Greetings from first Czechville, Wisconsin
And then Poynette, Wisconsin
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Czechville Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,766 Lake Wisconsin – Lakeview Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,767 Lake Wisconsin – Lakeview Ice Course Ice road course Lifetime Track #2,768 THE EVENT Editor’s note: Ever been to an ice race? I’ve now been to 127 of them! Next time someone invites you to join them at an ice race…I recommend you accept the invitation. I travel this way so you don’t have to…even though secretly you probably want 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. Welcome to my 2022 trackchasing season! I AM A TRACKCHASER. What’s a trackchaser? What is trackchasing? Trackchasing is a hobby of mine. With trackchasing I do just three things. Each one is of equal importance to me. I travel the world watching auto racing on ovals, road courses and figure 8 tracks. I seek out “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions” during my travels to keep myself entertained when I’m not at the racetrack. 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 I plan airline, rental car and hotel accommodations to get me from my home in Southern California to racetracks located in the United States and all over the world. Just the planning part of my hobby is as much fun as anything. I am known as the “World’s #1 Trackchaser”. How did I get that title? I have traveled to 85 different countries and seen racing at nearly 2,800 tracks…that’s how I got that title. 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 Thursday/Monday, February 18/21, 2022. I learned something a long time ago with my trackchasing hobby. What was that? I figured out that if I did something other than simply going to a race that in the long run, I was going to enjoy my hobby quite a bit more. This weekend trip will prove that particular point. I also learned that if I had the right contacts, I would be able to get “inside” information. I always try to go to the top of an organization when I’m looking for a little help with my trackchasing plan. For this weekend the president of the Southern Wisconsin Ice Racing Association was my key contract. Mike Hoksch was “that guy”. You’ll hear more about how Mike went out of his way to give me a “heads up”. He was responsible for this being a very production ice trackchasing weekend. The racing part of this trip would be highlighted with ice racing events in Wisconsin. When the weekend was finished, I will have seen ice racing at 127 ice tracks in 24 states, Canadian provinces and countries. Some 38 of those frozen tracks were seen in Wisconsin! THURSDAY The adventure for Carol and me would begin just 50 miles up the “405“. We were going to be the first guests for dinner and drinks at J.J. and Dustin’s new place. They bought a new home with great ocean views. They’ve only been in the house for a couple of days. Their property is located in one of the more affluent beach communities of Southern California. They are going to love that house. We enjoyed being their first guests. PLUS we dropped off a 65″ flat screen TV (no longer needed since I just bought an 85 incher) as a housewarming gift! As big UCLA fans we hung out with legendary basketball coach John Wooden whenever we could. After dinner, Carol, J.J. and I motored up to the legendary Pauley Pavilion. UCLA plays its home basketball games in Pauley. You might remember that UCLA has won 11 NCAA basketball championships including 10 in 12 years with John Wooden as coach. We have season tickets to UCLA basketball. Tonight, the Bruins were playing the Washington State Cougars. I’m happy to report that UCLA had a convincing win 76-56. All of us left the arena happy. Pauley Pavilion is located about an hour and a half north of where we live in San Clemente. We pass by the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on our drive back home after each basketball game. I had to make some important logistical decisions so that the racing part of my trip would begin as best as it could. The best logistical idea was that I would stop at LAX and sleep for the night inside my Tesla Model X at my airport parking garage. I could have driven an hour and a half home and arrived at a little past midnight but then I would have had to leave hom3 at 3 a.m. to drive BACK to LAX to make my 6 a.m. Friday morning flight. In this case, it was actually better to sleep in my car and save 3 hours of driving and add those hours to my sleeping time. Carol ended up driving her own car home and arriving at past midnight while I slept soundly on the fifth floor of my parking garage! Don’t worry. This is all part of my trackchasing lifestyle. It’s