Greetings from Sedalia, Missouri
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
State Fair Arena Dirt figure 8 Lifetime Track #2,651 THE EVENT Editor’s note: I think the small car figure 8 racing that is done in Missouri is the very best racing of its type in the world. How often do you get to watch a sporting event where the very best in the world compete? I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with New Hampshire buddy Bruce Spencer). I live in a modest seaside cottage in the sleepy little village by the sea, San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Trackchasing for me is all about three things. First, I’m interested in seeing an auto race. Secondly, I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Finally, I want to create a logistical plan that allows me to accomplish the two points mentioned above without depleting my retirement account. That’s trackchasing for me. Am I truly serious about trackchasing? I think so. I’ve seen an auto race in 85 countries at more than 2,660 different tracks. Does that sound serious to you? I’ve been able to see the world doing this. If you’re interested in exactly what I’ve been able to experience all around the U.S. and the world I recommend you click on this link. Trackchasing Tourist Attractions Trackchasing can be an expensive hobby. One of my fellow competitors was said, “When Randy stops trackchasing we know he will have run out of money”. Folks, I have been retired for nearly 20 years and have not earned a single dime working. I’m still trackchasing! After each and every event that I attend I post a YouTube video, a SmugMug photo album and a very detailed Trackchaser Report about the experience on my website at www.randylewis.org. I guess people find what I share interesting. My website gets more than 20,000 views every month. Because I have seen racing in 85 countries at this point I am considered the World’s #1 Trackchaser. That’s good enough for me. Now I encourage you to drop down a few spaces and read about today’s trackchasing adventure. As you discover what went on at this track just think about the idea that I’ve done this more than 2,600 times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. If you’re interested in looking back and seeing where I’ve been the following link is for you. If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Saturday, September 12, 2020. I’m thinking the reason that folks enjoy reading my Trackchaser Reports is that my style of traveling isn’t like anyone else’s that they know. I don’t think most folks would want to do it the way I do it. However, I think many people are intrigued by the situations and experiences that I come to meet up with. Last night I slept in my humongous National Car Rental Racing Nissan Infinity SUV for about four hours. Where did I sleep? In the cell phone parking lot of the Denver International Airport in Colorado. Before I go any further I will ask you a couple of questions. Have you ever slept overnight in an airport cell phone parking lot? Do you know anyone who has ever done that? So, you might be asking yourself, “Randy, why would you want to sleep in 40° temperatures in a cell phone parking lot somewhere out in Colorado?” Good question. Pour yourself a cold one, sit down in the recliner, and let’s talk about it. Last night I trackchased at the Honor Speedway in Pueblo, Colorado. I got out of the races after 10 p.m. It was going to be about a 2 ½-hour drive up to DIA. I was going to have to stop for gas and maybe some nourishment and to satisfy mother nature’s call when needed. I also had a nonstop flight that was leaving Denver bound for St. Louis at 8 a.m. on this Saturday morning. When I crunched all the numbers I figured that my allowable sleep time was about four hours. With so little time for traditional rest, it wouldn’t make any sense to try to get a hotel. Did I really have any choice other than to sleep in the cell phone parking lot? I know what you might be thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t try to tie-in a race in Pueblo, Colorado with a race the next night in Sedalia, Missouri. If you were thinking that then you were probably thinking like my fellow trackchasing competitors. If they were willing to do what I am willing to do maybe they would be the World’s #1 Trackchaser… but probably not. I take a lot of early morning flights although leaving at 8 a.m. wasn’t all that early. Why do I prefer early morning flights? Actually, I really don’t. However, when I’m traveling domestically I am most often flying on a standby basis. If an airline has an open seat and I have enough standby juice a.k.a. seniority then I might be able to sit in one of those unsold seats. There are typically more unsold seats available on morning flights than later in the day. I also try to get to the airport just a little bit early for these flights. I can benefit in two ways from that plan. If something goes wrong on the way to the airport, traffic, accidents or whatever it’s better to be early than late. If nothing logistically goes wrong then I arrive at the airport 30-45 minutes earlier than needed. No problem with that. I simply go walking up and down the terminals to get as much of my 4-mile daily power walk goal in as possible. If I can cover 2 miles doing this I consider that a success. When I land I’ll try to get in another mile before I leave the airport. At that point, I only have to walk one more mile to meet my 4-mile goal for the day. I’m in my 19th year of retirement. I retired at a relatively young age. I have never held a job or wanted to hold a job during those 19 years. I have never earned a single dime of income in all of that time. I think I’ve been pretty good at managing money over the years. I have a simple philosophy that I try to stick to at every turn. I don’t want to buy cheap things cheap. I want to buy good things