Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds – Go-kart track

 

 

THE EVENT

I have had the opportunity to follow my trackchasing hobby all over the world. As this is written I have seen racing in 74 countries. My lifetime track total exceeds 2,300. Each and every year I will trackchase in 25-30 states. At track #1,040 I moved into the “World’s #1 Trackchasing” spot.

 

 

Trackchasing rules allow for the counting of more than one track at the same facility in a number of circumstances. Before I started following the rules of trackchasing I never counted my tracks like that. Nevertheless, in order to accurately compare my results to others I choose to follow the trackchasing rules as regards “counting” tracks.

 

 

Sadly, in some cases, the hobby of trackchasing focuses too much on “counting”. I am a counter too but I put as much emphasis on touring so as to make my hobby more memorable. If you have the time check out my “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions” tab on my website. You will quickly see that I don’t just pay lip service to the topic of trackchasing touring.

 

 

My hobby is not only about racing. Trackchasing for me centers around three things. The racing part is pretty obvious. However of equal importance is the logistics of trackchasing and the opportunity to see the world.

 

 

I live in Southern California. The vast majority of tracks are located in the Midwest and East. It takes a good deal of logistical planning to get from where I live to where the tracks are. For the past 15 years I have traveled about 175 nights each and every year. Surprisingly to some, more than half of those overnights were not part of trackchasing.

 

 

Then there’s the travel just for the fun of seeing new things. You won’t want to miss my “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions” page or my “Sports Spectating Resume” page on my website at www.randylewis.org. That will give you some understanding on how important seeing the world is with my hobby.

 

 

Today’s adventure was one more of the 2,000 trips that have taken me up, down and around the long and dusty trackchasing trail. If you would like to see where I’ve been and experience those adventures here’s the link:

 

 

Randy’s Complete Track List

 

 

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!

 

 

Randy on Facebook

 

 

 

 

FOREWORD

I am considered a “flying” trackchaser. What does that mean? Because of my remote geographical home base location I normally start my trackchasing adventures with an airplane ride. If I didn’t do that the first two days or more of each trip would find me driving across huge desert in the western states of America.

 

 

From day one I have been the only trackchaser who routinely uses airplanes. In any given year I will fly on about 100 planes to make it happen for my hobby. Other trackchasers have a hard time flying 10-15% of the miles I do. Over the past 10 years I’ve benefited from an airline sponsorship program. However, prior to that I was flying just as much as I do now.

 

 

For this particular trip I had a choice of leaving my home at 9 p.m. or 3 a.m. If you were going to go on a short three or four day vacation which of those departure times would work best for you?

 

 

For the third consecutive Thursday night I elected to hop on a plane from Los Angeles to Portland. I would have to leave my house at 9 p.m. That would put me into Portland at about 2 a.m. There, for the third consecutive Thursday night, I would grab 3-4 hours of sleep. When I woke up at 6 a.m. or so I would press on with whatever it would take to get me to my ultimate trackchasing destination.

 

 

I have Pennsylvania based trackchaser Paul Weisel to thank for my knowing about the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds Go-kart Track, in Yreka, California. Yes, if you looked at my track list you would know I’ve already been to Yreka to see stock car racing. I did that in 2009. The fairgrounds “big track” was my 1,429th lifetime track to see. However, it was Paul who first discovered they raced winged outlaw karts on a smaller track in Yreka, California.

 

 

I would guess that most of my readers live in the United States. I would ask those followers this question. Would you ever even consider flying on an airplane to see a race located in your very own home state? I’m pretty sure the answer is going to come back as a resounding, “no”. In point of fact, I don’t know of ANY trackchaser in the history of trackchasing that has ever flown on an airplane from an airport in his or her home state to see a track in his or her home state!

 

 

Here’s another interesting trackchasing stat. We have a few women who are world ranked trackchasing participants. However, I would venture to say that the ONLY reason these women have ever darkened the door of a dusty oval is because their husband or significant other carries that interest. As a matter of fact of the women I’ve seen at the tracks, and I’ve met virtually every woman trackchaser ever ranked in the worldwide top 50, the only person who could tell you the difference between a modified and a sport modified (that’s not easy by the way!) is Pat Eckel. That is not the interesting stat I promised to share with you however.

