Greetings from all over Wisconsin
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Beaver Dam Lake Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,677 . Bear Lake Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,678 . Montello Lake Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,679 . Lake Dexter Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,680 THE EVENT Editor’s note: Ice trackchasing is difficult. The ice racing season runs from just about mid-January to the end of February. With warmer winters some ice racing groups might not get a single race in for the entire season. We felt very fortunate to see four new ice tracks this weekend. Last week the weather was so cold that most groups canceled their ice racing. Next weekend the warm temperatures might cancel the last week of the ice racing season. Yes, ice trackchasing is difficult. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with my Canadian buddy Graham Shirton). I live out in San Clemente, California. We’re only 74 miles north of the Mexican border. I’m not sure a person could pick a more inconvenient location in the continental United States if they wanted to be a world-class trackchaser. My residential location virtually assures the idea that I must fly to virtually every track I visit. 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 enjoy auto racing. Secondly, my hobby requires a good deal of overnight travel. When I venture out to see a race at a track I’ve never seen before I do not want my trip limited to racing only. The very last thing I want when I’m done trackchasing is to have memories of only racing. I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Those visits in many cases will provide more long-lasting memories than whatever I saw on the track. 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. Hundreds of trackchasers have stopped for a moment to create their own personal trackchasing list. I think that is great. However, I will tell you that no one has ever taken trackchasing more seriously than I have. Do I have any data to back up that assertion? I do. To date, I have seen auto racing in 85 countries at more than 2,670 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 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. My trackchasing contributions generate a good deal of interest in what I am doing. My YouTube channel (ranlay) has more than 1.3 million views. 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 nearly 2,700 times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. It’s just fun! 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/Sunday, February 20/21, 2021. Louisiana nope! Wisconsin yes! This weekend was long ago reserved for a trip down to Louisiana to see the World of Outlaws sprint cars race. I planned to also catch a track in Texas. I wanted to make this a southern adventure in February. Based upon the title of this report that didn’t work out, did it? It turned out that the Texas area got a severe blast of cold weather. I’m sure you’ve heard about this in the news. The cold in that part of the country canceled the races. I was in agreement with that decision. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a grandstand for 3-4 hours in nighttime temps of 40 degrees. If it was too cold to race in Louisiana and Texas maybe it would be just cold enough to race on the ice up in the north. Wisconsin here we come! Coming into this weekend I have seen ice racing at 115 different ice tracks in twenty-three states, provinces and countries. I was going to be focusing on Wisconsin for this weekend. I had already seen racing on the ice in 29 different locations in the Badger State. That somewhat limited my choices for new track visits in Wisconsin. The more the merrier. I decided to invite Carol to come along on this trip. She needed to get out of the state of California and get a little cold weather in her recently fully vaccinated blood. Once she accepted my invitation I also invited my sister Becky and her husband Bob to join us. They enjoy a little bit of trackchasing themselves. Becky and Bob live in northern Illinois. While I was exercising on Thursday night, in preparation for our Friday morning departure, I was smiling to myself. Tomorrow morning I was going to get my second Covid vaccination. I would be fully vaccinated at that point. I also had four ice races planned for our group during our Saturday/Sunday weekend. At this stage of my ice trackchasing career being able to get four new tracks on the ice in Wisconsin would be an outstanding coup. Don’t count your chickens. Long ago I learned not to count my trackchasing chickens before they hatched. It’s probably a good idea not to count your chickens before they hatch in virtually any endeavor of life. Soon I was going to find out that my ice racing plan, which appeared so perfect on Thursday night, was…by Friday night in a shambles. First, on about 12 hours’ notice, my Covid vaccine appointment was canceled on Thursday night. I was supposed to go to Disneyland to get my “jab”. The reason for the cancelation was “cold weather at the manufacturing site and related wintertime logistical problems”. Folks, I moved to California to avoid “wintertime logistical problems”! I would soon be rescheduled for just five days later, but this time at the Anaheim Convention Center. Did you know that During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Los Angeles Clippers were forced to move Game 4 of their NBA playoff series