Oh my gosh. I was having a bad day.

Just a reminder about a few things….

This message goes out to my finance/travel newsletter members. If you are also a member of the racing newsletter group you will get a slightly different version of this post soon.

What’s coming in the near future?

Were the presidential polls right or wrong or maybe a little of both?

Looking to buy a new car? I’ll tell you the best way to do just that.

And now let me tell you about a bad day I had traveling not long ago. Most of the “bad” came from my own stupidity! I hate it when that happens.

Most people will tell you that I am a very laid-back guy. Actually, two of our lady friends, who don’t know each other, have both said I am the most laid-back guy they know. Thank you Jill and Stephanie. However, I am sure that Carol will correct them based upon my behavior from time to time. I have absolutely no patience for people who cannot do their job well.

I don’t care if a person is a brain surgeon or drives for UPS or works the counter at McDonald’s. Just know what your job is and if you’re willing to accept a paycheck do your job well. Any questions?

I am equally if not more so hard on myself when I don’t do a task well that I know I’m capable of doing well. I stopped playing golf because I couldn’t live with my mistakes. I would rather not play than play poorly.

Today I performed poorly. Very poorly. If my trip’s purpose went south today I had no one to blame but me. Here’s the story.

This morning I planned to leave Southern California for a trackchasing trip that would begin in Minnesota. A good friend of mine, Rob Palmer from South Dakota, told me about a special once a year autocross race. The race was scheduled in the North Star State. That’s Minnesota for those not up on their state nicknames. This plan was perfect. I love going to these one-off events.

The race event was scheduled to begin today, Friday night at 6 p.m. In point of fact, this was really a demolition derby event. Demolition derby activity does not count in the hobby of trackchasing. However, the track race poster said they were also going to have an autocross race. An autocross race is essentially a race using junk cars racing on a very informal dirt track. This type of autocross racing does count for my trackchasing hobby.

I had taken a couple of looks at the race poster and concluded the race was in Owatonna, Minnesota, home of the Viking Speedway. I had last been to the Viking Speedway all the way back in 2001. What did I remember from that visit?

A guy mistakenly took my camera when he thought I had left it behind. I had not left it behind! However, Minnesota people are just so gosh-darned nice they can’t help themselves from doing good deeds. That fellow’s niceness cost me a lot of time. I can’t go into that story now but if you would like to read about it check the link below.

The night my camera disappeared when it shouldn’t have

Owatonna is only about an hour from the Twin Cities (that’s Minneapolis-St. Paul). Based upon its location I designed an entire transportation plan so that I could be comfortably seated in the grandstands for the 6 p.m. start time.

My trackchasing premise centered around getting to Owatonna from my home in San Clemente, California. Sadly as I would come to find out when I have a bad premise I often, make that pretty much always, come up with an erroneously catastrophic terrible conclusion. That is what happened to me today.

I was going to lose two hours in time zone changes flying from Southern California to Minnesota. No problem. I left on a leisurely 9 a.m. flight that would land me into Minneapolis by 2:30 p.m. That was plenty of time to get down to Owatonna by 6 p.m.

Most of the time I take a 6 a.m. or a 7 a.m. departure from Los Angeles (LAX) to my faraway trackchasing destinations. I could have easily left earlier this morning. However, given the logistics of it all I figured a 9 a.m. flight would be just fine.

By the way please let me pass along my regrets at this point. I realized that many of my U.S. references regarding cities and states might not make much sense to my hundreds of foreign-based readers. I can only recommend you read along and substitute geographical locales you are familiar with.

On the way to the airport, I stopped to use the Tesla supercharger station in Redondo Beach, California. The charging location is only about 10 minutes from the airport. I figured I could supercharge my car while I did about a mile of power walking. This would be a good use of my multitasking skills.

Carol is constantly telling me that my multitasking efforts are a complete and utter waste of time. She tells me that no one can do two tasks or more well while multitasking. Then I tell her that so many tasks in life do not need to be done perfectly. I believe two multitask activities done at 80% efficiency are much better than doing each of those tasks in twice the amount of time at 100% effectiveness. Although I have explained the wisdom of this choice multiple times Carol has not budged from her position.

When I got out of my car and attached the supercharger a beautiful red Tesla Model X pulled into the charger next to me. Out jumped two guys. They were screaming and yelling and celebrating. Mind you it was 7 o’clock in the morning. What was going on?

They had just driven in from San Francisco. They arrived at the supercharger here in Redondo with exactly 0 miles of electric range left on their fuel gauge. They were just happy they made it to the supercharger and couldn’t wait to tell me all about the angst the situation had created for them. When I returned from about 25 minutes of power walking they were already gone. What did that tell me about the two guys in the red Tesla? Maybe they didn’t have free supercharging! I’m not sure what their situation was but they did act just a little bit weird.