 

 

I have obviously gone to a number of racetracks by myself. However, there is not a single recorded occurrence, again in the entire history of trackchasing, where a top 50 ranked woman chaser has ever attended a racetrack by herself….except once. That’s right. Trackchasing’s First Mother (Carol Lewis), one of the aforementioned lady trackchasers who admittedly could not tell you the difference between a modified and a sport modified, went to a race by herself. Back on July 7, 2007 Carol bought her ticket and went to the race, by herself, at the Hagerstown Speedway in Hagerstown, Maryland. And now you know just a little bit more about one of the more obscure trackchasing stats.

 

 

Back to today….Yreka, California is quite a bit up the road on Interstate 5 from where I live in San Clemente, California. How far do you think it is from the center of one of these towns to the other? If you guessed 701 miles you would be right. That’s about an 11-hour Drive without stops if you’re hard on the pedal.

 

 

For this trip I would prefer to fly to Portland and then drive five hours south to Yreka.  That would cover a distance of 323 miles.  By the time I hung around airports and such I wouldn’t save much time by flying compared to if I had driven the 11 hours. 

 

 

However, Yreka was not my only destination on this Father’s Day weekend. I had more trackchasing scheduled for the Northwest. My trip might possibly include a trip back to Northern California for some more action on Father’s Day Sunday itself.

 

 

Years ago I found it most humorous to listen to my fellow competitors assert that they were simply a common “working man” and I wasn’t. What the heck is a working man?

 

 

The people that were saying that all had your basic “9-5 jobs”. When quitting time came at 5 o’clock they left their jobs. They didn’t have to think about work again until the next day.

 

 

I held a sales job. I was pretty much on call from customers or my bosses or my subordinates all the time. My job required about two days of overnight travel on average every week for 30 years.

 

 

During the first 10 years of my business career it was common to be on the phone with my boss or the people that worked for me for 1-3 hours every night during the week. How many people do you know that are talking business with their fellow employees during the evening hours multiple times a week after they’ve worked a full day?

 

 

I had one boss who told me that he didn’t really want us flying from one city to the next during the day. He wanted us making sales calls during the day and flying in the evenings to the next stop. You haven’t lived until you routinely hop on a plane at 6-7 p.m. and get into your hotel at midnight several times a month.

 

 

I was a sales manager most of my business career. Part of my responsibilities had me going out into the “field” to work with my sales reps and their managers. It seemed as if the sales rep always wanted to impress me as their boss. I know that when I was a sales rep I did everything I could to impress my boss!

 

 

That meant they would likely pick me up for breakfast at 7 a.m. Then we would make more calls that day than they averaged all year. At about 5 o’clock they would drop me off at the airport. I would spend the next 3-4 hours or more getting to my hotel in the next city. The next day the whole thing would start over. Breakfast 7 a.m., a full workday and an evening plane ride. I felt like I was the baton in a track & field relay race. 

 

 

Our national sales meeting was almost always a full week’s worth of activity starting on the Monday following Father’s Day. However the managers always had to come in on Saturday in front of Father’s Day or maybe on Sunday on Father’s Day itself to prepare for the meeting. I spent Father’s Day doing that for more than 10 years.

 

 

As a family we learned to celebrate holidays, birthdays and anniversaries on the next “clear day” to use some NASCAR vernacular. To NASCAR “clear” meant when the weather was good. To us, “clear” meant when our schedules were clear!

 

 

Yes, I made a lot more money than my fellow competitors. I always thought of that as being the American way. However I made a lot more commitment to my job than anyone else that I know did as well. That’s why a big grin comes across my face when anyone would insinuate that I wasn’t a “working man”.

 

 

 

ON THE WAY TO THE RACES

 

 

THURSDAY

 

 

It’s a 65-mile drive from San Clemente to the Los Angeles International airport. I left the house at about 9 p.m. The traffic was heavy but moving along.