something I’ve been doing for nearly ever. FRIDAY Today I was taking a nonstop airplane ride from Los Angeles to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That’s a pretty odd flight itinerary. It just turns out that Spirit Airlines has made Milwaukee some sort of a “hub” for their airline. Travelers can fly Spirit from Milwaukee to all kinds of warm weather locations like Cancun, Orlando and Los Angeles. I’m always telling you that I want to do and see all of the unusual local things that I can before and after I stop at a race track. Someday I won’t be trackchasing any longer. When that happens, I’m going to wanna look back on all of the sightseeing experiences that were just as important to me as the race-watching experiences were. With my website acting as a diary that will be easy for me to do. I did a quick Google search for “Things to do in Milwaukee”. A tour of the “Pabst Mansion” caught my eye. Soon I had grabbed a National Rental Car Racing Toyota Camry and was headed to the aforementioned Pabst Mansion. During the history of our country, there have been a lot of very wealthy people. In almost every case these wealthy folks benefited from owning their own companies. I guess if I had only one piece of advice for young people, I would say become an owner of something more so than a wage earner from something. You’re likely to do better if you can pull that off. Every year I travel to 30-35 states in the United States with my hobby. I’ve been doing that for going on three decades. When I go to one area or another that location almost always has a certain “flavor”. What’s the “flavor” from Wisconsin? Unmistakably, it’s drinking. Wisconsin is the biggest drinking state in the United States by a factor of a few. The only other place that I’ve ever been that matches Wisconsin and could go toe to toe with the best Wisconsin has to offer is Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe folks can drink. I’ve been to some of their parties in the evening where there were no restroom facilities. The ladies would simply disappear out into the dark for a few moments and come back and pick up their next alcoholic beverage. When I went to Zimbabwe it was a blast. There are lots of beer and liquor fortunes that have been made emanating from Wisconsin. One of those was the Papst family makers of Papst Blue Ribbon beer. The Papst family, from Germany, built a 20,000 square-foot mansion in Milwaukee back in the early 1890s. As a matter of fact, there were more than 40 such mansions built in the general area at the time. Today I would be taking a guided tour of the Pabst Mansion. I made a reservation online and got one of the last spots for today’s 3 o’clock tour. I’ll just say one thing about the tour. I loved it. Don’t miss the photos. If you take a look you’ll feel as if you were on the tour right beside me. My touring day wasn’t finished by a long shot when I left the mansion. I had just enough time to try a place called Maxis. I got the location and the background of this restaurant from Yelp. They serve Cajun food. When I arrived on Friday night the only place where I could grab dinner was from a seat at the bar. Of course, bars on Friday nights in Wisconsin, or any night, are always packed. I dined on cornbread, shrimp and grits with Andalusia sausage. All very good. From there I drove to downtown Milwaukee to see a college NCAA Division I basketball game. Milwaukee, formally the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, was hosting Cleveland State, two teams from the Horizon League. Milwaukee plays its home games inside the UW Panther Arena. This area has quite a history. It was constructed in 1950 and was the home for a very long time for the Milwaukee Bucks. As a matter of fact, the 1977 NBA All-Star game was played at the former Milwaukee Arena. I bought my ticket to the game using StubHub and got in for about 13 bucks including fees. I found a place on a side street where I could park for free. The arena seats more than 10,000 people but Milwaukee right now isn’t drawing very well. They might have had 1,000 people in the stands. I grabbed a seat at one into the court with no one around me and simply sat back and enjoyed the ambiance of another new arena and another new sporting event. I love all of my Trackchasing Tourist Attractions but I think I like seeing first-time sporting events as much or more than anything else. I was feeling a little tired after having slept for only 4 1/2 hours overnight in my Tesla Model X last night. The game ended at 9 p.m. Just before the final horn went off with the Cleveland State Vikings dropping the Milwaukee Panthers by a score of 78-61 the announcer offered up some surprising news. He told us that a major winter blizzard