Greetings from first Ona, West Virginia
And then Midlothian, Texas
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Ona Speedway Paved oval Lifetime track #2,757 TexPlex Dirt road course Lifetime track #2,758 THE EVENT Editor’s note: How far can a trackchaser travel in 48 hours? I was testing the limits with this trip…but I was pretty sure I could pull it off. 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 Bosnia’s #1 race car driver Boris Miljevic). 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/Sunday, Nov 5-7, 2021. 48 hours. I am retired. What could I do in 48 hours? How far could I travel in 48 hours? I was just about ready to test the limits as I tried to answer those questions. There’s a good chance this will be the last weekend that I will use an airplane to trackchase during my 2021 trackchasing season. It’s only mid-November. Am I quitting early? Not exactly. It is true that I have had 31 flying trackchasing trips this year. That’s low for me. I took six weeks off for Covid while I waited to get my vaccines. Another four weeks went toward UCLA football. I’m not apologizing for my lack of travel…just explaining. For the remaining six or seven weekends of the year I’ve got UCLA football scheduled two more times. I’ve got a big trip to Boston where I’ll be taking Carol to celebrate her birthday. We have lots of relatives visiting during the holidays. Add all of that to the fact that racing will pretty well shut down, but not completely, from this point through the end of the year. If I don’t fly any more this year for racing you can bet I’ll be out on an ice track somewhere in January braving the elements and having the time of my life. FRIDAY Following a Friday night dinner with Carol at one of our favorite little Mexican eateries in San Clemente I headed up to the Los Angeles International Airport. I had a wide-open 10 p.m. flight that would take me to Cincinnati, Ohio. You might remember that I am retired from the Procter & Gamble Distributing Company. P&G has their headquarters in Cincinnati. I’ve been back there many many times. If all went according to plan, I would be trackchasing on Saturday afternoon in West Virginia. Then on Sunday morning I would be down toward Dallas seeing some UTV racing at one of the better UTV race facilities in the country. Then if things continued to go exceedingly well, I would find myself back on an airplane Sunday afternoon landing in Los Angeles. Yep. The whole shebang would take only 48 hours. Let’s get started and see exactly how my plan worked out. SATURDAY I landed uneventfully, those are the best kinds of landings, in Cincinnati at a little bit before 5 a.m. That’s right. I was landing at a little bit before 2 a.m. in the time zone I just left, the Pacific time zone. It’s important to note that this weekend we change our clocks in the United States. We will turn the time “back” one hour. I am not a big fan of clock changing. I don’t like it getting dark so early in the winter. I’d rather have it dark in the morning and lighter at night. I heard some statistics say that only 25% of the population supports changing our clocks twice a year as we do. Some states don’t change their clocks ever. I had a plan for when I landed in Cincinnati at such an early hour. First, I needed to stand in line to check in for my flight leaving tomorrow morning from Cincinnati to Dallas. The airlines allow you to check in 24 hours before your departure. If I checked in now, I could get my boarding pass. This might save me an extra twenty minutes tomorrow morning of standing in line. I would take that 20-minute time savings and re-invest it in sleep on Sunday morning. There’s always a lot of strategy that goes on in trackchasing! I’m obviously in airports all the time. I find it interesting to see all of the vending machine offerings in airports. PPE items during the pandemic were everywhere in vending machines. The newest unique item I’ve seen is a temporary “office”. This thing looks like a phone booth. Heck, maybe these are re-purposed phone booths! You can rent them by the hour. Essentially this is a desk in a box! To date, I’ve never actually seen anyone using these. Next, I needed to pick-up my rental car. Getting a rental car at the Cincinnati airport has always been a little bit of a hassle. The National Car Rental location was located “off-airport”. That meant I needed to ride shuttle bus to get my car. That takes a lot of time. I consider riding a shuttle bus to pick up a rental car to be a pure waste of time. Luckily for me, just about three weeks ago they opened up a new rental car facility at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. This is a beautiful new rental car location. I could easily walk from the terminal to the rental car garage. There was no need to mess with those time consuming hassle providing rental car buses. I was very impressed with the rental car set up at CVG. I think you’re probably seeing that logistics are a key ingredient to successful trackchasing. Logistics, when managed properly, just make life a lot easier. The next step in the logistical process might have been the most important of the day. Whenever I fly overnight, I am almost guaranteed to land very early in the morning. When that happens, I will not have had much sleep. I have come up with a very special plan that addresses the sleep deprivation situation. Here’s how it works. I will try to get a hotel that I can check into as soon as I land. If I can get into my hotel by 8 a.m. or so I might be able to get three or four hours of sleep. Then in the afternoon I can head out to my race. That evening