Greetings from Minco, Oklahoma
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
81 Raceway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,776 THE EVENT Editor’s note: Sometimes it’s hard to believe how my best made plans can go off the rails. However, when that does happen I can only work smart and hard to get things back on track. Remember…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 Friday/Monday, April 15/18, 2022. First, I certainly hope I have not misled anyone into opening this message thinking that I have lost my driver’s license because of my nine speeding tickets. You can take one thing to the bank. Everything I tell you as fact is accurate and true. To begin this trip, I did lose my driver’s license. It also is true that I have had nine speeding tickets in my life. I am proud to say that after I was pulled over twice in a single month and ticketed in 1983, I have not had a single speeding ticket since. I truly do lament my ninth and last, up to now, speeding ticket. I had just left a Kentucky state prison where I assisted my grandfather in his ministry with both men and women inmates. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for doing such a good deed. Then I got pulled over for speeding in a work zone! What was the man/woman upstairs trying to tell me? I took it as a sign that when you do something good you shouldn’t expect a reward for just doing the right thing. However, I did not lose my driver’s license this morning. This was not because I enjoy driving at a rate of movement just under the speed of sound. Then how did things happen, you might ask? Sit down for a moment, pour yourself a cold one, and I’ll tell you all about it. Virtually every trackchasing trip that I take begins with an airplane ride. I didn’t fly on my first airplane until I was 21 years old. That’s a pretty late start, isn’t it? However, I guesstimate that since I was 23, when I arrived into the business world, I have flown average of three flights every week since then. That’s about 150 flights a year…for fifty years. That’s more than 7,000 flights. I honestly below my estimate is low. Today I was manhandling four different bags that I planned to carry on the plane. I know. The airlines are pretty strict and try to limit you to just two bags, don’t they? Nevertheless, it was true that I had four bags. My largest piece of luggage is considered a “rolling bag”. That thing was packed to 100-110% capacity with clothes, toiletries, Nutrisystem Foods and lots of other stuff. I also had my computer bag which carries things like my laptop, my iPad, my passport and one million other little things including some extra cash. By the way, the photo above shows me with all of the luggage I took with me on a seven-day trip to Algeria. I had my electronics bag not to be confused with my computer bag. This isn’t very big but carries all the wires and chargers needed to manage my massive electronics system that I bring along on each and every trip. Finally, I had my lunch bag. Carol had a nicely packed series of fruits and vegetables which I normally don’t eat but during this special Nutrisystem time frame I do. They say that some people come with a lot of extra baggage. I did today. I remember putting all of these bags on the conveyor belt to get me through airport security. I also remember carrying my driver’s license in one hand after I had cleared the TSA officer station. I remember laying my driver’s license down on the conveyor belt (I know…bad move) as I mixed and matched all the bags all the while with a mental note that I would put my driver’s license in my pocket as soon as I finished managing my travel equipment. When I gathered all my bags from the x-ray machine, I went to one of the more remote airplane gates at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). There is one terminal in the nation’s second-busiest airport that requires a shuttle bus ride. That’s always a hassle. It takes a lot of time and it means more hands on management of all of the baggage I bring with me. I was standing by for a flight from Los Angeles to Tulsa, Oklahoma. That’s right. I was in Tulsa last week as well. I don’t get to Tulsa, Oklahoma all that often. It just turned out that the races I wanted to see were within shouting distance of Tulsa for two consecutive weekends. My flight was wide-open. That meant I would be able to get a seat on the nearly three-hour flight over to Oklahoma easily. I had all of my luggage. I was a little bit early. The logistical things in life were going well. The woman at the gate asked me to show her my ID. I popped open my mini wallet and there was no driver’s license. Thinking quickly, I handed her my passport and got my boarding pass for the plane. Some of you might think I was all set. Actually, I wasn’t “all set”. I was sunk. I knew one very important thing. Yes. with a passport and boarding pass, I could fly on an airplane. However, without a driver’s license I could not rent a car. For every airplane trip I make I also rent a car. No rental car. No trackchasing. Where was my driver’s license? I know that everyone reading this has lost something at one time or another. When you lose something do you find yourself looking in the same places again and again even though you’ve already checked those spots and you pretty much know what you list isn’t there? I did exactly that. I checked every pocket. I checked every bag even the bags that hadn’t been opened since I arrived at the airport. No driver’s license. I suspected that I had left my license back at security. But I didn’t know that for sure. Sometimes I’ll have something in my pocket and when I pull one thing out of that pocket the “something” that I used to have in my pocket falls to the ground without me knowing it. Maybe that happened to my driver’s license? I did know this. If I couldn’t find my driver’s license in the airport, I would have to make a special trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). You all know what a hassle that is. If I couldn’t find