versus the Utah Jazz to the Convention Center? The venue served as the site for wrestling at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Now they were hosting Covid-19 vaccinations. That’s an all-purpose arena! Although we were headed north my trackchasing plan was headed south. Then another part of the overall weekend plan went south. We were planning to see some ice racing at Beaver Dam Lake in Randolph, Wisconsin. However, just a day or so before their scheduled race they announced they were canceling the rest of their season when some holes in the ice developed. This flooded their track. How did that happen? The holes could have been created by ice fishermen. I’ve heard of this happening in the past. It was these ice holes that appeared to be sinking the rest of the Beaver Dam Lake racing season. Nobody likes an ice hole. Another track we were planning to see was racing on Lake Montello in Montello, Wisconsin. They were also having some issues. The Lake Montello group had attempted to run two races in the recent weeks. Those outings only attracted a grand total of three ice racers to each event. Lake Montello had been racing against the Beaver Dam Lake folks on Saturdays. The two lakes were only 33 miles from each other. At the last minute, Lake Montello decided to move their race from Saturday to Sunday to avoid the conflict. That was before Beaver Dam Lake canceled their season! Normally I have many more ice racing tracks to see that want to race on Saturday than Sunday. I would think it would be exactly the opposite of that. To my way of thinking more people would be working on Saturday and have some difficulty spending all day Saturday racing. Wouldn’t more people have Sunday off? I guess that’s not the case. Now Beaver Dam Lake had canceled on Saturday. Lake Montello had moved from Saturday to Sunday. This was creating a huge hole in my Saturday race plan. I was out of options. I concluded that I had no real good opportunity for a Saturday early afternoon new track opportunity. I went to Facebook and asked my friends for help. I rarely do that. I got some great advice from Scott, Chris and Karen. Nevertheless, despite their help, there still wouldn’t be any new track opportunity for me. However, if I could get a new track visit for Carol, Becky and Bob that would be just as good. The only two tracks that we could find that would meet our logistical objective of leaving Saturday morning from northern Illinois and trying to be in Manawa, Wisconsin by 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon were in Poynette and Tilleda, Wisconsin. Wouldn’t you know it? Although the four of us hadn’t done all that much trackchasing together we had already been to the tracks in Poynette and Tilleda. This trip was falling apart fast! Help was coming from Kansas. I was also getting help from my buddy John Simpson. John is new to the trackchasing trail with about 135 new track visits. Up to now, and possibly still, he has been more of a racechaser than a trackchaser. John is a good track researcher. Good track researchers are hard to come by. Lots of trackchasers think of “research” as simply looking at my track list and trying to replicate it after I’ve already done it! But wait. Here was some good news. It was about this time that I learned that the people running the Beaver Dam Lake race, who had canceled because of ice holes at the last minute, were trying to resurrect things. They would be rebuilding their track and trying to avoid the ice holes. It’s a good idea in life to avoid as many ice holes as you can, isn’t it? Only 24 hours after they had canceled the entire Beaver Dam Lake racing season Saturday’s race was back on the schedule. Thank goodness! They would fit in slot #1 of our planned four-track ice race series with a Saturday afternoon start at 12 noon. FRIDAY Doing this from California is just a bit more difficult. Carol and I needed to fly into Chicago on Friday night. It takes about four hours to fly from Los Angeles to Chicago. On top of that we lose another two hours in time zone changes from the Pacific Time zone to the Central Time zone. That means a California-based trackchaser needs to come in a day in advance, which is exactly what we did. This is called the “California trackchasing penalty”. As is my normal practice for all of the hotels that we stayed in on this trip I used Priceline.com. We got some really nice places for some really low prices. I can also book these hotels just hours before we need to stay in them. When you have the flexibility of late bookings and low prices at quality places you’ve got a good situation going. We showed up at 7:30 p.m. on Friday night in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. As you know with Covid, travelers flying around the country are somewhat few and far between. Nowadays passenger volume is about 35-40% of what it would traditionally be in a non-pandemic situation. No place to eat. At 7:30 p.m., which seemed like an early hour, all of the restaurants in the airport were closed…except McDonald’s. Carol’s not a fancy person. I like McDonald’s myself so that’s where we dined on Friday night. Mickey D’s was not our first choice…it was our only choice. From there it was time to run over to the Chicago O’Hare rental car center and pick up a rental car. Getting a good rental car was a requirement for this trip. With four people and winter luggage being transported we needed a good big car. Chicago’s rental car center is brand new. It’s only been