Greetings from London, Kentucky
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Laurel County Fairgrounds
THE EVENT Note! If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. I’ll try my best to respond. Thanks! ON THE WAY TO THE RACES That trip was a long one. In July 2014 I initiated my longest trackchasing trip ever, 42 days. During that time I added 36 new tracks to my lifetime totals. This adventure will be longer. I had such good success with that trip that I decided to take on another long journey. The adventure would begin on Monday, July 6, 2015. This was less than 24 hours after we had returned from a three-day trackchasing/Fourth of July Northern California trip. The most unusual thing about this trip is that I don’t know when it will end. I could stay out for longer than 42 days or possibly as few as 30 days or so. I certainly would not want to leave “Trackchasing’s First Mother”, my wife of 43 years for 42 days. We have a plan to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’ll be out about a week and Carol will join me for about a week and repeat the process until the trip wraps up. In search of #1 rankings. I hope to see several tracks in Minnesota, Illinois and Kansas. These are all states where someday I have a chance to gain a #1 trackchasing rating. I might even reach those goals on this trip. Currently I hold a number one ranking in 17 states. The geography of those states range from Hawaii to Rhode Island to Alaska. Here’s the complete list: Alaska Arizona Colorado Hawaii Idaho Iowa Montana Nebraska Nevada New Mexico Oklahoma Oregon Rhode Island Texas Utah Washington Wyoming This adventure is not for the fiscal conservative. Anytime one embarks on a 42-day trip or any similar length they must give a nod toward the expense of the trip. Can you imagine the cost of 42 nights of hotels, 42 days of rental cars etc. etc. The cash outflow can be a big number. You might recall that last year I AVERAGED 400 miles of driving for each and every day of my 42-day trip. I don’t think I will drive that much this year but I don’t really know for sure. I wanted to minimize my airport parking expense as well as Carol’s airport parking fees. That being the case we would drive up to Los Angeles international Airport in Carol’s MFunds sponsored Lexus RX 350. I hoped to see lots of family and friends on this trip. As luck would have it our son J.J. was just returning from a commercial flying trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This made it convenient for Carol and me to meet J.J. for dinner at the Chalet Edelweiss, a Swiss specialty restaurant near LAX. My plans can and do change on a dime. The original plan called for Carol and me to get a hotel at LAX. This was Monday night. My Tuesday morning flight was leaving at 5 a.m. That meant I would have to get up at about 3 a.m. to make that airplane. Carol would sleep in and then take our car back to San Clemente. She would then return to LAX in about a week to begin her portion of the journey. By using this method we would have only one car parked at LAX at any one time. However the cheapest hotel I could get at the airport was $100 a night. I didn’t think spending that amount of money on a hotel when I would have to leave at 3 a.m. was a good idea. My solution was simply to have Carol drop me at the airport following our dinner with J.J. At the airport I would “hang out” until tomorrow morning’s 5 a.m. departure. Carol would return to San Clemente for the evening. Yes there are a lot of plans to consider and logistics to manage with these trips. I feel it’s what I do best. Just a couple of issues to overcome. There were a couple of issues with the plan. First I was carrying my golf bag, which would need to be checked at the airline ticket counter. Carol was dropping me off at 8:30 p.m. for my 5 a.m. flight. I was rightfully concerned that American Airlines would not check my bag this far in advance of my flight’s departure. This was a significant issue. If I couldn’t check my golf bag I couldn’t enter the secured area of the airport. Of course “inside” the airport terminal is the best place for sleeping overnight. I was right in believing they wouldn’t check my bag at 8:30 p.m. I hate it when I’m right. However the airline agent had an idea. It was a dang good idea on many fronts. How about if we did it this way? She told me I could standby for a 1 a.m. departure to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. If I did that she could check my golf bag on the 1 a.m. flight at 8:30 p.m. She also told me there were 10 seats available on that flight and I was number one on the standby list. This was a perfect solution. With my golf bag checked I felt like a “free” man. I don’t know if you are a golfer. Traveling with golf clubs is a big pain in the butt. I almost instantly