my driver’s license today, I would immediately walk to my car. It was a 25-minute walk to the parking garage. I might even have to go home if I thought the DMV needed a birth certificate or some other form of identification that I didn’t have with me today. I was in a very bad place. I hopped on the airport shuttle bus to take me back to the main terminal at LAX. I was, once again, reminded that riding that shuttle bus with all of my baggage is a real hassle. Losing my driver’s license was a big hassle but riding the shuttle bus was a hassle in itself. I walked up to the main TSA desk and asked if they might have found my driver’s license. Proving there is a trackchasing god, the TSA agent reached into a drawer and handed me my driver’s license. I guess miracles do happen. I wouldn’t be going to Tulsa, Oklahoma this morning. That ship has sailed or more precisely that airplane had flown. Now I had a driver’s license but I didn’t have an airplane or a rental car to begin the trip. I was still looking up from under the debris of my poor decision making. Maybe, if I acted quickly, I could still get somewhere out to the Midwest or the east today. At this point I didn’t expect to see any racing. The one and only trackchasing option I had for today, Friday, was located just outside of Oklahoma City. I had planned to fly to Tulsa to see that race. I had no other racing options. I was planning to trackchase in North Carolina on Saturday evening and then go to the big NASCAR dirt race in Bristol, Tennessee on Sunday evening. Maybe, if I acted quickly, I could still make all of that happen. I walked over toward a remote corner of the airport terminal, where it would be quiet, popped open my laptop and tried to make the magic happen. I get a really good deal on rental cars. I rent 50-75 cars a year. I’ve been doing that for 50 years. That’s about 3,000 cars. At a conservative estimate of 500 miles of driving per car…that’s 1.5 million miles. That’s a lot of miles…in a rental car. Knock on wood I’ve never had an accident with another driver. Although I get a really good price and really good rental cars along with great service…frequently I am required to make my rental car reservation at least 24 hours in advance in order to get those benefits. I’ve been known to “jury rig” the rental car system so that it looks like I’m making a reservation 24 hours in advance when in reality I might be showing up in three hours. I don’t think I need to tell you anymore about that today. I might be able to standby for an airplane ride out to the Midwest or east but if I couldn’t get a rental car in that same location then getting on an airplane wouldn’t be very worthwhile either. I noticed there was a special nonstop flight leaving for Dallas, Texas. I’m not talking about the big airport that you have likely flown through called “DFW”. I’m talking about the downtown Dallas Love Field (DAL) airport which gets much less traffic than its bigger brother at DFW. I checked rental cars. I could get a rental car at “DAL” on very short notice. I was surprised by that. Pleasantly surprised. I checked the airplane leaving for Dallas from Los Angeles. There were three open seats still unsold. There were five standby passengers before I listed myself. I might make that. I did all of the “paperwork” on my laptop. Then I noticed that the airplane was leaving in the same terminal I was standing in at LAX. LAX has eight different terminals. Several of those terminals cannot be entered from the next one and require a different security check-in procedure. How lucky was it that the one and only flight that I might be able to make was within 100 yards of where I was standing and was leaving in 20 minutes? Pretty lucky I would say. I went down to the gate. The airline agent asked me to show my identification. I reached in my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license. That made me feel good. In just a couple of moments I was hopping onto an airplane that would take me to Dallas, Texas. I hadn’t even thought about getting on this flight just 10 minutes before. This Friday night trackchasing chip might be saved after all. I would land in Dallas at about 4 p.m. The Love Field airport was about a 3 1/2 hour drive south of tonight’s planned racing location in Minco, Oklahoma. By the time I got off my plane and got my car rented and got out of the airport it would be 4:30 p.m. My Waze GPS system told me I would arrive at the track at 8:05 p.m. Wouldn’t you know it? The 81 Raceway in Minco, Oklahoma was scheduled to begin racing tonight at 8 p.m.! I would say that anybody can lose their drivers’ license. You’ve probably done it yourself. However, I might also say that it would be pretty difficult for most folks who missed their flight to Tulsa, Oklahoma to turn things around and still make it a Minco, Oklahoma from Los Angeles via Dallas in time for tonight’s racing. As you might imagine I meet a lot of people when I’m out on the long and dusty trackchasing trail. These folks are located all over the United States and the world. I know this for a fact. I have many more friends that I’ve met from racing and work along the way who live far away than those who live in my hometown of San Clemente, California. That’s probably true as much for the fact that I’m living outside of San Clemente just about as often as I am living in San Clemente. I like it that way. One of those friends is a native of Oklahoma. His name is David Hardy. He and his sons drive homemade “yard karts”. That’s one of the more inexpensive forms of racing that exists. I first met David at a small racetrack in Pink, Oklahoma. Ever been there? Most people have not. David has been a good friend and a real helper with my trackchasing. I called him last weekend when I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma just to catch up. Actually, I didn’t call him I used Facebook Messenger to message him. David is one of the very few people who when he gets an electronic message from me immediately calls me on the phone. He did