cheap. As we go through the rest of today’s story I think you’ll see that strategy coming through again and again. When I landed at the St. Louis airport I went directly to the Pasta House. Why was that a priority today? The Pasta House is part of the Priority Pass program that comes with my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. With PP I can go to the Pasta House in St. Louis and hundreds of other restaurants and airline clubs across the United States and the world. Here’s the killer point. I can partake of their services usually at no charge whatsoever. Who wouldn’t like to do that? Today at almost noon I showed up at the Pasta House and flashed my electronic Priority Pass membership card. This would allow me a $28 food and drink credit. I ordered up a 12-inch sausage pizza, their delicious-looking fudge cake dessert and a bottle of Diet Coke. My bill came to $27.11. However, because of my Priority Pass membership, there was no charge for me. During the first year of my Priority Pass membership, I made it a personal goal to generate $10,000 in savings from my visits to restaurants like the Pasta House and airline clubs all over the world. I’m happy to tell you that I surpassed that goal of $10,000. Then in March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic hit. People stopped traveling. Because there were very few travelers many of the airline clubs and airport restaurants closed their doors temporarily. I have only been able to use my Priority Pass benefits a couple of times since the pandemic began. When things open up I’ll be back at those restaurants and clubs all the time. Because I’m always trying to watch my carbs or my calories or both, today’s pizza and fudge cake were going to be my entire food consumption for the day. That statement comes with the exception of one Egg McMuffin purchased at an outrageous price in the Denver airport earlier this morning. I figured I could make that work. After having slept in my car in Colorado last night I was going to be in need of a hotel tonight. I immediately went to Priceline.com. I get some stellar deals with those folks. I almost always stay in a Marriott or Sheraton property. Today I selected a Town Suites by Marriott Hotel in Columbia, Missouri. Columbia was the perfect location. I could get there from St. Louis in the early afternoon and get a short nap in. Then I would be ready to go for tonight’s trackchasing effort in Sedalia, Missouri. After the race, the Columbia hotel location would only be an hour’s drive. Priceline sold me a night at the Towne Suites by Marriott Hotel in Columbia for just $60 plus tax. That was about half of what the going rate was for this hotel this evening. Then when I checked into the hotel I was able to negotiate an upgrade to a full suite because of my titanium elite status in the Marriott frequent-stay program. They also gave me a welcome gift….and I received “stay credit” so that my benefits at Marriott would continue to grow. I’m all about buying good stuff cheap. I wouldn’t say I did as well when I picked up my National Car rental in St. Louis. Right now rental car locations are overstocked with SUV automobiles. They don’t have very many four-door sedans. I always pick a sedan because I’m usually going to drive long distances in my rental car. The sedans, especially right now the Toyota Camry, give me fuel mileage of nearly 40 miles a gallon. Last night’s Infiniti SUV in Colorado provided less than 20 miles per gallon. It is true that I have driven SUV models since 2013 as the personal choice for my own car. However, I make very few long trips so the 22 miles per gallon that my Lexus RX 350 used to give me wasn’t that big of a deal. Now that I’ve got an electric car at home my fuel expense is zero and will be during the entire time of my Tesla ownership. I was really looking forward to the figure 8 racing tonight in Sedalia. I have seen racing at more than 350 different figure 8 tracks in the United States, Canada, England and Australia. I think I might have some credibility when I share my thoughts about figure 8 racing. The four-cylinder figure 8 racing provided in and around central Missouri is the best figure 8 racing for these types of cars on dirt racetracks…anywhere in the world! They get large car counts. The racing is super competitive. They start 15-20 cars in their feature races. Nobody does that. I first started out with this Missouri figure 8 racing group when they were promoted by J&B Promotions. The J&B owner is Gary Jones (above). Gary’s a buddy of mine. I was sorry to see that he sold the figure 8 part of his operation last year to a group called Lucky Seven Promotions. On the other hand, I’m glad to see that the Lucky Seven Promotions’ transition went well. The program tonight was as good as ever. Tonight’s track, the Sedalia State Fair Arena, was on the grounds of the Missouri State Fairgrounds. I must admit that I suffered minor heart palpitations when I drove into the fairgrounds and observed a darkened large covered grandstand. There was no one there. That concerned me. This would not be the first time I showed up to an arena with an empty grandstand that had canceled at the last minute. Or, heaven forbid, I had gotten my race dates mixed up. I’m happy to report that the Lucky Seven figure 8 racing tonight was held at the Missouri State Fairgrounds. It just wasn’t held in front of the big grandstand. I had seen racing back in 2000 at the large fairgrounds track here in Sedalia. That was a long time ago. Seeing that race with Jason Johnson being the winner was my 425th-lifetime track. Yep, a long time ago. This part of Missouri features a lot of country folks. An outside observer might even say, hillbillies. I don’t think of hillbilly as a negative term. I’ve got a good friend named Franklin Hodges who runs the Hillbilly Speedway in Fair Grove, Missouri. I once ran into a fan