Today I was flying from Los Angeles to Minneapolis on Spirit Airlines. The Spirit clientele is about as sketchy demographically as you’re going to find anywhere in the commercial flying world. If you can’t catch COVID-19 from this group of characters then you can’t catch it at all.

Some airlines that I’ve been flying recently, most notably Delta Airlines, have done an excellent job explaining how they’re cleaning their planes. Delta makes sure that when people get on and off the plane they follow social distancing guidelines.

Today Spirit did none of that. I took the time, because I’m old and pretty straightforward, to let the flight attendants know I thought they did their job really poorly as regards social distancing advice to their passengers. Actually, the flight attendants’ appearance and overall persona seem to match their downscale clientele. When I offered my consumer feedback they looked at me as if I was speaking Portuguese. They didn’t say a word in response. All I could do was tell them what I thought. I’m not shy about doing that.

When I got off the plane I began to make a series of mistakes that could have been fateful for tonight’s trackchasing. I noticed that Ike’s Restaurant in the Minneapolis airport was open. They are a Priority Pass member. I could eat at Ike’s for free. I had some time. I would stop there.

Membership with Priority Pass is part of my Chase Sapphire Reserve Visa card program. Priority Pass is an over the moon fantastically good deal. In the first year of operation, I earned over $10,000 in free meals and airline club visits. Fantastic! However, since COVID came upon the scene in March I haven’t use my Priority Pass membership one time until today.

I went up to the restaurant and just relaxed. I ordered a gourmet cheeseburger which came with fries and as much free Pepsi as I could drink. Of course, for me, that would be Diet Pepsi.

While I was at the restaurant I used my iPhone to reserve a hotel using my Priceline.com low price strategy. Yep, I love multi-tasking. I got a Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott property near the airport for $50 and tax. That’s a pretty good deal. It was well below the Marriott site’s price as well.

Then I made a reservation for an airplane ride in the morning from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh. I’ll be trackchasing in Ohio tomorrow evening. Pittsburgh was the closest airport to the racetrack. The flights that I wanted to use were wide open for standby passengers like me.

I leaned back in my chair in the restaurant with not a care in the world and thought to myself. This trip was going really well. I didn’t have to get up that early to make a 9 a.m. flight. On the flight I was given an exit row aisle with no one in my row so I had all of the legroom that I wanted. I watched an Apple iTunes movie on my iPad and did some work on my MacBook Pro.

Now I had the good fortune to be able to use my Priority Pass again for the first time in several months. My meal was excellent and the service was wonderful. Yep. Everything was going so well.

What was I REALLY thinking to myself? I was thinking that this Randy fellow was a helluva lot smarter than his wife Carol sometimes gives him credit for being.

I have probably used the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to begin my trackchasing efforts more than any other airport in the last decade. I know that place inside out. I’ve even slept overnight in the airport many times.

When I was here last week I noticed they had changed the location of the MSP rental car center. You can still walk to it after a short less than a half-mile train ride. That’s a lot better than riding those shuttles 10-15 minutes to some way off the airport rental car center.

I had plenty of time. I figured I could pick up my rental car and go over and check into the hotel this afternoon. I might even have time for a 30-minute nap. I had so much time that when National Car Rental didn’t have a Toyota Camry available in the executive elite area I asked them to bring one up for me. That took about 15 minutes but I didn’t mind. I like driving Toyota Camry rental cars.

While I waited for my car I plugged in the location of Owatonna, Minnesota into my Waze GPS system. Yep, just like I thought it was about an hour from Twin Cities. I knew that tonight’s event was going to be at the location of the Viking Speedway. This is when things got weird. The perfect day I was having was about ready to turn into a most imperfect day. Buckle up.

I already knew that Owatonna was just an hour away. For some unknown reason, I plugged in “Viking Speedway” to see if I could get my GPS to take me directly to the racetrack rather than just to the city of Owatonna in general. That’s when bells, no sirens, no air raid sirens begin to go off from my phone and in my head.

The Viking Speedway was NOT in Owatonna! Say what? The Viking Speedway was in Alexandria, Minnesota. Did that make a difference? You can bet your sweet bippy it did. Alexandria vs. Owatonna made a huge difference.

This was a problem. Owatonna was an hour from the Twin Cities. But… Alexandria was 2 1/2 hours from the Twin Cities. That extra hour and a half difference was the difference between success and failure for me. Now there would be no time to stop at my hotel. There would be no 30-minute nap. With the new drive expected to take 2 1/2 hours, I wasn’t going to arrive at the racetrack until 6:30 p.m. The show started at 6 p.m.

