventure. While I was sleeping the kid’s class of UTV racers were competing on the woods course. At 11:15 a few minutes behind schedule four rows of UTV racers lined up at the starting line of the oval track. They were facing in the clockwise direction on the front stretch. Tristan had told me that all competitors in each class start the race at one time. What did that mean? For me that meant this would be a countable trackchasing configuration and race. He told me that even if they had 20 or 30 competitors in a single class, they would all go off at once. There were at least three classes of UTVs racing on the woods course and maybe four. The competitors lined up in four rows. Each row took off on its own and the next row waited about a minute to begin their race. I really wasn’t certain if rows one and two were one class or two. They did takeoff separately. That didn’t really matter. Row three (two racers) and row four (5 racers) were their own individual classes and would make the track countable even if rows one and two did not. I’m going to guess that about 80-90% of the time today on the larger course the cars were in the woods and out of sight. I could hear them and I knew generally where they were but I just couldn’t see them. This was to be expected with the woods course which is definitely not a spectator friendly situation. It’s got to be fun for the drivers. When they returned to the starting line which is where each lap was counted, they all looked the same… muddy. Between racing on the Woods course and the racing that was upcoming on the smaller short course I visited the Grab a Bite concession trailer. There I met a nice fellow and for five bucks I ordered the shredded chicken cheesy jalapeño pepper nachos. The man asked me about my BC Lions (Canada) t-shirt. That got us into a friendly conversation and soon I was telling him about my trackchasing. All he could say was “2,700”! He was an admiring disciple. For the morning race the temperature was in the high 60s with about a 10-mile an hour wind and intermittent light rain. My t-shirt and shorts made me cold. I checked for my rain poncho. I was certain I put it in my luggage but couldn’t find it. I’m glad it didn’t rain any harder. During the “intermission” break they took their time. They watered the track a little bit. I found that somewhat amusing since it had rained most of the morning. Tonight’s racing in Peoples, Ohio, 150 miles away, had been canceled by rain. Here in Dresden, they were watering the track. With the short course racing they were going to have several different classes. They had an interesting and powerful pick up class. They also had what looked like some four-wheel-drive Chevy Blazer type vehicles and a good looking dune buggy class. Additionally, they had adult UTVs and a kid’s UTV class. Each one of these classes of racers would race their own race. The racing on the short course was entertaining. Probably the best thing about it was that I could see the competitors as they raced around the entire course. I got some really good video of the action. I don’t think you’re gonna want to miss that. I had arrived at the Muskingum County Speedway at 9:30 a.m. I was now leaving at 4:15 p.m. I had spent nearly seven hours at the track. It is rare that I need to spend seven hours at any track but the payoff was getting to add two different trackchasing configurations to my trackchasing lifetime totals. I’ve now seen racing at 2,712 tracks. My nearest fellow competitor sits with a total somewhere in the 1,800s. With my planned track visit to Peebles, Ohio canceled because of weather I now had a long drive ahead of me. I’m hoping to see some racing up in Northwood, Iowa tomorrow evening. Northwood is an eleven-hour drive from Dresden, Ohio. The weather forecast in Northwest Iowa is not very good for tomorrow. If I had to guess that show will be canceled because of rain. I don’t know that for sure which is why I need to make a very long drive to get up there. If they are going to cancel it would be nice if they cancel earlier in the afternoon saving me hundreds of miles of driving time. Since I had a little extra time I drove over to nearby Newark, Ohio. Newark used to be the corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company. The corporate headquarters building is just about the most unusual building I’ve ever seen. As you might expect, or maybe not, it was built to look like a huge Longaberger basket! Impressive. Unfortunately, Longaberger did what most companies are basically designed to do. They went out of business. I think it was the financial crisis back in 2008 that took them down. You probably know that the business cycle of any enterprise is basically to be a start-up, experience significant growth and then plateau, then experience progressive declines until they go out of business. Virtually every firm falls to the cycle. There are very very few businesses that have been operating for more than 100 years. I’m happy to tell you that