was now raging outside the arena. That seemed to send a chill through tonight’s crowd. When I had parked my car there was no snow on the ground but it was mighty windy and cold. Of course, I was wearing shorts. When I exited the arena a good 3 inches of snow had fallen while I had been inside. Luckily the National Car Rental Company provides an ice scraper and snowbrush. That was needed tonight. I’ll tell you something about my rental car. When I picked up the Toyota Camry it had more than 49,000 miles on the odometer. That’s a lot! I can’t remember when I had a rental car with more than 20,000 on it and that’s rare. I attributed this to Milwaukee being a “smaller” market. Oftentimes smaller markers don’t offer the products and services that are found in larger areas. Why are rental companies keeping rental cars longer than normal? Because new cars are scarce. Why are new cars scarce? Because there’s a “chip shortage”. Why is there a chip shortage? Because of Covid. Covid? Yes, Covid. During the early stages of the pandemic, people stayed home. They bought more cell phones and computers to keep themselves entertained while they were homebound. The supply of chips went to phones and computers and not cars. Now with the pandemic seeming to wind down the demand for cars, including rental cars, is way up. But with not enough chips around to use in cars the supply of new cars is way down. What happens when supply is limited but demand is higher than usual? The price goes up! Think there’s a politician to blame for the chip shortage and the increasing price of new cars? Then you’re listening to the wrong news source! Despite not having had much sleep last night I still needed to drive for a couple of hours on snowy and slick highways tonight. I had secured a Motel 6 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. You might remember that Baraboo was home to the very first Ringling Brothers circus on May 19, 1884. You remember that, right? I had one of my Facebook friends, now a former Facebook friend, heavily bitching and moaning that I was just some rich guy who didn’t recognize that the “little guy” is heavily impacted by inflation. It is 100% true that I don’t worry about inflation at whatever level it might be… ever. Why? Because I have inflation proofed my household budget. Inflation can hit 15 or 25%. I don’t care. If that happens for the next several years my personal inflation rate is locked in at less than 3%. If someone thinks I’m rich or someone thinks I’m bragging when all I’m doing is simply sharing facts that’s really on them. Last night I slept overnight in my freaking car. Tonight, as well as tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a Motel 6. Does that sound like a rich guy to you? When do you think Elon Musk last slept overnight in one of his Teslas? SATURDAY My ice trackchasing season is winding down. This is the second to last ice racing weekend of the year in all likelihood. My ice trackchasing season has been interrupted on several occasions in 2022. The first couple of weeks in January are normally just throwaway weekends because most lakes don’t have enough ice for them to have any ice racing. Then NASCAR came along and ran the Busch Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (above). I wasn’t going to miss that race to head out to the hinder lands of cold weather in the United States for ice racing. Then we had a cruise scheduled for our 50th wedding anniversary which would take place in February. Finally, throw in a few UCLA basketball games and I’ve been lucky to see ANY ice racing this year. I didn’t mind any of the above. Family and UCLA sports almost always trump ice trackchasing or any kind of trackchasing for that matter. This morning I was headed up from Baraboo to Czechville, Wisconsin. Czechville was going to be hosting, for the first time ever, the Czechville Winterfest ice racing event. Since this was the “first-ever” show from Czechville it was easy for me to become the first ever trackchaser to see racing there. I want to thank Michael Hoksch (kind of a young looking Martin Truex Jr.!) the promoter of the Southern Wisconsin Ice Racing Association (SWIRA). Mike turned me into this event when no other trackchaser was talking about it at all. I am an avid contributor to the trackchasing census. Folks see where I’ve been and report that information to the trackchasing census group. I think that’s kind of funny…but true. Today was going to be a rather “warm” trackchasing experience on the ice. The temperature was only going to be about 15° but there wouldn’t be any wind. I found a 100% blue skies sunny day. When there is no wind and it’s sunny it can be very cold but it won’t seem nearly as cold as if it were cloudy and