when the races are over, I can come back to the very same hotel and sleep overnight. This is sort of like getting two hotel sleeps for the price of one. Two for one is almost always a good idea…except when it comes to getting life sentences. I ran into something this morning that I had never come across when I am trying to get an early check in for my hotel. Some hotels didn’t have any availability based upon their being sold out the night before. No hard no foul there. Other hotels wanted an “early check-in fee” of $20 or $30. I had never heard of such a thing. If they had a room and it was clean but had not been occupied the night before why in the world would they care if I checked into the hotel at 3 o’clock in the afternoon or at 8 o’clock in the morning? That didn’t make much sense to me the consumer. To the hotel they were using their leverage to increase revenue. That’s their right. It was my right to refuse their price gouging! After about eight hotel phone calls I finally found the Econolodge hotel in Erlanger, Kentucky. They were just a couple of miles from the airport. The Econolodge had both a clean room and did not charge an early check-in fee. This wasn’t a Marriott but it was good enough under the circumstances. I would stay there. I made a quick stop at the Waffle House to redeem my free waffle coupon. Per advice from my southern friends, I used only butter and salt on my grits. I was back at the Econolodge in time to grab about four hours of sleep. That’s all I needed to get on down the road. Did you know that the Cincinnati, Ohio airport (CVG) is actually in Kentucky? Yep. I flew into CVG, completed my entire trip, and never spent a second in Ohio. Weird, huh? Today’s racing at the Ona Speedway in Ona, West Virginia was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. The track Facebook page was telling fans that with a sunset of 6:23 p.m. they could get more than three hours of racing in during the daylight when the temperatures would be a little bit warmer. I’m as gullible as the next guy, maybe more so. I believed them. I completed the three-hour drive over to the speedway arriving just a few minutes before 3 p.m. I thought it was golden. The weather was crisp with a high of 55°, clear skies and not much wind. During the daylight hours this type of weather would be just fine for watching auto racing on a paved half-mile oval. However, I am sad to report they did not start on time at 3 p.m. Why? I have no freaking idea. On a perfect weather day why couldn’t a track start their racing program at 3 o’clock in the afternoon like they said they would? If I went to a sports car race every aspect of the program would run like clockwork. With short track oval racing it doesn’t work that way. In so many places it never really has. Today the track was featuring seven different stock car classes. This would be a “features only” event. I like those. The main event of the day with the modifieds was going to be a $10,000 to win 100-lap feature. The modifieds would be feature race #4. I figured they should at least be able to get the first four feature races finished in the 3 1/2 hours of daylight that they had to work with. Of course, I was wrong about that. For reasons unknown to me they started an hour late. They wanted to qualify every class including the “crazy compacts”. Was that really necessary? If it was necessary then why didn’t they do it earlier in the day? I didn’t really know the answers to these questions. I was surprised to learn that the NASCAR Cup division raced here in 1963. The track was known as the West Virginia International Speedway back then. On that Sunday August 18, 1963 Elmhurst, Illinois native Fred Lorenzen (above) was the winner. Just twenty racers took the green flag but there were some heavy hitters in the field. These included Junior Johnson, Joe Weatherly, Ned Jarrett, Buck Baker, Richard Petty and Wendell Scott. Detractors of NASCAR racing are always saying the racing was so much better back in the day? Really? I don’t think so. On this day winner Lorenzen lapped the entire field. The sixth place finisher G.C. Spencer (above) finished NINE laps down! Just 16 cars finished. Several of those cars were 15-35 laps down at the finish. If a NASCAR race had those results today, they would be laughed off the stage. The Cup series raced at this track again in 1964 as well as 1970 and 1971. I always look at these races and think “if I was traveling then like I do now I could have seen a Cup race from way back in the day”. As it was Carol and I attended our very first NASCAR Cup race in 1971. We saw A.J. Foyt win the Atlanta 500. We got a pretty bad sunburn that day! Another interesting element of the Ona Speedway was its location. The track and the Ona Airpark are on the same property. Right behind the grandstand are a series of small plane hangers. Pilots were taxiing right behind the stands and taking off beyond the backstretch of the Ona Speedway. I haven’t seen actual planes this close to a racetrack anywhere in the past. Overall, I was generally impressed with the physical layout of the Ona Speedway. Everything was well-maintained. The grandstand wasn’t that that large. The crowd was small, maybe 300-400. I was a bit surprised by that. Today was such a perfect weather day especially for mid-November. Unfortunately, the PA system’s volume was low. It was difficult to hear and understand the track announcer. That’s never good. Today were a lot of caution flag generated racing accidents. I would consider the track very slow at cleaning up the wrecks especially when it was something a little bit more serious