the company I retired from Procter & Gamble is one of those successful companies ever. They started all the way back in 1837 as a candle company. From there I grabbed a KFC chicken sandwich and headed west. Regardless of whether I see a race in Northwood, Iowa tomorrow or not my plan is to go over to Omaha, Nebraska to watch a college World Series baseball game on Monday. I’ll tell you more about that as we get a little closer. SUNDAY Today was gonna be a very interesting day. It was fraught with uncertainty. The best I could do was to get going and see what I was going to be able to see. It’s somewhat difficult to keep up my exercise schedule while I’m traveling. It’s common for me to be on airplanes a few hours every other day or so. It’s also becoming more and more common, that I will be driving a rental car 400-500 miles or more each day of the trip. When you consider that taking time out to exercise is challenging. I got up a half hour early this morning so that I could knock out at least two miles of the four miles I like to walk every day. While I was doing that, I happened to pass by a Blain’s Farm and Fleet store. I love those stores. They have all kinds of items that I don’t see in other stores and that I don’t personally use with my normal lifestyle. That makes those items exciting to me. I didn’t have any money or credit cards with me so I figured that I would just be a “window shopper”. Have you ever gone window shopping? That’s what we called it when I was a kid. We didn’t have much money so just looking through the window was about the best we could do. This morning when I walked into the farm and fleet store, I literally did not have any cash or any credit cards. I figured it was very unlikely that I could buy anything. Nevertheless, I did. I bought a Dickies brown t-shirt and a pair of size 14 extra-wide Sketcher walking shoes. Even though I didn’t have any money I’m not going to tell you that I shoplifted them. How does one shoplift size 14 extra wide walking/running shoes? I did have my cell phone and my Apple Watch with me. They were both recording the distance that I walked this morning. Those two devices are also connected to my credit card. I could use my watch to pay for the goods that I wanted to get this morning. I love technology and I love America. When I was out on my morning walk, I passed through a Chrysler new car dealership that also had a large representation of used cars. Something dawned on me. As I passed through the cars, I marveled over the idea that I’ve never seen a Tesla offered on a used car lot. That’s something isn’t it? I woke up this morning in Morton, Illinois. Morton borders my boyhood hometown of East Peoria, Illinois. East Peoria is home to my favorite pizza place in the world Davis Brothers Pizza. I thought I might try to catch one of their pizzas on the way out of town. Nope. I was leaving at 11 a.m. and they don’t open until 12 noon on Sundays. Today’s logistical plan was to drive from Morton, Illinois up to Northwood, Iowa and then drive back to Des Moines, Iowa. That’s a distance of 487 miles. The weather for the races in Northwood was not good. There was a 90% chance of rain and the rain was going to be heavy. If I simply drove from Morton over to Des Moines it was only going to be a driving distance of 285 miles. That meant I was driving 200 miles out of the way to go up to Northern Iowa to see some figure 8 and oval track racing this evening. I certainly didn’t want to get all the way up there and then get rained out before I saw any racing. Since I was shut out on my hometown pizza my next eating option was going to be at Rudy’s Tacos. They have locations all over the Quad cities in Illinois/Iowa. I remember going to Rudy’s when I was working in Iowa back in the early 70s. However, after seeing Yelp star ratings of one and two I decided to bypass Rudy’s. Even though they were boyhood favorite with Yelp scores like that I couldn’t risk it. That being the case I texted my good buddy Pryce Boeye. Pryce is the owner of the Hungry Hobo sandwich store chain also located in the Quad cities. I asked him what my best location option might be to pick up a Hungry Hobo meal on the way to tonight’s races. He texted back immediately about one of his locations in LeClair, Iowa. It was only 15 minutes up the road and that’s where I would have lunch. I have been to that Hungry Hobo many times. Often, I’ve been able to share a meal with Pryce at his restaurant chain during these visits. I would consider Hungry Hobo an upscale sandwich chain. They have about a dozen sandwiches and they’re all numbered 1 through 12. However, sandwich number four was eliminated some years ago and now the menu reads 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 etc. I always like to go in and ask the server, “What happened to the #4 sandwich”. Many people working in the restaurant weren’t around when sandwich #4 was on the menu. Normally I get a quizzical look and not much of an answer. Today server was