 

 

I have visited about 90 countries. I have visited virtually every country in Europe. I can tell you this without a single doubt. European drivers are far superior to United States drivers.

 

 

The thing that folks can’t quite get a handle on in the states is the idea that you should stay out of the passing lane if you’re not passing. How difficult is that concept? The passing lane is for… wait for it… passing.

 

 

In Europe you may have a road that is four lanes wide in one direction. When the slow lane (lane #4) is on the far right the slowest drivers should be in that lane. No European driver will be in the fast lanes (lanes 1,2 or 3) for any amount of time other than when they are passing a slower vehicle. For the life of me Americans cannot get that. It’s not going to change so maybe I just need to accept it.

 

 

 

FRIDAY

 

 

I landed in the Portland international airport at 2 AM. The Portland airport is one of the most passenger friendly of any I visit. I quickly scanned the early morning departure schedule. I was looking for a gate that wasn’t going to have a departure until about 8 a.m. I found one went there and slept until 6 a.m.

 

 

When I woke up at 6 a.m.  I had a couple of choices. I decided to go over to the Alaska Lounge and relax for a couple of hours. I did some computer work, had some hard-boiled egg whites and just chilled.

 

 

Then I went over to the Hollywood Theater, an actual movie theater, located right in terminal C at the airport. I don’t think this has been open very long. I first discovered it only last week. Last week there was nobody in there. This week most of the 17 seats were occupied. It’s a Hidden gem.

 

 

It was now nearly 9 a.m. That would be a good time to pick up my rental car. I’ll have the car for two days. By picking it up at 9 a.m. on Friday morning I can return it as late as 9 a.m. on Sunday. I expect to be flying out of Portland much earlier than 9 a.m. on Sunday morning but the more time the better.

 

 

It was going to be a 336-mile, five hour and 40 minute drive from Portland down the Yreka, California. I had nine hours to make it. That would give me a little bit of time to nap along the way.

 

 

When I left Portland it was raining and about 55°. It rains a lot in the Northwest. By the time I got down to Yreka, which is only 25 miles or so south of the Oregon border, it would be 80-90 degrees with absolutely no chance of rain. Northern California, north of San Francisco, can get very hot in the summertime and it’s almost summertime now.

 

 

The interstate roads in and around Portland are in bad shape. They are worn down by the studded tires that Oregonians are allowed to use or have been allowed to use over the years. It’s difficult to even hear the radio with roads like that.

 

 

I had selected a National Car Rental Racing Nissan Maxima for my trip. I expected to drive in excess of 1,000 miles in two days. The Maxima is a good road car. It’s a step up from the Nissan Ultima, which I also have liked in the past.

 

 

Along the way I stopped at one of my all-time fast food favorites, Burgerville. They are a Northwest institution. Yes, I am still in food rehab, which limits my carbs option to almost zero. Burgerville’s strong suit is their shakes and sundaes but their burgers are very good too.

 

 

I can be entertained on these long drives by listening to my SiriusXM satellite radio app. The broadcasts are transferred from my iPhone to the car’s audio system. I do the same thing with my iTunes podcasts. This gives me a variety of entertainment choices. I stay 100% away from listing to political talk shows from either party. I find those to be major downers and most similar to radio preachers TV preachers who seem to want to rile up everyone for their own financial benefit.

 

 

Most of these guys want to tell you they should be your moral compasses. Then they host advertisers that proudly boast “that if you owe the government $30,000 or more in taxes they can get you off the hook for paying your taxes!!” OMG.

 

 

I’m always looking for “Trackchasing Tourist Attraction” opportunities. They are really very easy to find. One just has to have the motivation and initiative to stop!

 

 

Today I was driving south on Interstate 5 in Southern Oregon. All of a sudden I came across a sign advertising the Wildlife Safari Park. It was located in Winston, Oregon and Winston was coming up in just about 5 miles. I took that sign as a sign.