Normally if an auto racing show begins at 6 p.m. they would probably still be racing by nine or ten that evening. However, this wasn’t a normal auto racing show. This was really a demolition derby event with ONE autocross race.

Shows like this always have the racing portion of the program before the demo derby stuff. If they started their program with the autocross race at 6 p.m. I wouldn’t get there in time to see it. By the time I got there all they would be doing would be demolition derby and demolition derby doesn’t count for trackchasing.

For the folks who don’t follow my trackchasing all that much let me explain. My faraway travel is initiated by racing and a race date. If there is no race I don’t get on an airplane. I stay at home.

Of course, my hobby of trackchasing is not only about racing. It’s just as much about managing travel logistics as you may have noticed from the above. What I do is about racing, travel logistics, and……..seeing local stuff and meeting local people.

Some folks think my hobby is just about racing. Nope. Not by a long shot. I keep a list of the local sights and sounds I have experienced that have nothing to do with racing. It’s a long list of experiences from all over the world. I call these experiences “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions”. Here’s the list. The list is only 80-90% complete and I add to it frequently. You might want to see how many of these places you’ve been too.

Trackchasing Tourist Attractions

I don’t know if there’s a single person related to the hobby of trackchasing, with the exception of maybe Guy Smith, who would try to tell you that trackchasing is not a competitive counting hobby. Trackchasers do not trackchase unless the track they are visiting counts. Period end of story!

I had taken a later flight than I should have. I had wasted 30 minutes or more having a leisurely lunch in the airport. I took another 15 minutes to wait for exactly the type of rental car that I wanted. All of those decisions were terrible decisions. I felt bad for me. I felt bad that my performance today had been so poor up to now.

I will bet you that I have rented 50 cars in Minneapolis in the last five years. That’s why I was shocked and dismayed when my Waze GPS system began to take me on some surface streets (that’s a California term) as I exited the airport. I couldn’t recall ever taking these side streets to leave the airport before. Traffic made travel slow. I knew that my time deadline was getting worse by the minute. The road construction in the airport area was nerve-racking.

Then when I finally got on the interstate, Interstate 94, I ran into a severe traffic jam. I have been in some bad traffic on Friday afternoons in Minneapolis before. However, once I got on Interstate 94 headed to St. Cloud I thought I had escaped all of the Minneapolis traffic.

I figured I would call the race promoter and see if the autocross race was going to be the first event or the night. If it was I was sunk. What did “sunk” mean? It would mean I had traveled all the way to southern California to Minnesota with no good result.

I had called the race promoter about a week ago to find out more information and tell him a little bit about why I was coming. I do this virtually every time I trackchase. I don’t really like to trust websites or race posters. I do trust my racing friends or the track promoter for the best information.

I thought I was calling back the promoter’s number again today. His phone rang and rang and rang and no one answered. I left a message. About 20 minutes later I got a message back from a fellow by the name of Noah. I thought I had been calling a fellow by the name of Josh. Noah told me I had left a message at the wrong number. I appreciated his feedback. You get that kind of nice behavior from people from Minnesota even if they do take your camera bag once in a while.

Next up I found the Full Arena Facebook page. Full Arena was promoting tonight’s event. The first thing I saw was a large poster of a racing event with the words “canceled” painted across it. Damn! Were we canceled for tonight? No, we were not. The Full Arena Promotions folks were simply commiserating with another fellow who had his show canceled for tomorrow night because of COVID. Minnesotans are just too nice.

I might take a moment to tell you about the “NIMS” people. I routinely travel to 30-35 states each year. I’ve done that for decades. Heck in 2020 alone, in the midst of the pandemic, I’ve seen racing in 20 states, a Canadian province and six different countries. With that much experience, I get to know the people from one region or another and one state or another.

I know that nobody in the U.S. comes anywhere close to the amount of beer people can and do drink in Wisconsin. However, I can tell you this from multiple experiences. The folks down in Zimbabwe can drink just as much as anybody from Green Bay! Of course, when I’m in the south I gotta talk “country”. When I head to New York if I can figure out a way to get on the good side of a New Yorker they will stand in front of a moving bus to help me. In Montana, the challenge is to not be considered a city/suburban slicker.

So what are “NIMS” people? These are residents of Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. The nicest people in the country live in these four states. No, that doesn’t mean that the only nice people in the country live in these four states. It simply means that more nice people that you would expect, statistically, live in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. I love the NIMS people.