a friendly young woman named Ava. I asked her about sandwich #4. Initially her answer was simply, “I don’t know”. Fair enough. Better to say you don’t know than to give a bogus answer. After she gave it a little thought, she told me that once in a while they take a sandwich off the menu and that creates the numerical void”. That was a good answer. I went with the #6 sandwich. That’s the pepperoni/provolone cheese sandwich. I added a piece of chocolate cake and one of their steroid-sized chocolate chip cookies and a large drink. What I didn’t eat now I could take with me. Then I went over to the serve yourself drink dispenser. I had a large plastic cup and I filled it with Diet Mountain Dew. I love Diet Mountain Dew at the Hungry Hobo. I can easily drink a gallon of it. However today the Mountain Dew didn’t taste right. I brought that to the attention of the staff. A woman dressed in an all-black outfit came by to check things out. I thought she might be the manager. I told her the problem with the Mountain Dew. She said that she just replaced the CO2 cartridge. Then she pressed the button and watched the soda flow out of the machine. Without tasting the soda, she told me it was good. Folks, I am a connoisseur of soda. I can tell you if a brand has come from a can, a bottle or is a fountain drink. I can tell you the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero and Coke and Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. Get the point? I could tell by the color. The Diet Mountain Dew wasn’t really right today. Nevertheless, I simply switched over to Diet Pepsi. My meal was excellent. This location had really fit the bill considering where I was driving to and from today. It also fit the bill on something else I wanted to do in LeClair, Iowa. I am a huge fan of the TV show American Pickers. I am pretty sure I have watched every episode three or four times. The guys from American Pickers are from Iowa. They’ve had their store in LeClair for a long time. I always see the exterior of their store at the beginning of their TV shows and today I got to experience it. The store is named Archaeological Archives it’s just about a mile down the road from Hungry Hobo. Mike Wolf and his sidekick Frank Fritz must not have naming rights to “American Pickers”. They didn’t sell any t-shirts with the American Pickers brand-name. Frankly their store doesn’t really have anything in the way of antiques for sale. It’s pretty much just a huge gift shop. Nevertheless, I was happy to do the visit today. It was now time to drive up to Northwood, Iowa. Northwood is a small town. Their population is just 1,989. The city has a land area of 3.76 square miles. All land. No ocean views. Northwood, Iowa is home to the Worth County Fairgrounds. Today was the last day of their fair. The headliner event for the grandstand this evening was going to be the Gunderson Racing figure 8 and oval racing program. I was very much looking forward to that. Whenever I can go to one location and be able to count two tracks that’s a good thing. There was just one big problem. For the past week or more my Weather Underground weather app had been telling me that heavy rain was forecast for Northwood on this day, Sunday. I am absolutely blown away at how accurate my Weather Underground app is. It might tell me that there’s going to be bad weather in five or six days and then there almost always is. I looked at the radar and could see some major thunderstorms heading right towards Northwood. As a point of fact, they got 1.1 inches in 20 inches just an hour before the 6 p.m. scheduled race time. Just about anybody else would’ve canceled the show. Not these folks. Just as soon as the 20 minutes of hurricane like rains passed the sun came out. The sun didn’t help as much as all of the Iowa John Deere farm equipment did to get the track back in racing shape. North County Fairgrounds has an old covered county fair grandstand. I love those. They have a sign on the grandstand that says the grandstand was built in 1930. I looked at all of the other buildings on the fairgrounds and they had similar but much more recent origination dates for those buildings. That was cool. I’ve never seen that before. I pulled into the pit area and paid the $10 general admission fee. This would give me access to both the pit area and the rest of the fair and the main grandstand. The woman selling me my ticket was nice. She informed me that because this was the last day of the fair tickets were half price. I loved it. I had lucked out with the weather and now I was getting a half-price ticket. What a Father’s Day present. The Gunderson Racing people do a really good job with figure 8 racing. They also run a class of cruisers that compete on an oval configuration. This allows me to come and see racing at these Iowa county fair and add two tracks to my lifetime list with each visit. I think the bad weather forecast definitely cut down on the car count. I’ve seen Gunderson have racing with four or five