Greetings from Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Yellowhead International Speedway – dirt oval
Track #1,996
THE EVENT ON THE WAY TO THE RACES Day 20. I woke up this morning just inside the Canadian border (50 meters from the border agent checkpoint) in Boissevain, Manitoba Canada. I went to bed in the front seat of my National Rental Car Racing Hyundai Sonata in Bowman, North Dakota. This was day #20 of my 42-day mega trackchasing trip. Last night I crossed into Canada at just a few minutes past midnight. I asked the Canadian border crossing agent if it would be okay to sleep nearby. He directed me to a spot just 50 yards from his post that became my “hotel” for the night. It’s not my normal plan to sleep overnight in my car. However it’s not really as bad as you might think. I always try to pick safe areas. I figured being this close to the Canadian border patrol was about a safe as I could get. Prepared for this lifestyle. I was reasonably well prepared. I had my Tempurpedic pillow with me as well as my foam rubber garden kneeling pad. To protect me from the cool early morning Canadian temperatures I had brought along my Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim promotional giveaway blanket. For the conditions I was facing, with temperatures overnight in the 60s, I would be just fine. Use your imagination. My Hyundai Sonata rental car is an acceptable car to sleep overnight in as cars go for sleeping overnight. Simply leaning back the driver’s seat to the max works very well for my 6’3″ frame. I don’t normally sleep eight hours in this situation. However my alarm woke me promptly at 7 a.m. from a dead sleep. I might add that my large Subway plastic drinking cup comes in handy on these types of overnight stays as well. You can use your imagination on that one. The previous two days in Wyoming has been extremely hot. Temperatures bumped up and past 100°. It was with that background that I was surprised to wake up in a Canadian fog with my windows covered in heavy dew. Every 42-day trip needs some Canada. Soon I was off to my first Canadian trackchasing adventure of this trip. My plan was that I didn’t expect to buy any gasoline while in Canada. Gas up here goes for about five dollars a gallon. I’ve been buying petrol in the U.S. for about $3.65 a gallon. This strategy would save me about $20 USD per tank full. Ouch. Granted the Hyundai Sonata does not have the suspension of a Lexis. Why was that noteworthy? The roads in this part of Canada are rough and torn up about as much as what I experienced in Michigan last week. This morning I finished up the last of six mini-cinnamon rolls acquired earlier from the famous Johnson’s Corners in northern Colorado. I had to cover 347 kilometers from the Canadian border up to Yorkton, Saskatchewan today’s racing destination. I try to stay busy while driving. When I’m driving I try to multitask. Today that took the form of watching an iTunes movie on my MacBook Pro. The movie was about the Egypt World Cup football team trying to make it into the World Cup with their newly acquired Coach Bob Bradley. As you soccer fans know Bradley was the coach of the USA team in the 2010 World Cup before being fired. I am used to the “blank stare”. No, I’m not talking about having a conversation with a member of the “Dreaded East Coast Trackchasers”. Short track auto racing is a niche sport. Most “civilians” that I run into don’t know much about it at all. Why is that noteworthy? If I get in a position of having to ask the man/woman on the street about directions to a racetrack….I often get a blank stare. Give me a machine. I will tell you this. I will go out of my way NOT to ask an individual for directions. Why? I normally get “Go down to the light and turn left, then go two blocks and turn right…..no….go down to the light and turn right, you’ll see a fire station on the corner then follow the signs to the Dairy Queen….no….. Please give me a machine so I don’t have to deal with the foibles of well-meaning but poorly prepared direction givers. Please just give me a machine. It couldn’t be this hard but it was. Today I had directions to the town of Yorkton but not to the racetrack itself. Yorkton (population: 15,669) wasn’t that big so I figured if I just drove through town I might get a clue as to where the track was. That didn’t happen. My next option was to stop and ask a middle-aged couple for directions. They were out for a walk with their dog. At first they said “They race out by the airport once in a while”. That wasn’t what I was looking for. And the woman said something about a BMX track. Nope that wasn’t it either. Finally I got them on track of thinking about stock cars on an oval track. Then they pointed me in the right direction. This were well-meaning folks. They just weren’t trackchasers. The Racing. Yellowhead International Speedway – Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada NASCAR race listening. Racing