open a year or two now. I know they have a plan to connect the rental car center to the airport terminal, which is about 3 miles or more from the airport, with a train system. However, when Covid came along I think that project got delayed. Today we still have to ride a traditional rental car bus to the rental car center. It looked like our rental car bus had been through a snowstorm and lost. It probably had. Big and comfortable comes at a price. I was thinking that a Toyota Camry would be a decent and comfortable four-door sedan for our group. However, when I showed up they didn’t have any at the ready. Because I carry the executive elite status with National Car Rental they were able to give us a huge Audi SUV Q7 premium automobile. The fuel mileage wouldn’t be great. We would end up getting barely over 20 miles a gallon. However, we were only expecting to drive about 600 miles over our three-day trip. In my world of trackchasing that’s like driving across town and back. The Audi was a very comfortable car to drive. One good aspect was that it had the CarPlay app. CarPlay allows me to use either my Waze GPS or my Google Maps GPS system and see the map directions on the car’s video screen. On the other hand it was difficult to manage some of the other car’s complicated systems. This was sort of a trade-off. SATURDAY Time to pick up more trackchasers. This morning we picked up my sister Becky and her husband Bob at their home in Northern Illinois. Then we were off to Randolph, Wisconsin. Randolph was a little bit more than two hours north of Becky and Bob’s home. However there were no interstates going from point A to B. It seemed as if our GPS system drove us down one road for three miles and then another road for four miles and another road for two miles for the next 2+ hours. Beaver Dam Lake Ice Oval – Randolph, Wisconsin – Lifetime track #2,677 We were headed to Beaver Dam Lake. Wikipedia told me this about the lake. Beaver Dam Lake is a 6,718 acre lake in Dodge County, Wisconsin. The communities of Beaver Dam, South Beaver Dam, Sunset Beach, Beaver Edge, Fox Lake Junction border the lake. The fish present in the lake are Panfish, Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, and Walleye. The lake is created by a dam located in the City of Beaver Dam at Haskell Street and flows into the Beaver Dam River. There are seven public boat landings and numerous parks along the lake shore. Water from Fox Lake flows through the Mill Creek into Beaver Dam Lake. Our GPS was directing us to Woods Liquor Landing in Randolph. This was expected to be a bar/restaurant overlooking the lake. In most ways, this was a traditional northern United States ice racing operation. Of course, the cars were racing on a frozen lake. I’m going to guess the depth of the ice was about 15 inches or so. This was a standard ice racing location. It’s very normal for ice racing to take place in front of a land-based bar/restaurant. Sometimes the bar kicks in a little bit of money to support the ice racers. In return they get the racers, their pit crews and fans coming into the bar and restaurant for their food and drink consumption. In Wisconsin, the biggest alcohol drinking state that I’ve ever seen, food and drink consumption starts early on Saturday morning and continues well into the night. I have never seen another United States state challenge Wisconsin in this famous category. However, Zimbabwe as a country is right there with Wisconsin in challenging for the most drinking principality in the world! A couldn’t do what I do without help from people on the ground. A fellow by the name of Scott Tiedt had given me some really good information about the racing here on Beaver Dam Lake not to be confused with Beaver Lake in Wisconsin. Scott races with his wife Ashley and his dad Mark. I had met Mark at a race several years ago in Wisconsin. Scott and Mark told me that they frequently look at my ice racing videos on YouTube (channel name: ranlay). I’ve produced nearly 1,400 of those YouTube videos. Today we had a chance during today’s race intermission to visit with the Tiedt’s in the pit area. The pits were somewhat unique. Quite a few of the cars were pitted in the restaurant’s asphalt parking lot. The lot had a slope to it but didn’t have much snow. This seemed like as good a place as any to pit the cars. Today’s racing at Beaver Dam Lake would consist of rear-wheel drive and front-wheel drive stock cars as well as a women’s division. They raced traditional heat races on the ice oval. I’m going to estimate the track was about a quarter of a mile long or maybe just a little bit bigger. They took an intermission to prep the track and let the drivers relax for a bit and rather future races. It’s nice to have some youngsters in the hobby. All the while John Simpson and I were messaging back-and-forth as he made the trip all the way from down in Kansas City, Missouri up to the track here in Randolph, Wisconsin. I mentioned John is an aspiring trackchaser. He’s getting a good start with the hobby. He left his home driving last night at 1 a.m. How many of you have ever begun your hobby, whatever it might be, at 1 a.m.? John and I had met before but that was quite a long time ago. I met John and his parents at a track in La Mont, Missouri in June 2007. That was 14 years ago when John was just 13 years of age. Now John, aged 27, is trying his hand at trackchasing and having a lot of fun doing it. A couple of four-meat pizzas and a few beers. We were able to