divisions and have 20 cars in each class. Tonight, they had five divisions with only five or six cars in each class…a dramatic reduction. A nice crowd was on hand tonight. The announcer was good. He could be heard over a very strong PA system. They ran one race after another. I’m not sure if they had a single yellow flag for any kind of a crash. That makes a five-heat, five-feature program go pretty quickly. As a matter fact the entire program was finished by about 7:40 p.m. When the crowd filed out of the grandstands, I took a walk through the pit area. Most of the cars were already loaded on their open trailers. As always, I’d recommend you take a close look at my video and photo album to get a real pictorial sense of what tonight’s racing action was like. After the races I needed to drive down to Des Moines where I had reserved a Town Place Suites by Marriott hotel using Priceline. I got an unbelievably low price of $55 for my room in a very modern Marriott suite hotel. The price of a Motel 6 on the open market in Des Moines was higher than my Marriott room! This had been a good Father’s Day weekend. When I get home, we will have some special belated Father’s Day celebrations with the kids. I’m very much looking forward to that. MONDAY I pride myself in trying to be as flexible as possible when I make these trips. I always have an original plan. However, as things unfold day by day and hour by hour sometimes a better idea comes about. That was the case today. The main advance plan for today was to see a college baseball World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. The World Series in Omaha used to be played at Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium (Rosenblatt Stadium). Back in 2004 I saw Georgia play Texas at the CWS. When Rosenblatt Stadium closed down and the TD Ameritrade Park opened up, I knew I would have to return to the college baseball World Series. Today was that day. I was going to see a game that would begin at 1 p.m. Then I would hop in the National Car Rental Racing Nissan Maxima and drive to Kansas City and catch an 11 p.m. flight back to Los Angeles. By the time I pulled into the driveway of our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente it would be nearly 5 a.m. on Tuesday morning central time. Does that plan seem extreme? I am the father of extreme plans. When the World Series baseball tournament gets to Omaha there are only eight teams remaining. From there it’s a double elimination tournament. The game I was expecting to see this afternoon would feature Stanford against Arizona. This was a terrible combination for me. I would have no interest whatsoever in traveling all the way to Omaha, Nebraska to see Stanford play Arizona. I’m a big UCLA fan. UCLA, Arizona and Stanford all in the PAC 12 conference. I’ve seen Stanford and Arizona teams play 1 million times. No thanks. That game would be no good for me. I had a fallback position. This evening at 7 p.m. North Carolina State was playing Vanderbilt. Now that’s a matchup that I would like to see. If I stayed for that game, I couldn’t fly home tonight. What should I do? I made the executive decision to go to the late game with the Commodores of Vanderbilt and the Wolfpack of North Carolina State. Then I would grab a hotel in Kansas City tonight and fly home tomorrow. Yes, I would incur an extra day’s rental car expense and an extra night of hotel expense. But I would get to see the game that I wanted to say and I wouldn’t arrive home in the middle of the night startling Carol. It worked for me. I also had a meeting scheduled today with a fellow by the name of Tom McLaughlin. Tom lives in Omaha and has been following my trackchasing exploits for a good long time. He and I had agreed to meet at Don and Millies, a Nebraska institution, at 4:30 p.m. today. Originally our meeting was going to take place after the game I saw at TD Ameritrade Park. Now our meeting would take place before the game I expected to see here in Omaha. I love it when a plan comes together! I woke up this morning in Des Moines, Iowa. The drive over to Omaha for this afternoon and evening’s activity was only going to take a bit more than two hours. I had some time to explore Des Moines. I’ve spent time here in the past and seen some of their best attractions like Principal Park (Iowa Cubs), the Iowa Hall of Pride Museum and the state capital. I recommend them all. Today I checked out some things to do in Des Moines as recommended by travel websites. First, I selected an area in downtown Des Moines called “East Village”. I also planned to see the Papajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines. I guess the East Village section of Des Moines is supposed to have some similarities to Greenwich Village maybe in New York City. Sorry, I didn’t see any similarity whatsoever. Nevertheless, I did make a luncheon reservation at Zombies burgers and drink place in the East Village. I had checked Yelp for luncheon recommendations. When I picked Zombies