windy. I didn’t know exactly what time today’s race was going to begin. Normally ice racing starts at 10 or 11 a.m. and goes until almost dark which in the wintertime is around 5 p.m. I figured if I got there before noon I would be in good shape. That kind of thinking almost got me in trouble. The track had been advertised as being in Fountain City, Wisconsin. However, when I got to Fountain City with a population of a little bit less than one thousand, I hadn’t seen any signs of ice racing. I kept on driving and when I found the Roadhouse Bar & Grill. It was then that I knew I was at the right place. My iPhone’s GPS system told me I was in Cochrane, Wisconsin. However, when I met John, the track promoter a little bit later in the day he reminded me I was actually in Czechville, Wisconsin. I’m going with Czechville as the official location of today’s racing. Parking around the racing area was limited. It didn’t look as if anyone other than the racers were parking out on the frozen lake. In circumstances like this, I go back to my Sunday night Bible study learnings. What was my learning from that? Somewhere in the Bible, it says “there’s always room for one more”. I always use that strategy when I’m trying to park my rental car. One more thing about those Sunday youth group Bible studies. To be honest I went there to see the girls. Maybe that’s why God made girls…to get high school boys to go to Bible study! It was nearly noon. When I got out of the car. I could see a group of about a dozen or maybe a little more stock cars on the ice. They were just beginning to line up for a race. I didn’t know what kind of race this was at the moment but I thought it was probably a heat race. Coming into today I had seen ice racing at 124 locations in 24 states, Canadian provinces and individual countries. A couple of things happened today that I can’t recall seeing anyplace else on the ice. Today’s ice racing stock cars were starting their event three abreast. I loved it. At this point of the conversation, I always ask that you take a moment to look at my YouTube-produced video from today’s Czechville racing and my SmugMug photo album. There’s a special reason I want you to do that but I’ll tell you about it in a moment. Just trust me. Look at the photos and video. My timing would prove to be excellent. Talking to the track promoter, after the races in the warmth of a race trailer John told me that they had started earlier than when I arrived. The race I saw was actually the feature event and not the heats. Had I shown up 15 minutes later I would’ve missed the one and only stock car feature race. However, my near tardiness would have still been rewarded because the cars came onto the track for one more event after the feature just for fun. The promoter did tell me he was a little disappointed in how his event had turned out. He was expecting a lot more racers. He mentioned there was “a lot going on” around the area. I asked him what that might be and he told me there were at least two major fishing tournaments competing for the attention to his ice races. I mentioned that Michael Horsch president of SWIRA had given me the first heads up about today’s event. Mike was racing his ATV on the ice this afternoon. I stopped by to say hello at his racing trailer. I was invited inside and got to meet his parents and their friends and his “head scorer” and the track promoter. They were all relaxing inside the trailer where it was warm. We had a chance to talk for a few moments. I was really nice meeting these Wisconsinites. There wasn’t as much activity at today’s ice racing as there normally is at a lot of other places I have visited. I’m going to attribute that to this being a “first-ever” race location. I hope they continue it and it grows to be bigger and bigger every year. I told you there were TWO items that happened today that I hadn’t seen in my previous ice racing travels. One was the stock cars raced three abreast on the ice. The other? Well, the “other” activity was real different. While I was standing in the race trailer where everyone was dressed in their full winter ice racing gear…the head scorer began to shed her coat, ski pants and most of the rest. Oh my. You may want to keep this part away from the kids. I was the “new guy” in the race trailer. When you’re the “new guy” you have to kind of play things safe. I tried to keep my eye contact with Mike’s parents but in a small race trailer with eight people in it, it’s not difficult to notice that someone is taking all of their clothes off or most of their clothes. Well…it turned out that Amanda was introduced to me as the “head scorekeeper” was an entrant, the only entrant, in one of the Czechville Winterfest events. What event? The “bikini