was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. I arrived at 1:30 p.m. I sat patiently in the parking lot listening to the final laps of the Brickyard 400. My favorite NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon was the winner for the fifth time. I almost never listen to a NASCAR race broadcast on the NASCAR satellite radio channel. I prefer to wait until I get home to see it on TV. By the way, I NEVER watch a NASCAR race live on TV. I prefer to watch the race when I want to watch the race. I also couldn’t stand to watch three minutes of commercials every ten minutes. I normally watch the race on a pre-recorded basis in about three settings. What were they selling? Today admission was a reasonable $10 Canadian. However the program seemed to be over priced at five dollars Canadian. The track offered a simple multipage smaller black-and-white program. That was a nice gesture. I didn’t buy one. Cheeseburgers were $6.50. Later the trip I stopped at a subway to buy a foot-long meal. The price was a little bit more than $13 Canadian. In the states that meal goes for about nine dollars. The value of the Canadian dollar is roughly equivalent to the US dollar. Nevertheless their prices seem to be quite a bit higher for most things. How does that work? I was seeing my 6th track in Saskatchewan. What does that mean? I’ve been up here enough to know how to spell the province name! No lights. They race at this track about six times per year. There are no lights at the racetrack. That means that every show is an afternoon show or at least one that ends in the summertime before dark. Today’s track was about a half-mile long and oval-shaped with very little banking. The cars were racing on a dirt surface. The pit area was located near turn four. In my opinion the straights were way too long for the types of race cars they had today. If the track was about half as long as it was I think they would have better off. Never before? Nearly every track I visit offers something I’ve never seen before. Today they brought the entire field of cars out onto the front main straightaway. I’ve seen that done before but today they took an extra step. The announcer briefly interviewed all of the 15 or so drivers. I guess you could do such a thing for the entire field where there are so few competitors. There were two classes racing today. They were the thunderstocks and the street stocks. Each class had 7-8 cars. The program would consist of three heats for each division and a feature. I was glad they didn’t break the heats up into four cars and three cars. They ran the all the cars in each division in each of the heats. I stayed for six heats. By that time the street stock class was down to just four cars running. Often, when car counts are low, the first heat is the best race. Today the first heat had seven cars. The third heat had just four! By the time you get to later heats or the feature sometimes the field is cut nearly in half. Prices are higher, even with the exchange rate, in Canada. There was another example of high Canadian prices at the track today. The minimum investment in the 50/50 drawing was five dollars Canadian. Normally you can buy a single 50/50 ticket for just one dollar. Today everyone got five tickets for five dollars. However, if everybody gets five tickets it’s as if everybody got one ticket. That effectively meant the people were paying five dollars for one ticket whereas most tracks it’s one dollar for one ticket. Follow? I liked the announcer and not because he gave me a brief trackchasing mention. The race organizers did a good job of keeping the program moving. After each race finish the announcer came down to the track and asked the driver’s for a comment. Not all that original. A most common question asked by many announcers of drivers is, “Do you have anyone you want to thank?” It’s at this point the drivers thank their sponsors, family, friends and pick crew etc. However today the winner was succinct with his answer to “Do you have anyone to thank?” He simply replied, “No. Not really.” Just the basics. This is very basic racing, which befits a far western based population. I see this a lot in many of the far western states where I trackchase. Nevertheless today was the best option I had on a Sunday given the fact that on Saturday I was in North Dakota and Monday night I needed to be in Denver, Colorado. It’s funny where the string on the map of the world takes me in trackchasing. I did not stay for the feature events. I had already seen the same group of cars that would be racing in the feature race in three separate races. That was enough for me. AFTER THE RACES Next stop: 990 miles. I had a 990-mile drive back to the airport. That’s right 990 miles. You know I could just as easily have told you I had a 1,000-mile drive. However, I am sworn to 100% honesty in the facts I tell you about. If you can’t be honest what can you be? I can’t can ever remember having to drive that far to get back to the airport. However