 

 

I had the time. I like wild animals. I’ve been on a couple of short safaris in South Africa and Zimbabwe. I was going to stop.

 

 

I found the park easily. Based upon my advanced age (I still feel like I’m thirty-five) I was going to save three dollars on the general admission price. Yes, as an oldster I would pay just $16.95 U.S.

 

 

When I approached the ticket window with my credit card in hand the ticket taker waved me off. She handed me a ticket. Then she said, “Someone ahead of you has pre-paid your admission. All I ask is that you pay it forward.”

 

 

Now I ask you, how often does this happen? The answer is simply not very often. By accepting the ticket I had a 100% obligation to pay my good fortune forward. I’ll be looking for an opportunity to do just that in the very near future. Hopefully I can get that done in the next day or two. I never like to owe people. I will tell you that the person who gets my forward payment will get a little bit more than $16.95. Why? That’s the only right way to do things.

 

 

I wish I could tell you that the park was a real stunner. Unfortunately it wasn’t. I’ll share some pictures with you. I’ve been to a couple of wild animal parks in the United States. They were quite a bit better than what I saw today. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience. The way the ticket situation was handled was quite something.

 

 

My drive from the Portland airport down to the racing in Yreka, California took me just a little bit more than five hours not counting stops. I did pull off for a couple of rest areas for short naps. That was all built into the transportation plan so that I would arrive into the Siskiyou County Fairgrounds by 6 p.m.

 

 

 

THE RACING

 

 

 

Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds – Yreka, California

 

 

Whenever I travel a long distance to see a new racetrack, which is almost all the time, I really want to talk to someone in person before I leave for the track. There of been too many circumstances a website wasn’t updated or some catastrophic event had struck at the very last minute. However, I was never able to get a hold of a person for tonight’s racing.

 

 

The go karting group did have a Facebook page. They had a very nice poster telling that tonight’s races would begin at 6 p.m.   They even provided a phone number.

 

 

I called that number a couple of times. The line rang and rang. Finally an automated message told me that the owner of this telephone line have not set up a voicemail system. Therefore there was no way for me to leave a message. OMG.

 

 

I personally do not care if people want to live in the technological stone age. My own mother would never get an answering machine. Her reasoning was simple. She told everyone that if someone had called her and she wasn’t home they would certainly call back if they wanted to get in touch with her. How’s that for customer service?

 

 

I’ve known a couple of people who insist on doing the same thing with their cell phones. You can call them and if they’re not available to pick up the line you have no way of leaving a message. Then the inconvenience of making contact remains with you until they might become available. I don’t understand their thinking. However, when I don’t understand someone’s thinking I go back to the sage advice a used car salesman once gave me. In answer to one of my questions he told me “there’s an ass for every seat.”

 

 

I pulled into Yreka, California with a few minutes to spare. I stopped at a Shell station for a Diet Mountain Dew and a package of pork rinds. They were out of pork rinds! It’s been a long time since I’ve stopped at a convenience store and they didn’t have pork rinds on the shelf. The manager apologized and off I went with my soda.

 

 

I had seen stock car racing on the main oval track at the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds, the Siskiyou Motor Speedway. That was all the way back in 2009. At the time the fairgrounds was my 1,498th lifetime track. The next day I stopped by to see racing at the Delbert Memorial Speedway in Lakeport, California

 

 

Yreka is the town of less than 8,000 people. It’s not very big. However, in these parts a town of that size is bigger than if it were a suburb of Chicago. I pulled into the fairgrounds. There wasn’t much happening.

 

 

I must tell you I was minorly concerned. This eerie lack of activity in a place where I was expecting activity has happened to me a time or two in the past. I certainly wasn’t looking for those past situations to happen to me again tonight.

 

 

It was just my luck that three people were coming out of one of the fair buildings. I hailed them down. They worked for a nonprofit company that dealt with the fairgrounds ongoingly. They would be a good source of information.

 

 

Since there was no activity at the fairgrounds I asked them where I might find the go-kart track. My Waze GPS system was using a specific street address. It had led me to the front door of the fairgrounds.