I really needed to talk to tonight’s race promoter about the race schedule. I scrounged up another telephone number from the Facebook page for Josh. Remember, I was doing all of this while driving. Josh didn’t answer but a young woman did. I frantically asked when the autocross race was going to take place tonight. The news I got was good.

She told me that “racing” would probably be the first event of the night but they would also be having some racing somewhere in the middle of the program. As we talked just a little bit longer she seemed to indicate that the racing that would begin at 6 p.m. would only be time trials. Time trials don’t count in trackchasing. I have to see racing as in a real race. The main race would be somewhere in the middle of the program she told me.

Did I tell you that I also called the Viking Speedway the site of tonight’s demolition derby? I realized they were probably leasing out the track to the demolition derby promoter but I figured if I called them they might be able to help out. The phone rang a few times. Then it went to message. The message told me their mailbox was full. Welcome to short track racing folks. That’s how they do it here.

Based upon the information the young woman had given me it looked like I was still going to be able to reach my Minnesota pot of gold in time for the race. There was one important item to remember. When you have done this as long as I have and as hard on the gas as I have you know that until you’ve seen the green flag drop on the beginning of that first race you haven’t seen a race at a new track. The people I have talked to who represent short tracks have given me bad information many times. They’ve given me a lot of good information as well. All I could do now was fight my way through traffic on Interstate 94 on the way up to Alexandria, Minnesota.

At this point in time, I didn’t really know how things were going to turn out. However, I hope that the reader can fully appreciate and understand the uncertainty of the trackchasing game. To some, this hobby might seem fool hearty and to others, it might seem somewhat extravagant. No matter. I would never consider someone’s collecting hobby be it stamps, beer cans or Van Gogh paintings to be any of that. It’s simply what people like to collect.

My day was not going well. Granted pretty much everything that had gone poorly so far was my fault. For the rest of the night, things didn’t get any better but I don’t think I could be blamed.

I pulled into the Douglas County Fairgrounds which is the location of the Viking Speedway at 6:41 p.m. I was 41 minutes late. From the sounds of things they were having the lawnmower demolition derby. I just hoped they hadn’t had their one and only autocross race.

The place was packed with cars. I could choose to park out in the hinterlands or I could use the Randy Lewis method of finding that “extra spot”. This is really a religious-themed approach with me. My parking arrangement mirrors the overnight plans for baby Jesus. There is always room at the inn for one more.

Yes, I was driving a rental car. I went the baby Jesus route and made my own parking spot next to the motorcycle parking area within 50 yards of the ticket booth. That seemed like a good thing. Not really.

When I walked up to the ticket booth it was closed. What was up with that? It turned out that the grandstand was sold out. I won’t encounter a track but once every four or five years that is sold out. By the way this was not “COVID social distancing” sold out. Pretty much every seat in the grandstand was occupied as I would come to see later.

My next choice was to buy a pit pass. Tonight’s general admission price had been $15 per person. A pit pass was only $20. Often times a general admission ticket might be $10 and a pit pass $30. I gladly paid the extra five bucks. The pits were packed. The grandstands were packed. There was not a lot of social distancing going on. Masks? Not invented here.

Just before I got to the fairgrounds tonight the skies out toward the west began to look troublesome. It looked as if rain was coming. I checked the radar. Rain WAS coming. That being the case I went back to where I had parked my car near the grandstand and drove it down to within a few yards of the entrance of the pit area. I figured it would be raining when I left. I didn’t want to have a long walk to the car.

The first event I saw from the pit area was a 25-car stock demolition derby. The derby ring wasn’t all that large. Twenty-five cars were probably twice as many or more than normally contest a demolition derby in a space like this. It took the better part of a half-hour until only one car was remaining from the demo. That’s how a demolition derby works.

Then it took them another 20-25 minutes using five skip loaders to remove the disabled demolition derby cars. It was an absolute mess. One of the drawbacks to demolition derbies is the time it takes to clear the ring when one event is finished. During this downtime, I inquired about when the autocross racing was going to be.

I ran into someone who told me a totally different story than what I got from the woman when I called the track promoter’s phone. This guy told me there was going to be an autocross heat race after the demolition derby that I had just seen. Then they would have one more demo and then another autocross heat and then one more demo and another autocross feature.

Next, the track announcer contradicted both of the people who had giving me their version of the autocross racing schedule. He essentially said the cars would appear in three different heats. I didn’t know who to believe.

I did know this. The bad weather was right on top of us. We’re the blue dot! If this had been a NASCAR race the race would have been put on hold because of lightning. It took them an excruciatingly long time to remove all of the disabled demo cars. When there were only one or two DD cars left to move they brought out about 25 autocross cars. This was the entire field of autocross competitors at the track tonight. Putting twenty-five cars in a demo ring this small with the expectation they would race in an oval configuration was the true equivalent to putting ten pounds of taters in a five-pound sack.