than a simple spin. To add misery to more misery a bumble bee stung the middle finger of my right hand. I do not do well with bee stings. I noticed something crawling on my finger. I tried to brush the bee away. I missed the first time. That’s when the bee stung me. Dang! My finger hurt and it itched. It wasn’t long after that when my entire hand and fingers started to swell. I attempted to remove the stinger but I wasn’t sure I did. Then I iced it the best I could from my KFC drink cup. Later when I returned home the swelling still had not gone down. I don’t like bee stings…but then who does? The 100-lap modified race start at about 45 minutes before sundown. I knew they wouldn’t be able to be finished before it got dark. What did that mean? It got cold! They had some crashes and some blown engines in the beginning part of this long race. They took forever to clean these messes up. The longer it took the colder it got. At a little past sunset, it was about 45°. I checked the temperature later on at 9 o’clock. It was 36°. Folks, that’s chilly if you’re sitting in a grandstand even if there isn’t much of a wind. I’m here to tell you that I watched the first three feature races. Two of which were for the legends and another for the Crazy compacts. The legend races ran for 20 laps each. The stocks for forty. About 30 minutes past sundown and about one hour into the 100-lap modified race they had only completed 25 laps. It was getting cold. The temperature was the coldest I’ve experienced this season since the ice races in January and February took the checkered flag. Luckily, I met a couple of racing fans from up by Akron, Ohio to keep me company. They were pretty amazed at my trackchasing hobby as most race fans are. They kept asking me, “have you been to this track, have you been to that track?” and of course my answer to all of their questions was “yes I have”. I could tell them just a little bit of a remembrance from each of the tracks they were asking about. That built my street cred with them! I enjoyed the racing that I had seen. It’s always fun to visit a new track and see how they do things and what the place looks like. It was just disappointing that they got so little racing done from 3 o’clock the scheduled start time until 7 o’clock when I left the track. I figured I had made a commitment of four hours to the Ona Speedway. If this was the best they could do then four hours was the best I could do. On the way home I was busy listening to podcasts and didn’t notice I wasn’t following my GPS properly. I got almost to Charleston (the wrong direction) before I realized my error. This took me about an hour out of the way. It was what it was. I’m the Person who made the mistake so I have no one to blame but myself. I did get a chance to stop at a Gold Star Chili outlet in Maysville, Kentucky on the drive back. That made it a Waffle House/Gold Star Chili day. A day like that is always a good day. I arrived back into my Erlanger, Kentucky hotel at about 11 p.m. I had slept here for four hours in the morning. Now I would be able to sleep five hours overnight before I caught a flight to Dallas. That equated to about nine hours of sleep over TWO nights. I was aided by the idea that we were turning the clocks back one hour. SUNDAY On the way to the track in Moscow, Russia these two Russian ladies helped Carol pick out a winter hat. My wake-up call this morning came at 4 a.m. eastern time. For a fellow who had just come from the Pacific time zone a day or so earlier and hoped to be in the Pacific time zone in about 15 hours that was early. Because Cincinnati is on the western edge of the eastern time zone it doesn’t get light this time of year until about 8 a.m. That was weird. I thought I was in Russia! I was happy the CVG airport had their new rental car center (above). That made returning my rental car about as easy as any airport that I have ever visited. I was happy that I got my boarding pass for this morning 6 a.m. flight yesterday. That meant I wouldn’t have to wait in line today to get it. With this airline standby passengers can’t get their boarding passes at an airline kiosk. Today’s flight would take me from Cincinnati to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. I would seriously bet you I have been in the DFW airport well over 500 times. I grabbed a pretty red Toyota Camry and headed out to the TexPlex off-road racing facility in somewhat nearby Midlothian, Texas. Although 8:30 a.m. wasn’t exactly time to have lunch I couldn’t resist stopping at a Whataburger. I’m a big fan of Whataburger. Whataburger and In-N-Out Burger, the top chain in Southern California, are sort of like Republicans and Democrats. If you like one you don’t like the other. In Southern California you will have to wait in the drive-through line for 20 or 30 minutes to be served. If you go to In-N-Out Burger in Texas you could probably walk right in and be the first in line. It’s funny how people are. I still prefer In-N-Out but I love Whataburger as well. The best thing about the UTV racing I was about to see today at TexPlex was that they pretty much race all day. It almost didn’t matter when I got there. I was gonna be able to see about as much UTV racing as I wanted to see. From 9 a.m. I watched UTV racing from inside my car and walked all over the grounds getting the best views that I could. You won’t want to miss my racing video from TexPlex. I’m going to guess that the distance of today’s dirt road course, which had several jumps and lots of rolling hills, was maybe a mile and a half. That’s a pure guess. When I could actually see the competitors