in a Kentucky grandstand who told me he was proud to be a hillbilly. Sedalia is getting pretty close to the Ozarks, which is home to Branson the country music performing capital of the world, or something like that. We’ve been to Branson several times and love it. I sort of think that of my admission price to the three tracks that I will be seeing this weekend as being free. Of course, in reality, very little is free in life. I have a folder of one dollar bills that I have been stashing away in my briefcase. Whenever I get change in dollar bills I put them in this special folder. This weekend I will use those one-dollar bills to pay for $33 worth of trackchasing admissions. I still have a lot of ones in that folder for future use. Tonight I would estimate 50-60 4-cylinder pretty well used up figure 8 cars were racing. Some might look at these cars from the exterior and think they were demolition derby participants. Nope. These are racing machines that put on the best four-cylinder figure 8 racing shows in the country as well as the world. I would say that most of my figure 8 racing has been seen at county fairs. Often times these are drivers who race only one time a year. The racing in these types of situations is slow, not super competitive and a lot of cars fall out. At one of these county fair shows as much time can be spent removing the disabled cars after the race as seeing the racing. Tonight’s racing featured seven heat races and three main events. The top two finishers in each heat race would transfer to the A-main event. Then the winner of each B feature would also go to the main event. I would say in all of these races there were only three or four disabled cars that needed to be moved off the track after the checkered flag flew. Tonight’s track announcer did give me the briefest of mentions. He told the crowd that Randy Lewis, “The World’s Figure 8 trackchasing champion” was in the audience. What he said was true. His message was worded a little bit differently than most of my mentions. Nevertheless, I appreciated him taking the time to do that. During the pandemic, racing fans do not wear masks at the races. It doesn’t really matter what the local signs or rules or mandates are from governments. Fans don’t wear a mask at the races. Nevertheless, I don’t find it at all difficult to socially distance myself from others. Tonight I grabbed a seat in the top row of the grandstand right next to the figure 8 scoring team. Nobody was within 6 feet of me all night. The figure 8 scoring situation is somewhat unusual if you’re not familiar with it. There is no technology with this system. One scorer is assigned to watch just one car in each race. Except for the feature events there usually aren’t more than eight cars or so in one race. Eight cars mean eight scorers. It’s kind of fun to watch the scorers doing their thing. They flip over a little scorecard with the lap count each time their driver passes the start/finish line. For the most part, there is no traveling series of figure 8 racing groups anywhere in the country. In general, I rarely know who the drivers are. I do have my all-time favorite. That would be one Peter Becker. Peter races figure eights up in Canada. Tonight I’m going to add an additional Figure 8 driver to my “favorite drivers group” which you can find on my website at this link. That addition will be Curt “the Hammer“ Turpin. He drives the number 15. I’ve watched him race in this series for a few years. He normally does very well. Tonight it looked like he had a brand new black and white car without a single dent on it. He won his heat race by a mile but got sidelined by an overheating engine during the feature and dropped out. Curt, welcome to my all-time favorite drivers’ group. Tonight I did a little Facebook live broadcasting of the feature events to people who follow me on Facebook. Not very many people join up for one of these impromptu broadcasts, without any advance notice, but it is kind of fun simply to share with other people. This evening’s admission price was a very reasonable eight dollars. The 50-50 Winner took home $218. Tonight’s feature winner captured a prize of $700. It was a fun night of racing. If you get the chance I would highly recommend you take a look at my YouTube video. If you do you will see what good figure 8 racing on dirt with four-cylinder cars looks like. When you watch that video you’ll be seeing the best figure 8 racing of this type in the world. How often do you get a chance to do something like that? The very last event of the night was a “powder puff” event. I told you that folks down here are country right? I don’t believe they’re all that concerned about political correctness. Having a powder puff race that is limited to women drivers works very well here. I certainly didn’t have a problem with it. Nobody held a gun to anyone else’s head to make the drivers do anything they didn’t already want to do. The racing was finished at a reasonable 9 p.m. after starting on time at 6 p.m. That’s how a show should go. When I got back to the National Car Rental Racing Chevy Malibu I noted that I had walked 3.9 miles for the day. By the time I got back to my hotel room, four miles was in the bank! On the ride back to the hotel I listened to one of the many podcasts that I subscribe to. This podcast was initially recommended to me by New Hampshire buddy Bruce Spencer. It’s called “Dinner with Racers”. Tonight I listened to their “at dinner” interview with Skip Barber the owner-operator of a Skip Barber Racing School. He was a most interesting interview. If you’ve read this far you will note that all of these activities represent a reasonably typical day of trackchasing. I didn’t have any time for a Trackchasing Tourist Attraction. A two-hour nap appealed to me just a little bit more since I slept in my car last night. I often mention that I like to buy good