cleared airport security with my TSA Pre-Check capabilities. Then I walked through the underground tunnels of the Los Angeles international Airport from terminal 4 to 6. If you’ve never used these tunnels you should! I try to make travel as convenient and comfortable as I can. Once in terminal six I spent nearly an hour and a half at the Alaska Airlines Board Room where I have a membership to the private club. Unfortunately the Board Room closes at 10 p.m. At that point it was a long walk back to terminal four where I would wait for nearly three hours to see if I would get on the 1 a.m. flight. Folks, I’m starting a trip that will likely last longer than 42 days. I hadn’t even stepped on the FIRST plane and all kinds of logistical problems were being addressed and solved. The good news was that I made that flight. I think it was better to sleep overnight on the airplane than to sleep overnight in the airport. I least I was moving on down the road as I slept. Recall a couple of years ago when I averaged traveling 27 M.P.H. for every hour of every day of every week of every month of the entire year! In a bit more than four hours I was landing in Chicago. John Candy reincarnated? When I travel in public I don’t want to make it inconvenient for any of my fellow travelers. Unfortunately that is not how everyone feels and acts. Tonight I was lucky to get an emergency exit row aisle seat. That’s just about the best seat in coach on the plane. However the 6’4″ person who sat in the middle seat was not the most convenient or transparent passenger to have as my seat partner. This guy failed his “good traveler” responsibilities in several key areas. It is a universal symbol in the travel world that if you put on your Bose noise canceling headphones you don’t want to be chatted up by your fellow passengers. I will call the big guy next to me “Jake”. Why? Because that was his name. Even though I was wearing my headphones, Jake wanted to talk. I have a few travel tricks designed to try to discourage maneuvers like this. I’ll make a big deal of removing my Bose headset and then asking, “Sorry I can’t hear you with my headphones on. What did you say?” That usually does the trick but was less effective with Jake. There are times I enjoy talking on an airplane. One of those times is not when I am watching an iTunes movie on an overnight flight. Jake also had a hard time keeping his elbows and feet and legs on his side of the invisible plain (no pun intended) separating our two seats. I hate it when that happens. Additionally he kept trying to recline his seat. We were in the first of the two exit rows on the plane. Any frequent traveler would tell you that the first exit row will not be allowed to recline into the second exit row. At the risk of encouraging his conversation I lifted one side of my Bose headset and told him his seat would not recline. At first he didn’t believe me and was a bit incredulous. Soon the realization of this fact dawned on him. During the relatively brief flight Jake had to get up twice to go to the bathroom. I’m guessing Jake was a year or two older than me. He was barely agile enough to sidestep his way between me and the seat in front of me to get to the aisle. On most overnight flights passengers will either sleep or play with their electronic gadgets such as MacBook Pros, iPads and iPhones etc. The less fortunate will do their self-entertainment on Droid machines. The common denominator for all of these passengers is that on an overnight flight rarely will you see an overhead light left on. What did Jake do? He left his overnight reading light on for nearly the entire flight! When Jake made his second trip to the bathroom he had to wake me up to slide through. Once I was awake I decided I would stay awake until Jake returned for the bathroom. Unfortunately he either had a lot going on gastronomically or he took the opportunity to chat up the flight attendants in the back of the plane. Probably both! He didn’t return to his seat for a full 15 minutes or maybe more. During that time I took the opportunity to shut off his overhead reading light. This made the entire interior of the plane dark which was a good thing. I’m probably a little more particular about the behavior of my fellow passengers because I’ve traveled so much during my life. It’s hard to have patience with people who appear to be inconsiderate and boorish. When I have experiences like this I can’t help but think about John Candy removing his shoes and socks in the middle seat of the airplane. Planes, Trains and Automobiles starring Candy and Steve Martin is one of my all-time favorites. I’ve had so many similar experiences. Arriving early was good and bad. I would now be landing in Chicago at 7 a.m. rather than nearly noon. This was both good and bad. I was heading to