watch some of the racing from the bar/restaurant while we enjoyed a couple of four-meat pizzas. We drank a little beer and diet soda inside the bar. The pizza was outstanding. Our bill came to just 27 bucks for two large piping hot pizzas and five drinks. Very reasonable. By the way my sister Becky has never had a beer. Although I tried to corrupt her once again this weekend I was unsuccessful. Don’t mention this to the rental car folks. When we finished eating we hopped in the National Car Rental Racing Audi Q7 and drove it from the pit area down onto the lake. There was a good deal of snow on the lake but with our heavy car, we were able to navigate things without any trouble. Carol and Becky stayed inside the warmth of the car watching the races. Bob and I ventured out onto the ice and watched the races from there. The temperature was about 15°. With not too much wind and a sunny sky, we were comfortable. That’s comfortable as in ice racing comfortable. By the way this was the first time John had ever driven a car onto a frozen lake. This fellow IS becoming a trackchaser! As always don’t miss my videos from the track. At this point, I would recommend you take a look at my video of today’s ice racing from Beaver Dam Lake. It’s a good one. There is also a photo album linked to this report. If you want to see what happened rather than read about it the photo album, which is captioned, is your best bet. My photo album will show you exactly what the bar and the pizza looked like. You’ll feel exactly as if you were there. I hope that’s the case. Bear Lake Ice Oval – Manawa, Wisconsin – Lifetime track #2,678 What’s a “Snodeo”? From there we all hopped in the car and began our drive up to Manawa, Wisconsin. They were having a special once a year show called the “Manawa Snodeo”. I had heard of this event before. From what I knew the snodeo was mainly snowmobiles with possibly some trackchasing countable racing but maybe not. I meet a lot of nice track promoters. A few nights ago I was able to make contact with Debbie who along with her husband promotes this special event. Debbie was very nice to answer all of my questions. I soon confirmed they would be having some side-by-side (UTV) wheel to wheel racing. That’s what I needed to be able to count this as a new track in my trackchasing lifetime totals. Debbie was even nice enough to add me to the VIP list. I certainly appreciated her hospitality. The Manawa Snodeo is a two-day event with all kinds of things happening on four different tracks over Saturday and Sunday of their special weekend. The side-by-side racing would take place on their oval track as opposed to their other tracks named, Lakecross (1.5-mile slalom course), Radar Run/Ice Drags and the Kitty/Junior Lawnmower Mini-Bike track. The side-by-sides were expected to race from 4-6 p.m. on late Saturday afternoon under the lights. I only had directions to Manawa the town. I figured that once we got to this relatively small town of just 1,371 people we would just follow the signs to the snodeo location. That plan didn’t exactly work out. When we began exiting the northern part of Manawa I asked for some help. Brother-in-law Bob came to the rescue. He Googled the Manawa Snodeo’s location and soon we were pulling into what looked to be a very large event. Once again there was a bar restaurant overlooking Bear Lake. With the size of the crowd, most people had parked on the opposite side of the road in a huge frozen dirt parking field. I’m going to guess there were 400-500 cars parked over there. By this late in the day, 4 p.m., a lot of people who had been at the earlier events were now leaving. Rather than park in this dirt field, I elected to pull over into the more select parking area on the lakeside of the road. This turned out to be a great idea. We were able to park within just a few feet of the door of the restaurant. Very convenient. We soon discovered this was a BIG event. We walked into the restaurant. There we found a huge crowd with lots of activity going on. I’ll bet there were 300 or 400 people inside the building warming up, getting some food, listening to music and later accepting their awards for the race activity. I might point out that even during the Covid pandemic there was not a mask in sight. All during the trip, we went into bars and restaurants. We were in tonight’s huge social hall and a steakhouse or two. We didn’t see a mask being worn by anyone be that a customer or an employee. I did see one sign in a steakhouse that said that folks could wear a mask if they wanted or not. Since nobody in the restaurant was wearing a mask I concluded they didn’t want to. That’s not exactly how they do it in California! Who is right? Who is wrong? I don’t know. Are Wisconsinites raging anti-masking non-Covid believing maniacs? Maybe not. They have a lower deaths per million rate from Covid than California. In California, we’ve had various lockdowns and lots of restaurant closures of different degrees. I found those statistics to be very interesting. He who travels fastest travels alone. When we arrived in Manawa John Simpson was already there. He who travels fastest travels alone! We had to stop for gas with our gas-guzzling Audi Q7 but we were still in plenty of time for the side-by-side racing. I was able to meet up with Debbie, the track promoter who had helped me so much. There was just enough time to say hello, give her my business card and accept her generous offer of VIP passes for me and my group. Thank you very