radar run”! Yep. Miss Amanda, now attired in a hot pink bikini was now hopping on a snowmobile wearing about two ounces of clothing! Oh my. She took the sled around the oval ice track as spectators looked on. Then she drove her snowmobile just beyond the oval’s backstretch for a radar run straight down a quarter-mile stretch of ice. She probably clocked 80-90 MPH wearing a bikini in 15-degree temps. She won! I was able to congratulate Miss Amanda the next day in a Wisconsin bar where she had returned to wearing traditional ice racing gear. I’m told this was not her first bikini radar run victory! All of the racing was wrapped up before 1 p.m. I was staying about 2 1/2 hours away tonight in Madison, Wisconsin. I checked my proprietary race date computer database. I was wondering if there were any more ice races anywhere else close to where I was today. There wasn’t. Then I took a quick look at the Division III nationwide basketball schedule. They play a lot of their games on Saturday afternoons. There wasn’t anything happening. I resigned myself to a mid-afternoon relaxing drive back toward Madison where the temperature had increased to 22° by 4 o’clock under sunny skies. Tonight, I would be meeting my sister Becky and my brother-in-law Bob in Madison. I had invited them to come up and be my guests for tomorrow’s ice racing in Poynette, Wisconsin. They live just a couple of hours south in northern Illinois. We spent the evening dining at Mission BBQ in Madison, Wisconsin. They serve tasty traditional BBQ and offer good service. We stayed in the restaurant talking for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel. Tomorrow will be another big ice racing day. Can’t wait. SUNDAY. Today was going to be an interesting trackchasing day. In case anyone is confused I will reassert that trackchasing is truly a “counting” hobby. If it don’t count a trackchaser don’t go. In simple terms, a trackchaser needs to see auto racing at a track that meets trackchasing rules with drivers that meet trackchasing rules and have a race format that meets trackchasing rules. Back in the day when I was attending Peoria Speedway on a frequent basis it wasn’t difficult to see a trackchasing countable event. They had a countable track with countable drivers and a countable race format. In today’s world, things are just a little bit different. My sister Becky and my brother-in-law Bob were going to be going to Poynette, Wisconsin in order to see some ice racing with me on Lake Wisconsin. We did just that a few years earlier on January 27, 2019. The event was being promoted by the Southern Wisconsin Ice Racing Association (SWIRA). The plan was for those folks to have racing on the ice with motorcycles, ATVs and UTVs. In the trackchasing hobby ATVs and motorcycles do not count. UTVs do. In order to meet trackchasing rules I need to see racing where the division is open to drivers 18 years of age and older. No kid’s classes! Remember I didn’t make these rules. Don’t like the rules? Take it up with trackchasing’s founding fathers and their descendants. There were lots of drivers over the age of 18 that were expected to be racing in the UTV class. We didn’t expect a problem with the race format. SWIRA races on two different track configurations an oval and a “TT”/road course. All of the competitors in each race start at the same time and race for a certain number of laps or time. We were good to go on the race format issue. I’m not going to bore you with the minutia of trackchasing rules. I will simply tell you this. Back in 2019 when Becky, Bob and I came to see the SWIRA race on Lake Wisconsin when they were racing in front of the Remi’s Thirsty Moose bar and restaurant. In 2022 SWIRA has moved down Lake Wisconsin a grand total of 1.3 miles and race in front of the Lakeside Bar and Grill in Poynette. Trackchasing does have some rule verbiage, based upon an event I went to a New York concerning a similar situation. That rule says if a group is racing at one spot and for whatever reason changes the location of a temporary location because the track is no longer raceable and then moves a short distance of say 100 yards or so that second track cannot be counted. Yes, this is a “Randy Rule”. What are “Randy Rules”? These are rules made up after I saw a particular situation that wasn’t covered specifically by the rules and the trackchasing community led by the heavily biased Pennsylvania group didn’t want me to be able to count that track. I simply telling you the way it has been. I was convinced that if an ice racing group held a race in one location and some years later held it at a location more than a mile away that these tracks were not going to be affected by the rule