Then one of the skip loaders moved a couple of huge tractor tires into the ring and placed them about 60 yards apart maybe more. The autocross cars and drivers were going to race around these two tractor tires in the form of an oval. They would be racing clockwise. No, this was not the Daytona 500.

This was a huge amount of autocross cars to put on such a small track. If this truly was a heat race why wouldn’t they divide the field in half? Maybe the track promoter figured that with the bad weather within arm’s reach his best bet was to let all of the autocross racers get their chance to run.

The promoter was rushing now. I was more than apprehensive. I knew that when these storms with yellow and lots of red radar hit, the program was likely to be totally washed out.

I think the only good thing that happened to me today was when the starter threw the green flag and the race began. That meant the track was in the books. Trackchasing rules state that a chaser must see “competitive racing”. That means when the green flag drops I have seen competitive racing and can then count the track. Some old-time competitors have always held onto to totally erroneous views that a complete race needs to be seen. Wrong. Disinformation. That is NOT the case.

The cars made one lap and then had a pile-up of about 15 cars in one of the turns. This totally blocked the track. Truthfully this event looked more like a demolition derby than anything but in point of fact it was an auto race.

Tonight I got some of the best video of the demolition derby and then the autocross racing that I think I’ve taken all year. You’re not gonna want to miss the video.

This autocross race was designated to last for 15 minutes. The leader after 15 minutes would be the winner. With only a minute or two to go it began to sprinkle. I have missed some races by the smallest amounts of time in the past under these conditions. I have been able to count some races when the rain held off for the five minutes I needed. Tonight I beat the rain by the slimmest of margins.

When the autocross race took the checkered flag I was out of here. I knew there was virtually no chance of the program continuing beyond another 5-10 minutes. When the temperature dropped about 15° in three or four minutes that was a signal that rain would be here any minute.

It was a wild 2 1/2 hour ride back to Minneapolis. I had to drive through all of the storms that were traveling southeast just like I was. It got so bad at one point that I pulled into a rest area and tried to sit it out. You should know this. I almost never stop. If the forecast calls for 12 inches of snow I still go and go until they close the roads. I’m that guy. Tonight I stopped. It was that bad.

When I finally got back to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area I pulled into the parking lot of my Fairfield Inn and Suites hotel. It had been quite a day. I had made an earlier reservation at this place via Priceline.com. There didn’t seem to be too much activity at the hotel.

It was now past midnight. I just wanted to get checked in and get some sleep. I gathered all my gear and walked up in the rain to the entrance of the hotel’s sliding glass door. The door wouldn’t open. I could see the hotel clerk sitting behind her desk. I had to bang on the window to get her attention. She came out to tell me the bad news.

Apparently due to the coronavirus and lack of business this hotel had been closed temporarily. Guests were being “rerouted” to another Fairfield Inn about 10 minutes away. Say what? Why were they selling rooms on Priceline if this hotel closed!

I trudged back to my car with all of my stuff as it began to rain a little bit harder. There’s a lot of road construction right now in Minneapolis. Some of their interstate highway interchanges are closed. It took me a while to navigate around that mess until I pulled into the next Fairfield Inn. It was now nearing 1 a.m. How much more could go wrong in one single day?

The clerk at the second Fairfield Inn was nice enough. I asked her why Priceline would be selling rooms at a hotel that was closed. She had no good answer. She told me it was not just Priceline but the Marriott hotel site was also selling rooms at the Fairfield Inn in Mendota Heights which was closed. Oh my.

As I look back on this day I am amazed that I survived it. I made so many mistakes and then other mistakes just kind of fell my way with the grandstands being sold out and the bad weather coming and the hotel situation being messed up.

There were only two good things that really came out of this particular Friday. The first….by the slimmest of margins I was able to count my 2,642nd-lifetime racetrack visit. And the second good thing? The trip came with a story. I do this because I like to “talk story” as they say in Hawaii. Then as Larry, the Cable guy might say, “I don’t care what you say this was a funny story!”

Good evening from the Viking Speedway in Alexandria (not Owatonna), Minnesota.

The YouTube Video
This video includes high speed, crashing, banging junk car racing and demo derby action. Caution: video includes violent behavior

Close-up demo derby and autocross racing action

The SmugMug Photo Album
This captioned album takes you through the entire trip A-Z. A trip to Minnesota for demolition derby and lots more.

Summertime fun in the midwest. It’s the always reliable on the fun meter demolition derby