much, Debbie. You guys have a really great event going on here. From there we all walked outside to see what we could see. There was a lot of activity. We found the oval track located on frozen Bear Lake. Today’s flat ice oval was listed as 1/3-mile in length. We matched up with John (above Bob, John, Randy and Carol) at a location just past the starting line of the oval ice track. We were soon being treated to some really fast ski to ski snowmobile racing. We were watching from down toward turn one. At that point, we could see how fast the snowmobiles were going down the straightaway and around the entire track. We watched the races from a dangerous spot. The snowmobiles were only separated from the spectators by a snow berm that might have been a couple of feet tall. This really wasn’t much of a barrier for safety. We were standing just 15 feet or so from where the machines raced past. I mentioned to our group that we definitely weren’t in the safest place to be watching these races. During one of the heat races, one of the snowmobile riders lost control of his machine. John was thinking he might’ve broken a ski. This driver and is out of control machine careened over the 2-foot snow berm and headed in our general direction. The riderless out-of-control snowmobile missed us by maybe 10-15 feet. It did take out a spectator who had his back to the action. The tall fellow was cut down at the calf. I’m going to guess that the snow machine was traveling at 30 miles an hour or so when it hit the spectator. I was amazed that the fellow, who flew several feet in the air, was able to get up with seemingly no major injuries at all. I know he’s going to be sore tomorrow. They took the rider away. He appeared to be injured. From that point, we tried to stand back or stand behind one of the pit vehicles just in case something like that happened again. We came for the UTV racing. When the snowmobiles were finished on the oval out came four SXS machines. These four drivers would first race a three-lap heat race and then a six-lap feature race using studded tires. You won’t want to miss the video on this one either. Then the drivers took their machines into the pit area and switched tires from studs to non-studded tires. The speed difference between the two different tires was dramatic. Obviously studded tires racing on an ice track are much faster. The driver who was so dominant with studded tires ran toward the back of the pack with rubber to ice tires. It was now dark. It was fun watching the side-by-sides race under the lights. When they finished it was only about 6 p.m. It was getting cold. We took the opportunity to get some warmth from the red-hot heaters on the ice. When the UTV racing was finished we figured there was time to go out and have a nice dinner. Don’t miss the Manawa Snodeo! Before I go any further let me just make this note. If you are anywhere close to the Manawa Snodeo during the third weekend of February I highly recommend you make a stop. There is a lot going on here. We were only able to see the tip of the iceberg if you will. What’s for dinner? I did a little searching using Yelp and phoned a couple of places looking for dinner. The places I called were busy but they did recommend the Triple O Club for steaks in Clintonville, Wisconsin. Just a few months ago I stopped by the GSR Kartway to see some go-kart racing up in Clintonville. The Triple O, not to be confused with the Big O Oscar Robertson, was an old-style traditional steakhouse. They had a pool table and a bar. While I parked the car Carol and the others went inside. The place wasn’t huge. They did take a long time to seat this and take our orders. You’re not from around here are you boy? I’m going to guess that we waited 30-40 minutes in the bar area before we were seated. Trying to “move them along” was not a very productive idea I soon learned. Maybe they noticed that we “weren’t from around here”. It seemed they figured there was no need to put any importance on our being at their place. Finally, the server came out and took our order while we were still waiting in the bar. In a few more minutes we were seated. We probably waited at our table for another 20 minutes or so before being served our food. All the while we were being told the dining room was full. People kept leaving the dining room having finished their meal and then leaving the restaurant. I predicted, correctly, that when we were seated there would be virtually no one left in the dining room. When we WERE seated only three tables were still occupied. By this time our initial server who had been somewhat rude and standoffish had been replaced by a much more cooperative person. That was a good thing. The food and fellowship were good. I was glad that John was able to join us. I always say that you really haven’t made a friend unless you’ve shared a meal with them or played a round of golf with them. I still believe that. There comes a time when trackchasers must head in opposite directions. From the steakhouse, John would head over toward Rochester, Minnesota. He was hoping to trackchase in Minnesota and South Dakota tomorrow. At the same time Carol, Becky, Bob and I were going to stick with our weekend plan in Wisconsin. We hoped to see two more tracks here on Sunday. That plan was still a little up in the air but I was thinking it might work out. Today had been a very full day. We had driven about 300 miles in chunks of twenty here and sixty there. We had eaten pizza in an authentic lakeside