 

 

To my amazement, astonishment and concern none of the three people knew anything about the go-kart track. One woman said, “Yes I know what a go-kart is I just don’t know anything about a go-kart track.” OMG.

 

 

I pulled over to the side of the parking lot. I used my tethering feature to allow my iPhone to get my MacBook Pro an Internet connection. I went back into the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds go-kart Facebook page. There they had a video. I returned to the two women who were still hanging around and showed them the video. By the way no other trackchaser has the technology skills to pull off what I was about to pull off and then there’s that.

 

 

This video seemed to spark some interest with the ladies. One woman said yes that’s our stock car track. I’m not sure that was exactly true but she thought it was. It’s never good when you ask a local a question and you know they are giving you an incorrect answer. It sort of taints everything they say after that point.

 

 

We couldn’t see the regular stock car track from where we were standing. The woman directed me to a place only about a half a mile or maybe less from where we were standing. That was where the big track was. However, in that general direction was where the go-kart track was situated as well. They hadn’t started racing yet. There was no engine noise.

 

 

This is not the first time I have talked to local people and asked for directions to a racetrack in their small town. At other times, just like tonight, the racetrack was within a driver and sand wedge from where we were standing. Nevertheless the “civilian” I was talking to had no idea where the track was or that it was so close. Yes, auto racing especially on the local level is a niche activity.

 

 

I was soon pulling into the parking area/pit area of the Siskiyou Golden Fairgrounds go-kart track. Their Facebook page had proudly announced a 6 p.m. starting time. However, they would not start at 6 p.m. They would play the national anthem at 7:15 p.m. and begin racing shortly thereafter.

 

 

I must be the most gullible person in America. When people tell me something I believe them. That’s why I always expect tracks to start on time if they advertise a specific start time and most do. I would estimate that 75% or more of the tracks I have visited have not started within fifteen minutes of what they advertised. If I went back to one of those tardy tracks would I believe their starting time claim? No, I would not. As it is I don’t go back to those track very often!

 

 

When people tell me something I believe them. Sometimes they don’t deliver because of their own deception. If I encounter those people again, and I sometimes do, do I believe them? No, I do not. That is why I resigned my membership in the Pennsylvania based trackchasing group and like I sometimes say…there’s that.

 

 

I paid my $10 admission price. That entitled me to view the races and walk around the pit area. As I walked around the pit area I talked with several of the competitors and car owners.

 

 

By the way it always amazes me that some oval tracks can offer a one-price admission so that fans can be in both the pit area and the spectator area. Promoters and others will tell you that the normal hike in admission prices is because of the cost of track insurance.

 

 

Let’s think about that for just a moment. Let’s say that a spectator admission ticket is $10. Now let’s say that a pit pass is $25. Both of those assumptions are pretty reasonable.

 

 

Is the track promoter who is charging these two different prices REALLY incurring an extra $15 per person expense for each of the people who paid to be in the pit area? I would significantly doubt that.

 

 

Then why is there such a big difference in spectator and pit admission prices? It’s pretty simple. The person who wants to be in the pits either must be in the pits to support a race team or is a bit more of an enthusiast than most of the folks sitting in the grandstands. If someone really needs something and/or really wants something that you have, do you think the price of the goods and services goes up or down?

 

 

I’m not faulting promoters who want to make a buck. If they don’t then maybe they and/or the racetrack won’t be there the next time you might want to visit. Just don’t lie to me about the pricing difference between the grandstand and the pit area.

 

 

I was here tonight to see the 500cc winged outlaw karts race. In talking with one car owner he told me he had paid about $7,000 for his racer. He also told me that he knew of people that had $10,000 in their go-kart engine alone.

 

 

Those numbers don’t work for the long haul. If one guy spent $10,000 on his engine alone and another guy spends $7,000 on his entire car the guy with the expensive engine will win much more often than not.