Indiana. The weather forecast was horrible. It had rained all day yesterday in Chicago Right now that rain was moving into Indiana for today. I was hoping to see racing tonight in Portland, Indiana. However the chance of rain in Portland was 100% for the evening! However by arriving into the Windy city at 7 a.m. that put a race being held in Kentucky into play. It was a seven-hour drive from Chicago. I would lose one hour moving from the central to the Eastern Time zone. If I had landed in Chicago at 12 noon with the original plan I never would’ve been able to make it down to Kentucky if that’s was my choice. One change effects lots of things. Of course landing at 7 a.m. would minorly screw up my rental car plan. If I picked up my car by 8 a.m. this morning I would have to return it by 8 a.m. tomorrow in Indianapolis. That wasn’t as good as returning it at 11 a.m. by a long shot. This likely meant I would lose three hours of sleep on the back end of my rental car contract. That’s one thing that makes my travel hobby so interesting. One twist of the upstream logistical dial often has multiple impacts on the downstream logistical dial. Expense often drives my creativity. Renting cars at the O’Hare international Airport Chicago is expensive. There are very few places where rental cars will cost the traveler any more. Later in the trip I wanted to fly from Chicago to Minneapolis. That plan meant a longer Chicago rental car contract. I searched for a better idea and came up with one. I would rent a car in Chicago for just one day and then drop it off in Indianapolis. Then I would rent another car in Indianapolis for the balance of this beginning Midwest tour. I would return the car Indianapolis and fly from Indy to Minneapolis. This decreased my rental car expense a good deal. What made this plan a doable idea was that flights from Indy to Minneapolis were wide open. No! Not a Ford Fusion. In Chicago I couldn’t find a Hyundai Sonata to rent. It’s one of the few cars that offer satellite radio with the National Car Rental Company. Another model that has the satellite radio option is the Ford Fusion. I want to like Fords. I grew up in a heavily dominated Ford family. However the Ford Fusion compares poorly to the Hyundai Sonata. The Fusion’s windshield wipers appear to be better suited on a toy car. The car steers like a truck. The driver cockpit makes me feel like I’m sealed in a NASCAR Sprint Cup stock car. Finally the driver side door has a “hip breaking” notch like the idiotic Chevy Malibu of a few years ago. That notch will likely make me break a hip some day. Other than that I like the Ford fusion! O.K. I really don’t. Note: Please don’t be offended if you own a Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu. You read these reports so you can get my unvarnished opinion. I’m the Donald Trump of trackchasing. Normally when I return a rental car to a second location I will do my best to re-rent the very same car. That makes things convenient on several fronts. However I didn’t want to drive this Fusion any longer than a single day. When I get back to Indianapolis I will turn this car in and hopefully get a Hyundai Sonata. Big trucks. A plethora of them. I am somewhat amazed by the amount of big truck traffic on the routes from Chicago to Indianapolis. In the greater Southern California area big trucks are not allowed to drive, for the most part, during daylight hours. That’s right. In Southern California most truck traffic is limited to nighttime hours. That’s also when all road construction in Southern California is done. They might rebuild an eight-lane freeway over the space of a couple years. All of that work will be done from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m.! In the Midwest it seems as if half the vehicles on the road are big trucks. THE RACING Laurel County Fairgrounds – London, Kentucky Seeing a race today was going to be difficult. If I tried for the county fair figure 8 race I would encounter a 100% chance of rain. My weather app estimated that Portage, Indiana would get more than 1 inch of rain. That was not good news. How’s this for a commitment? I had called the fairgrounds yesterday to see what their stance was on running “rain or shine”. The woman I spoke to had to seek additional counsel to answer my question. She came back with “it’s going to take a lot of rain for us to cancel the event”. What kind of answer was that? What was she really saying? I didn’t have the answers to those two questions. Indiana was vague; what was Kentucky saying? Then I called my contact in Kentucky. I did not want to drive to Kentucky but if the Indiana figure 8 race was going to be rained out I might not have a choice. I know as a reader you could be saying to yourself, “Randy, of course you have a choice. You can simply go to your hotel