Burgers, I was directed to add myself to an existing waiting list on line. I have never done that before. When I showed up, I still had to wait about 10 minutes! I ordered the poutine and coney chili. This was not poutine from Canada. It was poutine from Iowa. When I added the coney chili to the fries I then had chili fries which is something you would likely find in Iowa. The sculpture park was just about a mile down Grand Avenue from Zombies. Today was a beautiful blue sky day with white puffy clouds. The temperature was 70° with fairly strong winds. I much prefer that to the 90° and 90% humidity with no wind days I have encountered recently. The sculpture park was outstanding. You won’t want to miss the photos on this one. I ran into a woman who was with her young granddaughter touring the park. Soon she was telling me all about the highlights of Des Moines. I was pretty well surprised when she mentioned the Knoxville Raceway as being a local highlight. You just never know, right? Next up was Omaha, Nebraska. I was really looking forward to the next couple of hours. My visit was going to be special. Over the years, because of my trackchasing hobby, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people. I’m talking about track announcers, track promoters and fans that I met at the track. I’ve met a lot of newspaper people. I’ve met a lot of people who have read the stories that have been written about me. Now that I write my Trackchasing and Travel newsletter I get a lot of very good feedback from the people who read that as well. One of those folks, Tom McLaughlin, has been reading my Trackchaser Reports for years. Once in a while he’ll send along a message telling me that he enjoyed this or that or the next thing. I knew based upon his previous correspondence that he lived in Omaha. Since I knew I would be in Omaha tonight for the College World Series baseball game I thought I would extend an invitation a time for Tom and me to meet up at a place that we both like in Omaha, Don and Millies. This is a hamburger fast food joint that serves $.99 margaritas. Who wouldn’t like that? Tom and I planned to meet a couple of hours before tonight’s baseball game. We both arrived early and easily recognized each other. For the next hour and a half or so we spent time getting to know each other. I think Tom “gets” what I do is just about as well as anybody I’ve ever met. I always appreciate that. I got the chance to hear Tom’s story as well. Although a Midwesterner he actually got the opportunity to live in Southern California for three months very early in his business career. The bottom line is we had a fun time meeting each other. Everyone lives in such a digital world nowadays that it’s easy to have “internet friends” that you never actually get a chance to meet. Tom and I both went just a little bit out of our way to correct that potential problem. We had fun and Tom even ended up buying my double cheeseburger and fries because of according to him, “All of the fun, free entertainment I’ve given him over the years”. We left with a handshake and a promise that we might be able to see each other again at one of the local racetracks in the area. Maybe we will. I hope so. The Don and Millies restaurant where Tom and I met was only three miles from the TD Ameritrade baseball park which is home to the college baseball World Series. The stadium is located in downtown Omaha. Game time was scheduled to be at 7 p.m. I parked my car at about 6:10 p.m. maybe three or four blocks from the stadium. This was street parking so there wasn’t any charge. I hadn’t been out of my car for five seconds when I heard a large crash. I looked up to find one of those large steel street light poles falling to the ground. It just missed a large building and landed into a huge tree. I would find the police presence tonight at the stadium and around the stadium to be much more than just noticeable. When the guy hit the light pole and took it to the ground a police officer in a black and white car was only 25 yards from the incident. He immediately sounded his siren and flashers and soon the offender was apprehended. I don’t know what caused this accident. But it probably wasn’t a very good idea for the guy to have done it within arm’s reach of a policeman. My plan was simple. I had my “need one” sign with me. I never leave home without it when I need a ticket to a sporting event of any kind including something as big as the college baseball World Series. The TD Ameritrade Park opened in 2011. The park’s seating capacity is 24,000 with the capability to expand to 35,000. TD Ameritrade Park cost $128 million to build. They made a profit in their first year of $5.6 million easily being able to pay their bondholders. The park is the home field of the Creighton University Blue Jays baseball team and the CWS. The college World Series first came to Omaha in 1950 and will be there at least through 2035. The weather was comfortable with temperatures in the 70s and no rain