this was all part of the plan. That’s why I had scheduled a 9:45 p.m. flight out of Denver on Monday night headed to Chicago. Once in Chicago I would play some golf with good buddy and long-time fraternity brother Mike Skonicki. I expected the drive to take me 16 hours. That would give me an additional 10-12 hours of “free time” to sleep eat or what ever. Yes, I love the free time. Sorry. Canada is not a foreign country….except for Quebec. Following the races in Yorktown off I went on my 990-mile track to Denver, Colorado. I was in a foreign country. At least some people think of Canada as a foreign country. I don’t. I didn’t have a map. Some people think they need a map. I don’t. I was blindly trusting my GPS to take care of the logistical details. Some folks can’t give up control. I can tell you that I have traveled with nearly 10 of my friends who have so much difficulty giving up control when it comes to GPS. They have a totally different mindset on the issue than I do. I’m willing to forgo all of the time and trouble associated with planning my trip with paper maps. I know the GPS system will take care of me. When you’re out in the middle of nowhere in a place like Saskatchewan, which is similar to Wyoming or Montana, you’d better have faith or you had better have a good system. I have both. I have faith…and I have a good system. All of this trip would have me driving on two lane highways. Occasionally the highway turned to a dirt and gravel surface. That’s how far out of the country I was. Nevertheless the landscape was dotted with bright yellow rapeseed fields. Thanks Colin I never knew. This was supplemented with patches of water with tall reeds growing in these mini lakes. This was some of the most beautiful and unusual scenery I had seen all year. It’s oil baby. For the second straight night I was considering sleeping overnight in my car. That was for two reasons. Number one I would be having just a maximum of eight hours in the hotel. Secondly I will be traveling through the boom state of North Dakota. Don’t know why North Dakota is blooming? It’s oil baby! A few years ago they discovered oil in North Dakota and they’ve been drilling like crazy there ever sense. At the beginning of this trip I drove through North Dakota and now I was driving through it again. I saw several examples of “workforce housing”. These are small temporary buildings with air-conditioning units. The “homes” are lined up neatly in rows for as far as I could see. A small group of oil workers lives in each house. Taco Johns. Don’t bother. Against my better judgment I stopped at a Taco John’s in Williston, North Dakota. Taco John’s is a chain of fast food Mexican restaurants in these parts. I stopped there because I couldn’t find any of my favorite burger joints. The meal I had was bland, overpriced and not very good. What did I learn? Don’t buy Mexican food in North Dakota. However I did talk to one of their workers about the local oil boom. I saw lots of torn up roads and lots of oil tankers going to and from. There were many signs of an expansion trying to keep up with the demand for the people who know live here. What will the place look like when the boom is over? When I get to be 18. The 17-year-old fast food worker told me that as soon as he can reach 18 he will join his older brother to work in the oil fields. He said they can make $6-$8,000 per month. However according to him a three bedroom two bath home rents for $4,000 a month! This is in rural North Dakota mind you. It was approaching midnight. I decided to drive on despite having to navigate roads under construction with speed limits of 25-40 MPH. During the entire trip I rarely if ever saw any police looking for speeders. Welcome to the Bowman-Sonata Hotel. Finally I came across the small town of Bowman, North Dakota (population: 1,650). This would be my resting place for the evening. I saw a sign for a local park and drove in that direction. Soon I found a parking space that looked like it would be safe. I gathered my makeshift bedding and leaned the driver seat back as far as it would go. I slept for about six hours. Then on Monday morning I was off for the final 442 miles of my drive to the Denver International Airport. Monday – Day 22 of my 42-day trackchasing trip. I have completed two parts of my four-part 42-day adventure. Part one took me through the Midwest. Part two had me traveling mainly in the Far West. That effort had yielded 22 tracks in 21 days. Parts three and four coming up. Parts three and four will take me to the Midwest and then onto Eastern Canada. The second half of the trip will not be as productive quantitatively as the first half. However I will knock off some important trackchasing goals during the next 20 days. Stay tuned. Folks I’ve had some crazy travel arrangements over time. I seen and done some unusual and dramatic things to get from one place to the next. However I can never recall driving 990 miles from a racetrack to my departure