room in Indianapolis and have a quiet relaxing evening in front of the fireplace.” If you or your brother-in-law think that then you don’t understand what I’m doing with my trackchasing hobby. Whenever I leave the cozy confines of Southern California I leave to see new tracks. I do not head out onto the road in order to be shut out. Tuesday evening Indiana is out; Kentucky is in. My big trackchasing trip was not getting off to a good start. The county fair figure 8 venue where I had been told it would take “a good deal of rain” to cancel their program canceled their program! They did get an inch and a half of rain today in Portland, Indiana. Therefore I can’t complain too much. They have decided to race tomorrow night, Wednesday. Going into what I am calling the “Long and Arduous Mega Trackchasing Summer Tour of 2015” I did not have any racing planned for tomorrow Wednesday. Was I cutting back and taking it easy? No. When I’m on the road and don’t go trackchasing it’s because I can’t find a new track opportunity. With tonight’s rain out in Indiana I did have a fallback position for a junk car race in Kentucky. From my hotel in Indianapolis I called the Kentucky promoter. He was promoting a demolition derby at a Kentucky county fair. His schedule also included a “circle track” race for junk cars. They would race on a temporary oval. To his credit he told me that he didn’t know if he would get two or twenty junk cars for the oval race. This was the first time his group had come to the Laurel County Fairgrounds in London, Kentucky. Based upon this shaky information (it was my only option!) I decided to make the four-hour one-way drive from Indianapolis down to London, Kentucky. If I got down there and didn’t find any countable racing my time expenditure would be eight hours of round-trip driving I wouldn’t make a trip like this unless I thought there was a better than average chance of success. I figured the only expenditure on my part was eight hours of gasoline. That amount of driving will burn a $50 bill pretty quickly. On much of my drive down to Kentucky it rained. I passed several NASCAR Sprint Cup tractor-trailers hauling their race machines up to the Kentucky Speedway. NASCAR will be racing there this weekend. The rain during the four-hour drive didn’t worry me too much. The weather forecast for London, Kentucky was acceptable although rain could come in later in the evening. It’s ironic to come from California where a severe drought is taking place to an area that’s had a strong amount of rain up to this point. Even more predicted for the next week. Tomorrow is for family. Tomorrow, Wednesday, is going to be a family day for me. My family is from Illinois although some of us have moved on. My brother Mark who lives in Phoenix is visiting my sister Lynn who lives in the greater Peoria area. Mark and I are planning to play golf tomorrow in nearby Bloomington, Illinois. Our tee time is scheduled for 1 p.m. The rain forecast from 1-5 p.m. calls for a 100% chance of precipitation! The high temperature for the day is going to be 64° with a slight wind. I don’t know if I can ever recall seeing a high temperature of 64° in the middle of July in Illinois. Normal July temperatures would probably be mid 80s or more. Following golf in Bloomington we had a big dinner planned. My sister Lynn and her husband Ed as well as my sister Becky and her husband Bob from DeKalb, Illinois would all drive to Bloomington. Along with my brother Mark we would all have “supper” as they call it in the Midwest. Waze is the best GPS system I have used. Tonight’s demolition derby was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. My Waze GPS system took me off Interstate 75 when the system noticed a slowdown in traffic. Soon I was driving all over “hell’s half acre” on a whirlwind tour of Kentucky back roads. I was hungry too. When I’m on the road and hungry I stop to eat. Someone once told me that I’m going to miss a track some day by stopping to eat. Maybe so but I haven’t up to now. Kentucky might be a little backward. The Kentucky area Wendy’s could wrap my cheeseburger in lettuce as they do in California. However this was probably the most unorganized and tarty Wendy’s I have ever visited. My iPhone was telling me my estimated time of arrival was now 7:30 p.m. I would be 30 minutes late. I certainly hoped they wouldn’t run the circle track race at the beginning of the program. I would miss what I was coming to see. By the way when I searched for an internet connection I got the surprise of my life. It appeared I was about ready to connect with a local FBI surveillance team! That would have made a great story. I am almost always early to each track I visit. I learned that habit from my business career. It was constantly reinforced that it was always good to be early rather