in the forecast. This was such a welcome relief from the previous three or four days in Omaha when the high temperature topped out at 95°. I went about the “work” of simply holding up my “Need One” sign. That’s all I need to do. It is a rare day in sportsville when some civilian doesn’t come up and offer me their extra ticket within the first two or three minutes of my flashing my sign. Tonight, that didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, I walked around outside the stadium trying to dodge policeman and stadium employees who might object to my sign for 45 minutes. No one was offering me a ticket. I’ve never had that happen to me. It was super weird. Of course, the official “scalpers” were more than willing to try to sell me a ticket. This was a group of about a dozen black men. It is a common and factual statement to say that 98.7% of all ticket scalpers are black. Why would I say such a thing? Because it’s simply a true statement. I wasn’t expecting tonight’s stadium to be full like it was. The mistake I made in judging the crowd was that all eight teams were still in the tournament. Until today none had been eliminated. If I had come another day or two later this week when two or three or four teams had been eliminated their fans would have gone home. Getting a ticket then would’ve been much easier. Nevertheless, I felt a little deflated. I have bragged about my “Need One” sign for years. It has never ever let me down. What was wrong tonight? Why hadn’t a single fan come up to me from when I arrived at 6:15 for the next nearly full hour? I couldn’t explain it. I was getting a little nervous. Game time was 7 p.m. and it was now 10-15 minutes after that. I walked over to the box office. The least expensive ticket they had for sale was $80. I walked back and talked to the scalpers. They had sold all of their tickets and didn’t have a single one left. I had no choice. I had to buy a ticket for 80 bucks at the box office window. I didn’t like doing that. I was downright embarrassed. Then when I entered the stadium, I got a huge surprise. I would come to find out the starting time that I had read about was NOT 7 p.m. central but actually 7 p.m. EASTERN time. The game had not started at 7 o’clock in Omaha it started at 6 o’clock. Oh, my goodness. Major error. Error on Randy. It’s kind of hard to explain how a baseball game could start at 6 p.m. and I didn’t pull up to the stadium until 6:15 p.m. Then I spent the next hour walking around amongst a huge crowd of people trying to get them to sell me a ticket when all of the people who really wanted to go to the game tonight were already inside the stadium for the first pitch at 6 o’clock. No wonder my sign wasn’t working! All of the people who had an extra ticket or already inside the stadium. Sometimes I can be a real dumb ass. You might ask because Carol asked this question, “Didn’t you hear any cheers coming from inside the stadium”? No, I did not. Here’s the reason why. When I got into the stadium and glanced at the scoreboard, I saw the game was in the top of the fifth inning. There was no score in the game. Up to that point Vanderbilt had one hit and North Carolina State had none. I guess there wasn’t much to cheer about! The stadium was basically is divided into two levels, the first deck and the second deck. The first stack has the lower priced seats and the second deck features club seats and suites. At least the $80 that I spent got me a club seat in the top deck. On the first level of the TD Ameritrade Park the line to get refreshments everywhere was at least 75 people deep. Those folks would miss two or three innings of the game just trying to get a beer. I watched about an inning from the lower level seats near home plate. That’s when I saw one of the NC State players hit a giant home run out to right field. They gave the Wolfpack a 1-0 lead. I soon made my way up to the second deck where the club seats were located. The cool thing about being up there was there were absolutely no lines for refreshments. They had open bars and different food choices. I went with a Coors Lite and a bag of peanuts. Then I found my seat in section 219 row 3 seat 11. My “game” began in the fifth inning. Once that fella hit a home run there was no more scoring at all tonight. North Carolina State would beat Vanderbilt by a score of one to nothing. There were only six hits in the entire game from both teams. I am not a big fan of one to nothing baseball games. I would much rather see a 12-10 contest. Nevertheless, I had a good time. I had seen a very special game, a college baseball World Series game. Yes, I have done that back in 2004 but that was at the old Rosenblatt Stadium. I had figured now that the college World Series was being played in the new stadium that I had better knock that one off which I did tonight. When the final batter struck out on a called third strike, I simply sat in my seat for the next 15 minutes. I watched the crowd file out and the grounds keepers come