racing, I really enjoyed the view. Unfortunately, at least half of the track if not more was pretty much inaccessible to a fan standing in any of the normal viewing areas. I think if a promoter could get some “stadium off-road racing” promotions going they would be popular. The UTVs are so much quicker than just about every standard short track racing vehicle. They can also handle jumps well. I know that other promoters dating all the way back to Mickey Thompson and others have enjoyed success with the Stadium off-road model. It’s too bad not very many people are attempting that in today’s world. Following today’s racing I really wanted to get back to Los Angeles from Dallas today. There are certain “lanes” in America and certain days of the week that are difficult to fly on a standby basis. Trying to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles on a Sunday is one of those most difficult times and lanes. With most airlines I am almost always last on the standby list. Nevertheless, in more than 2,000 standby flights that Carol and I have attempted since the year 2006 we have only missed our same-day destination about five times. I think that is an outstanding record. I feared missing my same day destination for the sixth time was about ready to rear its ugly head today. United States Marine Corps – 1971 For the first flight I would try to get on, the plane was full with paying passengers. I was 11th and last on the standby list. Several people didn’t show up for one reason or another. I commonly refer to these folks as the “sick, lame and lazy”. That was a term often used during Marine Corps boot camp for the non-performers. You might know where I’m going with this story. I made the first flight I tried for. Every person who was trying to fly standby including me got on. I think I may have gotten the last seat on the plane. I was happy. It truly was going to be a 48-hour trip as I tried to promise you at the beginning. Sometimes really good stuff happens to me. When my plane landed at LAX it was only 4 p.m. I had been gone from SoCal for just 42 hours. I had seen racing in first West Virginia and then Texas. I got to eat at a Waffle House, a KFC restaurant, Gold Star Chili and Whataburger! There was no time for Trackchasing Tourist Attractions. Russian Subway sandwich store. However, the excitement of my trip had not ended. I was making the one-mile walk back to my airport parking garage. I stopped along the way to eat at Subway (lots of Russia references in this report!). My server was telling me how much a case of potato chips had gone up since she started there 30 years ago. I told her she only looked like she was 28 now! When she heard that her eyes sparkled, then glistened and she thanked me for the compliment. People like getting compliments. I’m sure she will think about what I said for the rest of the day. What did I get out of the compliment? I got the joy of seeing how happy what I had said made this lady feel. As I continued my walk a young woman stopped, lowered her car window, and asked if I could give her directions to her hotel. I did. I felt good. Then a couple about my age were walking toward the terminals and asked if I could tell them how to get to where they were going. I did. I felt good. Then…and I am not making up a single world of this message…I found a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. There was no one around. I bent over and picked it up and put the money in my pocket. I don’t need twenty dollars. I especially don’t need that $20 bill. I’ll give it to someone I meet somewhere along the line this week who I think deserves those twenty dollars. When I do, I’ll tell you how that went down. It was a good walk! And that’s how a 48-hour trip, or less, gets done! P.S. A couple of days after I returned home I had the chance to pay my good fortune forward. I did just that as noted below. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,758 tracks. West Virginia The Mountain State This afternoon I saw racing at my 12th lifetime track in the Mountain, yes, the Mountain State. I do not hold a top ten trackchasing ranking in West Virginia. West Virginia ranks #45, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time West Virginia state trackchasing list. I have made 12 separate trips to West Virginia seeing these tracks. West Virginia State Track List Texas The Lone Star State This morning I saw racing at my 88th lifetime track in the Lone Star, yes, the Lone Star State. I hold the #1 trackchasing rank in Texas with a 35 track lead over my nearest fellow competitor. Texas ranks #10, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Texas state trackchasing list. I have made 60 separate trips to Texas 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 West Virginia sayings: Sauce and slaw, please. Chili and coleslaw for a true West Virginia dog. Texas sayings: “Might could.” 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 855 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. Heading east to West Virginia and the Ona Speedway Way down in the heart of Texas…they have UTV 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. Each trip includes a lot of photos of the “trip” and not just the racing. From one U.S. senator, “I think if I wanted to see what this adventure was like and didn’t have all that much time, I would just look at the photo album.” All photo albums are fully captioned. I don’t get out of West Virginia all that often…this trip had a lot of comings and goings 
Translation: “Could.”
Example: “You might could just sell your ticket to me. I am a big fan of Willie Nelson.”