I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Actually, nothing I do is officially affected by any kind of trackchasing rule because I am not a member of any formal trackchasing group. However, I do abide by the rules posted by the Pennsylvania based trackchasing group simply for the purpose of being able to compare my totals with someone else’s totals using an identical rule format. We were all set. We were about ready to check out of our hotel this morning. We were expecting to see UTVs race on both an oval and a road course configuration on Lake Wisconsin. What could go wrong? Whenever I ask that question, I know that something can go wrong. I have a lot of race promoter friends. One of those folks is Mike Hoksch. As mentioned above, Mike is president of the Southern Wisconsin Ice Racing group. Mike sent me a message this morning saying that he was seemingly the bearer of bad news. His group was just about ready to complete racer sign in and not a single UTV has shown up at the track yet. He recommended another location that was racing today but I had already been there. I simply messaged him back and told him that we were still planning on coming to the track and we hoped for the best. With that, we headed on out. Not too long after I had seen Mike’s first message, he messaged me again. Attached was a photo of TWO UTV racers on a trailer presumably entering the pit area on Lake Wisconsin! That Image made us all happy. This was DOUBLE good news! Two racers is the minimum allowed in order to count a track. We were now going to be trackchasing on Lake Wisconsin and the class we were most interested in would be those two UTVs. Why DOUBLE good news? Those two ice racing UTV drivers would be racing on TWO tracks today. We were lucky ducks! There was another small issue. Sometimes the issues never seem to stop! The weather was going to be very warm today. The high temperature was expected to be 50°F. Fifty degrees on a sunny day does not work well with ice racing. Every year it seems as if more ice track events are canceled because of a lack of suitable ice than any other reason. The people at SWIRA had anticipated the warm weather. They sent a message to the entire group saying they would run heat races and then take their intermission and lunch break. If it was determined that racing could not be continued because of the ice conditions created by the warm weather they would cancel their feature events. In that circumstance, full points would be given for the heat race results just as if they were the feature results. We soon showed up at the Lakeside Bar and Grill and parked my sister inside where it was warm and cozy. Despite the temperature at 10 a.m. being about 40°, the winds blew strongly at 20 miles an hour and more. This probably created a windchill temperature below freezing. Once SWIRA gets going they run their events very efficiently. The racers are barely off the ice from the previous race before the next race is getting the green flag. The two and only two UTV racers would be in event #8 on the oval, and event # 16 on the road course also named the TT course. In total there were about 30 heat races to complete including the classes for motorcycles and ATVs. It was with a massive sigh of relief that Bob and I stood out on the ice and watched the two UTVs take the green flag for their oval and road course races. The UTVs were a family team of either father/son or father/daughter, I couldn’t say for sure. When race #16 came and went Bob and I headed indoors for lunch. With all of this, I have now seen ice racing at 127 different tracks in 24 states, Canadian provinces and countries. I’m kind of proud of that statistic given the fact that I am a fellow from California and lead the trackchasing industry’s ice trackchasing stats by a wide margin. Oh ya! I was the only person watching today’s racing in shorts. The surface on Lake Wisconsin was essentially what I would call “glare” ice. Luckily, I had my Wendy Hurst recommended ice cleats which gave me a little bit more traction than the normal ice trackchaser. From time to time Bob and I stood in Mike’s race trailer which was heated. That provided some welcome relief. Bob and I joined Becky in the Lakeside Bar and Grill for lunch. They have a bar area and then a separate dining room. We dined on Philly cheesesteaks, thin-crust pizza and cheese curds. It was all good. It is very common for an ice racing group to race in front of a bar and grill located on land at the lake. There’s usually a sponsorship-type relationship between the bar and the ice racing group. The bar owner knows that his business during the winter is going to spike when the ice racers come out. Being inside the bar atmosphere is also a nice touch for a Californian that doesn’t frequent