on to the diamond and smooth the dirt. This was definitely a weird situation that I had created tonight and it was all my error. I was more than pleased to know that my sign had not really failed me. I had failed me. I think when you fail yourself it’s important to recognize that fact, make some corrections and move one. There were all kinds of souvenir sellers outside the stadium and inside the stadium. They had a nice selection of shirts and hats and that sort of thing as well. I picked up a souvenir T-shirt. I still exercise in my t-shirt that I got back in 2004. It’s red and mentions the Georgia Bulldogs. If I can be exercising 17 years from now in the shirt that I bought tonight I’ll consider that a grand success. When I left the stadium, I saw more examples of the strong police presence tonight. I would guess that nearly half of the police I saw were carrying semi-automatic rifles. When you think about it, I don’t blame them. Tonight, there were literally hundreds of people walking around outside the stadium. There were no security fences and the like whatsoever in these areas. You can imagine if a bad guy brought in one of those automatic machine guns with hundreds of rounds, he could do a lot of damage. I looked in all kinds of directions and saw all kinds of Omaha police. I can only imagine the number of people they had undercover as well. I talked to one fellow who told me that he had a friend with the Omaha Police Department. In a conversation with his policeman friend, he learned that it was expected that 1,500 sex workers would descend on Omaha to match up with the folks who might require their services. He also said that virtually every tall building in the city that overlooked the baseball park had a police sniper. I can only imagine the amount of security that was unknown to the civilian populace tonight. I hope they never have a problem. From there I had a 2 1/2 hour drive down to Kansas City. I’ll be staying there tonight and flying home to the Los Angeles International Airport. Right now, our son J.J. and I are both refinancing our home mortgages. We spent more than an hour on the phone as I drove down to Kansas City working out various details so that we both will have success in this arena. Nothing is ever over until it’s over in the mortgage refi business. If these deals come through, they will be some of the biggest if not the biggest wins we’ve ever had in managing finances by refinancing mortgages. TUESDAY I arrived home safely into the loving arms of “Trackchasing’s First Mother”, that would be wife Carol. We were glad to see each other. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,714 tracks. Kentucky The Bluegrass State This evening I saw racing at my 56th lifetime track in the Bluegrass, yes, the Bluegrass State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Kentucky. Kentucky ranks #15, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Kentucky state trackchasing list. I have made 36 separate trips to Kentucky seeing these tracks. Ohio The Buckeye State This morning and afternoon I saw racing at my 88th and 89th lifetime tracks in the Buckeye, yes, the Buckeye State. I hold the #6 trackchasing ranking in Ohio. Ohio ranks #9, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Ohio state trackchasing list. I have made 62 separate trips to Ohio seeing these tracks. Iowa The Hawkeye State This evening I saw racing at my 122nd and 123rd lifetime tracks in the Hawkeye, yes, the Hawkeye State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Iowa. Iowa ranks #4, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Iowa state trackchasing list. I have made 22 separate trips to Iowa seeing these tracks. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Kentucky sayings: Betty = Dessert. Ohio sayings: “Pop” is the dead giveaway of an Ohioan. Iowa is the hog capital of the world. Don’t believe me? Just take a whiff on a county pavement someday. It only makes sense we have Pork Queens. JUST THE FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 840 tracks of my lifetime total. That’s a fact, Jack. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. Racing at a small county fair in Kentucky PLUS calf-roping! Off-road racing not late models from the Muskingum County Speedway Real good figure 8 racing See it in pictures! Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. From California to Kentucky and beyond It was along drive to Ohio for the off road racing…but I made it My trip to Iowa had a little bit of everything including bad weather First, the Des Moines sculpture park and then a trip to Omaha for the college baseball World Series 
“Trackchaser Reports” are designed to inform and entertain those folks who like to follow my hobby. Some of those people are ardent racing fans, some are trackchasers and others just like a good old fashioned travel log. I hope that my past experiences might be helpful to those expecting to replicate certain elements of my trips.
Iowa sayings: PORK QUEEN