than late even by a minute. Ten bucks; unlimited carnival rides. I arrived at the Laurel County Fairgrounds and paid my $10 general admission price. My ticket included full use of all the carnival rides. That was a lot cheaper than Disneyland. There was no activity in the demolition derby “ring”. That seemed a little strange. It turned out that a few cars and drivers have been stuck on Interstate 75 in the traffic I had avoided. Maybe they should have been using Waze. I got to the track by 7:30 p.m. but some of these stragglers didn’t make it until 8 p.m. and later. There were about a dozen cars on hand. They would be part of a two-class demolition derby program. As luck would have it I picked the grandstand that was next to a man running a huge chainsaw. He was carving logs into wooden statues! This made hearing anything said over the PA system virtually impossible. However I was beginning to become worried. There was been no mention of the circle track race for tonight. Ouch! I have been sitting next to some young Kentuckians. One fellow was wearing a huge back brace. I couldn’t resist asking him how he got involved with it. He told me he had been swinging on a “rope swing”. Don’t get ahead of me here. When he was 20 feet off the ground the rope broke and he crashed to the earth breaking his back. Ouch! He gets the back brace off on August 28. It was time to elevate the issue. Rather than stay much longer I figured I would walk into the pit area. There I would ask the promoter if there was going to be a circle track race. I soon found “John” tonight’s race organizer. He confirmed there would NOT be an oval track race tonight. He told me he had asked the drivers if they wanted to have that race and they did not. He told me he even offered them a free entry if they would race on the temporary oval and again they declined. I was going to be shut out! The demo derby future events were wrapping up now. I needed to get on the road. Less than five minutes from tonight’s county fair location it began to rain. That was about right. A brief recap of the start of this mega trip. Let’s try to recap here. I had flown overnight on an airplane not getting much sleep. Then I had rented a car in Chicago and driven it to Indianapolis and then down to Kentucky. By the time I got back to my hotel in Indianapolis tonight I had driven about 700 miles. Who flies overnight, picks up a rental car and drives at 700 miles in the first 24 hours of a trip for nothing? Do not try this at home I am a professional. AFTER THE RACES No, this trip was not going particularly well at least from the start. Bad luck I guess. There would be no race on Monday night because I flew on an airplane to get positioned in the Midwest. I would get no trackchasing credit for tonight Tuesday either. My first option had been a rain out and the second option had been a lack of countable racecars at the track. “Lack of countable cars” would go down as my “official” reason for not getting a track tonight because that had been my last and final option. I won’t get a track tomorrow night, Wednesday, either because of my commitment to family. I made that commitment to them before I discovered that tonight’s rained out figure 8 track would reschedule for Wednesday night. Once I make a commitment to people I never like to back out on them. The penalty for picking up my rental car early. I arrived back into my Indianapolis-based hotel at 2:30 a.m. I would have to be out of the hotel by 8 a.m. in order to return my car by no later than 9 a.m. to avoid an extra charge. All of the above is part of the “story”. I live for the story. I was disappointed in the day’s production. However, I expect this trip to get better and better as I go along. Good evening. Oops. Good morning. Kentucky The Bluegrass state I entered the 2015 trackchasing season having seen 34 tracks in the Bluegrass state, yes the Bluegrass state. I have a plan to see many more here before the trip wraps up. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Kentucky sayings: Millions of people; 15 last names QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Chicago, IL (ORD) – 1,745 miles RENTAL CAR #1 O’Hare International Airport – trip begins London, KY TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Laurel County Fairgrounds – $10 (not a trackchasing expense) 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 450 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 That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the one-minute “Video Lite” production from the Laurel County Fairgrounds. . . Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. Double click on a photo to begin the slide show or watch the photos at your own pace. Hover over a photo to read the caption. From California to Kentucky with a few stops in between 