airport. That’s what I did from yesterday afternoon until early evening today, Monday. I always take time for the media. However, as always, I did have some interesting activity during the long drive. First I was contacted by a reporter from the Peoria (IL) Journal Star newspaper. They’ve covered my trackchasing very well over the years. They even did an article on Belgium’s Roland Vanden Eynde during his visit to Peoria years ago. This coming Wednesday I was planning to see racing at my all-time favorite track, the Peoria Speedway. To tie in with that visit the Peoria reporter wanted to update readers on my trackchasing achievements since the last story they ran. Back at that time I had only seen a paltry 1,700 tracks. We talked for a good long while. He told me the story would appear in Thursday’s edition of the PJS. Shortly after that media phone call I texted Peoria Speedway announcer Scott Schultz. We were making arrangements for at the track interview this coming Wednesday. However his texting reply was not what I wanted to hear. Apparently the Peoria Speedway has been receiving some noise complaints. That and some other reasons had canceled the Wednesday night racing program I was planning to attend. That little gem juggled my planned trackchasing schedule. The good thing was that I had a couple of days to come up with a new plan. From the comfort of my National Car Rental Racing Hyundai Sonata I went to work. Monday and not showered….yet. Today is Monday. I had spent the last two overnights in my car. That meant I had not showered since Friday morning. It was time to visit a Flying J Truck Stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. For the princely sum of $12 USD I was able to get a shower, shave etc. It was one of the better $12 bills that I’ve spent on this trip. Yes, I live the lifestyle of a trucker. I just don’t have a truck. Yes, I live the lifestyle of an airline pilot but I sit in the back of the plane. Showering in Cheyenne was now in my rearview mirror. Saskatchewan The ‘Bread basket of Canada’ province This afternoon saw my 6th lifetime track in the ‘Bread basket of Canada’ province, yes the ‘Bread basket of Canada’ province. Did you know I hold a number 1 trackchasing ranking in three Canadian provinces? Can you name them? Answer at the bottom of this Trackchaser Report. 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 Saskatchewan sayings: Bunny hug: A hooded fleece top that is either a pull over or has a front zipper. Elsewhere it’s a hoodie. Bush party: A large teen party, usually held clandestinely in a farm field and featuring a bonfire and under-aged drinking. QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Chicago, IL (ORD) – 1,745 miles RENTAL CAR #1 O’Hare (Chicago) International Airport – trip begins Charlotte, MI Cortland, OH Davisburg, MI Davisburg, MI Mechanicsburg, IL Harlan, IA Primghar, IA Knoxville, IA Bucyrus, OH O’Hare (Chicago) International Airport – trip ends – 3,516 miles RENTAL CAR #2 O’Hare International Airport – trip begins Carlyle, IL St. Louis International Airport – trip ends – 412 miles RENTAL CAR #3 St. Louis International Airport – trip begins Hastings, MI Greenfield, IA Atchison, KS David City, NE Dighton, KS Malvern, IA Eldon, MO St. Louis International Airport – trip ends – 2,760 miles Editor’s note: The above did involve three different rental car contracts. However, I did it all with the SAME car. When I pulled in for the final time to the St. Louis airport the car was huffing and puffing. In 15 days I had driven it 6,688 miles. RENTAL CAR #4 Denver International Airport – trip begins Powell, WY Plentywood, MT Crary, ND Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Eaton County Fairgrounds – $10 Trumbull County Fairgrounds – $4 Oakland County Fairgrounds – oval – $10 ($10 to park!) Oakland County Fairgrounds – figure 8 – $10 ($10 to park….again!) Ealyville Speedway – Complimentary pit pass Shelby County Speedway – $5 Primghar Raceway – $5 Knoxville Raceway – Complimentary admission Crawford County Fairgrounds $10 ($5 fair; $5 grandstand) Clinton County Fairgrounds – $10 Barry County Expo – $13 ($3 fair; $10 grandstand) Adair County Fair – $6 Atchison County Raceway – $12 Butler County Fairgrounds – $10 Lane County Fairgrounds – $10 Mills County Fairgrounds – $10 Miller County Fairgrounds – $10 Parker County Fairgrounds (Night #1) – Complimentary admission Parker County Fairgrounds (Night #2) – Complimentary admission Sheridan County Fairgrounds – $10 Devil’s Lake Speedway – $20 (ouch!) Yellowhead International Speedway – $10 Canadian 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 400 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 10 countries of my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Answer: Alberta, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. Remember to hover over the photo to see the photo caption if any. A fun day of racing up in Saskatchewan…at the Yellowhead International Raceway 