 

 

Does the guy who wins get tired of winning? Probably not. Does the guy who never gets to win get tired of that? Probably. Sooner or later the guy who never wins drops out of the class or the sport. Then the guy who has the expensive engine doesn’t have anyone to beat. It sort of works that way in trackchasing too.

 

 

Let’s move on. About this time they were holding the driver’s meeting. It was a brief meeting with not much said. I walked over to the whiteboard to see what the race lineups looked like.

 

 

There were only two competitors listed for the 500cc winged kart division. That is the bare minimum for a race to count by trackchasing rule. This was somewhat concerning to me. What if one of the karts broke during hot laps before the races began? Then this long trip would have been for naught.

 

 

Then, as if by divine intervention, another 500cc winged kart was added to the line-up. It’s even possible this car was a 250cc competitor. That didn’t matter. I breathed a little easier.

 

 

There were six divisions of karts racing tonight. Only the 500cc winged outlaw karts counted against trackchasing rules. The other classes included caged karts for youngsters and flat karts for adults.

 

 

Tonight’s program called for each class to run two heat races and one feature event. With just three cars counting for trackchasing purposes I elected to watch one complete round of heat racing only.

 

 

That seemed like plenty of time at the track for me given the circumstances. When the first round of heats was completed I had already been at the track for a little bit more than two hours. Driving five hours to a racetrack and being at the track for two hours seemed like a strong enough commitment to see three go-karts run for about eight laps.

 

 

 

AFTER THE RACES

 

 

Following the races I immediately hopped in the National Car Rental Racing Nissan Maxima. I began the four-hour drive up towards Redmond, Oregon. I will be overnighting in Redmond.

 

 

Here’s something that you won’t hear from me very often. Up until tonight my last eight nights of trackchasing overnight stays had all been at either an airport or a highway rest area or driving completely through the night. I am sure I have never done that before in my entire trackchasing career or come anywhere close to doing that.

 

 

I probably could have made a case tonight for skipping the hotel entirely. I wasn’t going to get to the hotel tonight until about 1 a.m. I had to be on the road by 11 a.m. Saturday morning. However, that was just enough time to utilize the services of a hotel to get a good night’s sleep and a shower. My hotel stay was in the middle of the trip, which was a benefit as well. I probably won’t have time to stay in a hotel tomorrow night.

 

 

For some ungodly reason hotel prices in and around Redmond, Oregon are extraordinarily high. The local Motel 6 was going for $110 plus tax. Wow!

 

 

I used Kayak.com to identify a small private 2-star rated hotel in Redmond. It was the Greenway motel. I called up the owner and wrestled with him for a while until we settled on a $60 cash payment for the cost of my room including taxes. I sensed this wasn’t going to be the very best place I had ever stayed. Nevertheless, I certainly didn’t want to pay more than $100 for a Motel 6.

 

 

When you read this particular report you will likely come to the conclusion that I have an extreme passion for what I do. It’s a travel hobby. It’s a logistical hobby. It’s a racing hobby. It takes some commitment in several different areas to make it work. I’m lucky I have such an understanding wife who allows me to come and go as need be. I do my very best when we’re together to make it a more special time for the both of us.

 

 

I can’t go without telling you that the view of Mount Shasta was absolutely gorgeous on the way up to Oregon tonight. Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano. It tops out at an elevation of 14,179 feet, the fifth highest in California. It’s covered in snow now and most beautiful.

 

 

Good evening from Yreka, California.

 

 

 

 

 

California

 

 

The Golden state

This evening I saw my 159th lifetime track in the Golden state, yes the Golden state. I hold the #1 trackchasing spot in California. I’ve seen more tracks in California than any other state.

 

 

 

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

California sayings: California is a state of mind, and we have our own language and sayings. Maybe people elsewhere get it, and maybe they don’t. We don’t care — we live in California and they don’t.

 

 

 

 

QUICK 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 595 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me.

 

 

1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 2,334

 

 

 

Total Trackchasing Countries

There are no trackchasers currently within 20 countries of my lifetime total.

 

1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 74

 

 

 

Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results

 

1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 4.37

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

One of the most scenic trackchasing days of the entire year