these places all that much. Everyone in the place is almost always nice, cordial and having a good time. I had the chance to spend a few minutes with SWIRA president Mike Horsch in the bar. He asked me a question that I don’t get all that often. He wanted to know how many other people were in the trackchasing business and how many tracks they’ve seen. Surprisingly, I rarely get this question. People seem to think I am the only person crazy enough to go trackchasing. I told Mike that after today, I had seen racing at 2,768 tracks. I mentioned that about a dozen people had seen 1,000 tracks or more. I mentioned that my nearest fellow competitor was nearly 900 tracks behind my total. There are a couple hundred people or more who’ve seen racing at more than 100 tracks. Mike told me that the SWIRA Ice Racing group has been going for nearly 10 years. He’s been president for six of those years and is hoping to pass the baton sometime in the very near future. He told me the club is on solid footing right now and things look good for the future. He mentioned that they’ve been able to get upwards of 150 competitors for a single race day. That’s pretty impressive. By the way, Mike competes in the Pro ATV racing division (above). As we wrapped up our lunch, I could see some of the ice racers beginning to put their equipment away. That surprised me just a bit. Apparently, the warm weather was making for some very watery conditions on the track. They decided to cancel the feature events and count the heat racing results for point totals. That probably made a lot of sense. Soon most everyone was in the bar bench racing. From there Becky and Bob treated me to an afternoon indoor movie. We saw the movie starring Tatum Channing titled “Dog”. We all enjoyed it, especially sitting in the comfy leather-like reclining chairs. To finish off the day I drove everyone back to Madison. Becky and Bob hopped in their car for the two-hour drive down to their home in northern Illinois. I headed toward the Milwaukee airport where I had a Priceline-generated Sheraton Hotel for a price so low that I can’t mention it in these pages. MONDAY Today I would be flying from Milwaukee back to Los Angeles. Last Thursday Carol and I had seen a UCLA basketball game during the evening. From there I slept overnight in my car at the airport before beginning my trackchasing trip. Today, Monday, Carol was once again driving her car up to LAX to join me for yet another UCLA basketball game against Arizona State. I know that some of you might just be thinking “Maybe I’ll give this trackchasing thing a try that Randy has always been talking about. I wonder what a typical trip looks like?” This was my travel itinerary from this past weekend’s trip. Ready to be a trackchaser? This trackchasing trip, from Thursday night to Monday afternoon, had been busy although most of my trips are “busy”. The trip included two UCLA basketball games, a Division I basketball game in Milwaukee Wisconsin, a tour of the Pabst Museum, also in Milwaukee, as well as seeing racing at three different ice racing tracks in Wisconsin and an indoor movie. On top of THAT, I flew well over 3000 miles and drove nearly 600 miles in my rental car. I like to stay busy. Oh yeah, I slept in my car one night! I’ve been doing this more than 40 weekends a year for well over 20 years. As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed following just a little bit of my trackchasing saga that I meet up with for most weekends during the year. Remember I do this for fun. How do I know if it’s fun? I’m a volunteer. People don’t volunteer for stuff that they don’t like what they are doing. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,768 tracks. Wisconsin The Badger State This weekend I saw racing at my 112th, 113th and 114th-lifetime tracks in the Badger, yes, the Badger State. I hold the #4 trackchasing ranking in Wisconsin. Wisconsin ranks #5, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Wisconsin state trackchasing list. I have made 74 separate trips to Wisconsin to see 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 Wisconsin sayings: Ah geez! Another shared trait by many phrases on this list? Adding unnecessary words to sentences. “Aw geez” is one where it can stand alone, but it often proceeds the recounting of some calamity. It’s also a phrase that most of us use without even realizing it. 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 865 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. See the bikini clad radar run…plus three abreast ice oval racing! Just plain downhome fun with ice racing on a very slick glare ice track. 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. Two UTVs; Two tracks plus some real good bar food. 