that last week and we talked for a bit. This is when David gave me the heads up that the 81 Raceway would be having its inaugural event tonight in Minco, Oklahoma. No other trackchaser had ever mentioned anything about the 81 Raceway. That gave me a pretty good indication that nobody else from the trackchasing world was going to be at the track tonight. I almost wasn’t at the track tonight myself! In point of fact, I did make it to the 81 Raceway this evening. They were scheduled to begin racing at 8 p.m. I arrived just five minutes later. True to form for most short track auto racing they were not starting on time which tonight for me was a good thing. I paid my $10 general admission price. Pit passes were selling for $25. Race promoters will try to tell you that the increase in expense for a pit pass compared to a general admission ticket is mainly because of insurance. I think it’s more for profit than it is to cover the cost of insurance but it likely helps with both. I never begrudge a race track promoter for seeking a profit. That’s the American way. People operate businesses so they can make a profit. I support that 100%. I found a parking spot that most other patrons would not have thought existed. I looked back to my Bible training when I searched for a parking spot. When Joseph and Mary showed up in Bethlehem with baby Jesus and the was no room for them, they were able to apply the theory “there’s always room for one more”. That’s how I look at parking spots. It’s a little bit easier to have that view when I’m driving a rental car. Just saying. I believe the 81 Raceway used to be and probably still could be a rodeo arena. Rodeo is big in Oklahoma. It doesn’t take too much equipment to move dirt around so that a rodeo arena magically transforms itself into a short nicely banked dirt oval track that can handle winged outlaw karts. Those karts were the main attraction for me tonight at the 81 Raceway. The grandstands were metal, maybe six or seven rows high. One step to the next was about a 20-inch jump. There were no handrails. For a man of my age and stature, those were pretty steep steps but I soon found myself sitting in the top row. I sat down and before very long I was talking to the fella next to me. I make friends easily. He asked me where I was from and I told him. Then he told me he had lived in California. I am more than surprised at the number of people who tell me that they “used to” live in California. Why in the world would people leave the Golden State for the Sooner State or leave the Golden State for anywhere else for that matter? I think there can be several reasons for a geographical relocation like this. A lot of people want to move back and be near their family which they probably left to begin with to move to California. Others will find the expense of living in California an obstacle. Still, others will benefit from that expense by selling a house that has appreciated rapidly and use that money to go back “home” and buy a house for cash and still have money left over. Others might go “back east” for a job. People do what they have to do. I just hope I never have to leave California. I don’t expect that I ever will. The fellow I was sitting next to used to be a racer. He had raced motocross and stock cars at tracks that were long ago closed. Motocross involves a motorcycle. It’s pretty dangerous. Riders fall off and get hurt all the time. The fella sitting next to me started showing me his battle scars. He had a number of them. I was surprised that his arms were still attached to his body! When people tell me their stories, I try to take a moment in my mind, and before I tell them something about me, I try to imagine what the experience they have just explained to me was really like. This man’s experiences sounded pretty painful. Tonight’s racing was excellent. They had a good field of winged karts most of which were driven by adults. The track might have been about an eighth of a mile in distance but I’m just guessing on that. They race these little karts hard. They’re very “twitchy”. A small turn on the steering wheel is likely to result in a big change in the direction of the car. I will ask this of you before you read much further. Take a quick look at my recent video and my photo albums. Five or 10 minutes might do it. When you look at those photos and the video try to imagine what it was like being at 81 Raceway tonight. Try to imagine what the race promoter and the race drivers and crew were doing there. They came of their own free well as I did. They came to have fun and to experience competition in their lives. Nobody on either side of the fence really makes any money out of this. Racers end up spending a lot of money doing what they’re doing. Racing can be dangerous for the driver but in reality, not all that dangerous. Very few people get seriously hurt. This is just something to do because Americans have a love of the car culture and competition. As I say it would be my recommendation for you to take just a moment to check out the facility that is now named the 81 Raceway. Maybe even imagine what a rodeo looked like here over the past several decades. When the racing was finished, I hopped into the “trip plan “that was the original intent before I lost my driver’s license. That beginning plan had me seeing racing at the 81 Raceway and then driving over to Tulsa, Oklahoma and flying to Charlotte, North Carolina the next morning. Now that I was at the 81 Raceway, I could resume the original plan even though because of my poor logistical management skills this trip started out in Dallas, and not Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sometimes when I try to rent a car in one location and return it to another, I can’t give the rental car company much lead time. Oftentimes if I try to do this within 24 hours of when I need the one-way rental, they won’t allow it. That being the case, I have developed a “workaround”. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t really like to adhere to every little rule that exists if I don’t think there’s a good reason for that rule. In a situation like this, I try to develop a “workaround”. I had originally rented my car at Dallas’ Love Field. According to the National Car Rental Company I was contracted to return it to Love Field as well. What’s a contract among friends, right? Over time I have discovered that while I am renting a car, I can simply call National and ask them to let me return it somewhere else which is more convenient for my purposes. I did just that today. I called up and asked if I could return my car to Tulsa. I was told that for a fee of about $40 extra I could do just that. I didn’t mind paying the additional fee for a one-way rental. I was just happy that they would allow me to do it. Oftentimes in life I don’t mind paying a little bit extra to remove a restriction that won’t allow me to do whatever it is I wanted to do in the first place. The driving time to Tulsa from tonight’s racetrack was going to be a little bit more than three hours. I figured with stops I might pull into Tulsa at around 2 a.m. I had a flight scheduled from Tulsa heading toward Charlotte, North Carolina tomorrow morning leaving at 6:50 AM. I figured I needed to be returning my rental car and getting checked in by 5:30 a.m. This plan would give me a full 3 1/2 hours of sleep time. When I have such a small amount of time available to sleep, I don’t think it’s a good idea to get a hotel. If I checked into a full-scale Marriott at 2 a.m. by the time I got my gear stored, got to sleep, and then got up I might only have 2-3 hours in the room itself. That doesn’t make any financial sense or logistical sense for that matter. In these circumstances, I MUST sleep overnight in my car. I think I know what you might be thinking. You would never ever sleep overnight in your car especially to do something as silly as trackchasing. What would be my response to that? I might think you’re missing out. I might think that you’re never ever going to be the World’s #1 Trackchaser. Now I REALLY know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you have no intention whatsoever and never have had of becoming the World’s #1 Trackchaser. At that point, I might think to myself exactly this. I’ve been retired for 20 years. I am doing in retirement exactly what everyone else who retires or has ever thought about retirement would like to do. No, that is not sleeping overnight in my rental car. No that is not running all over the country and the world trying to see racing different race tracks. What exactly am I doing that everyone reading this wants to do in their own individual retirement? The answer is simple. I am doing exactly what I want to do in retirement. Now I’m pretty sure virtually every reader is nodding their head in agreement. We’re on the same page! So, if I were going to sleep overnight in my rental car exactly where would I want to sleep? I would want to sleep in a hotel parking lot. Those places have a lot of cars in the lot from their registered guests. Most hotel parking lots are safer than lots of other choices. If I did that, I could say such outrageous things like as “I stayed at the Ritz Carlton last night” when in point of a fact I really wasn’t a registered guest of the Ritz Carlton but I did “stay” at the Ritz-Carlton. Tonight, I didn’t see any Ritz Carltons. That being the case, I pulled into a Hilton Garden Inn which was adjacent to the Tulsa airport. I expected to find the parking lot at 2 a.m. totally dark without any activity. However, wouldn’t you know it? There was a shuttle bus driver sitting at the entrance of the lot with his engine running and his lights on. I drove past him and parked. In about three minutes later he drove the shuttle bus over toward my car and sat there with the engine idling and his lights on. Did he think I needed a ride…at 2 o’clock in the morning… at the Tulsa airport… when there were no scheduled flights? I suspected I had been “made”. Being made in the Italian mafia might be a good thing. Being “made” by the hotel shuttle driver at the Hilton Garden Inn in Tulsa when you’re trying to sleep overnight for free in their parking lot is not a good thing. I moved on. About 5 miles away I found another hotel parking lot. Time was flying by. I was now going to get less and less sleep. Wouldn’t you know it? A guy was sitting in this hotel parking lot in a black pickup truck with his lights on and his engine running just a few spots over from where I parked. There was no way this little hotel could have airport hotel security sitting in a black pickup truck was there? I moved on. I didn’t drive very far but I found a Jack-in-the-Box parking lot that seemed to have 24-hour service. A little bit of activity would be a good thing and make things all the safer. I parked in the Jack-in-the-Box lot and slept for two hours and 23 minutes. Then I was off to the Tulsa International Airport to begin the remainder of my trip. This had been a rather eventful 24 hours. I was just trying to get from point A to point B. I found a pretty interesting way to do it. I hope you found it nearly as interesting to read about it. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,776 tracks. Oklahoma 100% RED counties out this way! The Sooner State This afternoon I saw racing at my 45th lifetime track in the Sooner, yes, the Sooner State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Oklahoma. Oklahoma ranks #19, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Oklahoma state trackchasing list. I have made 31 separate trips to Oklahoma 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 Oklahoma sayings: “Okie”-We’re not all from Muskogee, nor rednecks but we’re are ALL Oklahoma proud. 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 870 tracks of my lifetime total. Why is this noteworthy? Because it’s true. 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 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. The challenge of getting to Oklahoma and being the first to visit 81 Raceway 