things cheap rather than “cheeping out” and buying cheap things cheap. I think you can see with my hotel and restaurant choices today I was able to get good quality products at bargain-basement prices. Back home my car is sitting in an airline parking airport at a rate that is too low for me to mention in these pages. Of course, flying standby is a great deal financially as well. There is a good deal of logistical strategy involved in my hobby as well. A good strategy can make my trip easier, it can make the adventure more efficient faster and sometimes it can make it less expensive. Here’s an example. When I got back to the hotel after the races tonight I began to think about how I was going to get back to California at the end of this trip. My initial plan called for me to fly into St. Louis, rent a car for two days and take a nonstop flight back from St. Louis to Los Angeles. However, that wasn’t going to work out as well as I had hoped. With the coronavirus in place, the number of airline flights has been decreased by well over 50%. Right now there is only one flight leaving on a nonstop basis from St. Louis to Los Angeles daily. There were two problems with that flight. One it didn’t leave St. Louis until the evening getting me back into Los Angeles at about 10 p.m. Secondly when I check the loads there were no standby seats available. I could have tried several connecting options from St. Louis to get me back to Los Angeles. If I did that I would have to layover in cities like Philadelphia, Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, or maybe Minneapolis. I could do that but then I thought of a better choice. I came up with this plan. Rather than rent my car in St. Louis for two days, I could return it after only one day. Then I could create a new one-day one-way rental from St. Louis to Nashville. There were several positives associated with this and hardly any negatives. Tomorrow night I will be trackchasing in Owensboro, Kentucky, the boyhood home of my buddy Tim Frost. If I had stuck with my plan to return the rental car to St. Louis it would’ve been a five-hour late-night drive when the Owensboro races were finished. However, with Nashville being much closer to Owensboro than St. Louis I would save a few hours of driving. Additionally, there was a nonstop flight from Nashville to Los Angeles leaving at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. That would get me back to Los Angeles International by 11 a.m. This plan would save me nearly 12 hours of on the ground time back in California. Also, the flight from Nashville to LAX had 60 open seats so I could make that plane easily. I would have to pay a 40% premium to rent a car for a day on a one-way basis. That was compared to returning my car where I picked it up. However, by renting two cars I generated more sponsorship dollars from National Car Rental. This would allow me to earn more free days that I would use for future more expensive one-way rentals. I have discovered a very efficient way of closing out a rental car contract and starting a new one in situations like this. When I returned the car to STL to close out the one-day contract I simply told the agent to check me in and then, without leaving the car, I would drive the car toward the exit to begin my one-way rental to Nashville. I do this all the time One of the things I like the very best about my hobby is it makes me think. I’m only telling you about the choices I made that were part of the final cut. I probably went through five or maybe ten more iterations of what might have worked until I came to the conclusion that flying nonstop back to California from Nashville was my best choice. Was it the absolute final best choice? I’ll never know. Once I put a certain amount of time into a plan and think I’ve got a new great plan I don’t worry that there be an even better plan. At that point it’s simply time to move on. You would probably be shocked if you saw how much I spend on my hobby in a single year. Trust me, it’s a lot. Trust me on one other important fact as well. No matter how much I do spend doing this it’s about 30-50% of what anybody else could do it for. Maybe that’s why no one else travels as much as I do. However, it’s important to note that I do this for one simple reason. I have fun doing it. I’ve got a very supportive family headed by wife Carol who doesn’t mind my being gone from time to time with the hobby. She’ll come along on these trips 80-100 nights in a typical year but I’ll be gone more than that. I’ll close by again mentioning that I’ve been retired for 19 years. I can tell you this with a virtual 100% certainty. I’m doing exactly what everyone wants to do in retirement. No, everyone does not want to be a trackchaser. I’m good with that. However, what I am doing in retirement is exactly what I want to do. I’ve got to believe that everyone in retirement wants to do if they can, exactly what they want to do. Good evening from Sedalia, Missouri. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,617 tracks. Missouri The Show Me State This evening I saw racing at my 70th-lifetime track in the Show Me State, yes, the Show Me State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in Missouri. Missouri ranks #13, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Missouri state trackchasing list. I have made 51 separate trips to Missouri seeing these tracks. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Missouri sayings: “Check out those Hoosiers!” Uh, no we’re not talking about people from Indiana. When you hear this from a Missourian (especially from the eastern part of the state) it means red-neck. JUST THE FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 780 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. 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. Lots of Covid signs on the way to tonight’s track in Missouri 