Wisconsin restaurant and bar. Supper was steaks in one of their little traditional Badger steakhouses. The food and the cultural experience had all been good. We had a chance to meet up with a new friend in John Simpson. We got to know John just a little bit better after not having seen him in more than a decade. We always meet a lot of nice people. We had met some Wisconsin ice racers. We met the promoter of a very important event, the Manawa Snodeo. These folks had been as nice as they could possibly be in welcoming us from a faraway land. I guess this is what the trackchasing hobby is all about. It’s about racing and the people and experiencing local culture. It’s about trying to get from point A to point B to point C when all of these locations are moving targets. This is one of the reasons I was attracted to trackchasing in the first place. However, our weekend wasn’t finished. We had more adventures to come the next day. We checked into our Holiday Inn Express and Suites hotel in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. There we got a good night’s sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s busy Sunday. SUNDAY Logistics! That’s the word of the day. The plan for this weekend was to see ice racing at two locations on Saturday and another two locations on Sunday. Over the past two weekends, I had planned to see quite a bit of ice racing. With cold weather cancellations, I only ended up seeing ice racing at one new track. That meant that if I saw four new ice racing venues this weekend I would be back on track… sort of. A big part of trackchasing is managing logistics. I was going to have to manage logistics pretty well today to make things work out in our favor. Montello Lake Ice Oval – Montello, Wisconsin – Lifetime track #2,679 We were going to watch a new group of ice racers. The Montello Lake ice racing group would be starting their races today at 1 p.m. They’ve only been racing for a couple of years. As a matter of fact, in 2020 they didn’t race at all because of lack of ice. Their car counts are small as well. I was told by my advance race contact, Amanda, that in the first two attempts to race this year they only attracted three cars at each race. Our other option for today was an event organized by the Central Wisconsin Ice Racing Association. They were racing on Lake Dexter in Pittsville, Wisconsin. Pittsville and Montello were 80 minutes driving time apart. That was a key factor in managing logistics. CMIRA is one of the best ice racing organizations going. CMIRA primarily focuses on quads a.k.a. ATVs and motorcycles. They attract a large number of entries. Today there were approximately 250 racers spread across 34 classes. One of those classes, and the only class to count in the hobby of trackchasing, was the UTV class also known as side-by-sides. The CMIRA group was going to begin racing at 10 a.m. Each of the 34 different classes would run a heat race. Then they would take an intermission and follow up with a feature event. We estimated the heat racing for the UTVs, which would be the 34th and final class, would take place at about 1 p.m. The feature for the UTV class might run at around 4 p.m. or later. Everyone loves a challenge right? This was the challenge. We wouldn’t have to be at Montello Lake very long to see all seven of their cars race, which is how many showed up today. They had five cars in the front-wheel drive division, two of those five cars were also used in the women’s division. Finally, they had two “big” cars racing in the rear wheel while division. So…this was the plan. This was the plan we came up with. We would drive an hour south from our hotel’s location in Stevens Point to Montello. We planned to have lunch at the Rustic Saloon which is where the Montello ice cars do their sign-in and have a landside pit location. Then we would watch ever how many cars would end up showing up at Montello Lake today. As noted that car count turned out to be seven, Following the racing, at Montello Lake, we would drive another 80 minutes back up north and arrive on Lake Dexter in Pittsville at a little past 3 p.m. That would put us at the track in time for the CMIRA UTV feature racing. We hoped that race would be at 4 p.m. or maybe later. Don’t miss the Rustic Lounge. Lunch at the Rustic Lounge was everything and more than you would expect from a Wisconsin lakeside bar and restaurant. We dined on their sample platter of appetizers with items like onion petals, cheese curds, mini tacos, fried mushrooms and several other choices. It was all good and fried. We followed all of that with some of the restaurant’s various burger entrees which were also outstanding. While we had lunch several people played darts as you might expect in a Wisconsin bar. Lunch wrapped up at 1 p.m. Just then we noticed several patrons at the bar were leaving. They were getting their parked race cars from the bar’s parking lot and driving about a half a mile or so to the entrance to Lake Montello. Follow the leader. We did the same. We parked out by turn four of the large 1/3-mile ice oval. This was a fairly informal affair. There were a handful of cars also watching the races from our location. This seemed to be the only spot that spectators were allowed to park. Hey Amanda. Thanks! I’m really thankful for Amanda my Montello Lake contact for messaging me back many times over the past several days with updates on the racing event. I’m also happy that my good buddy Wendy, who I first met at the Buffalo Lake ice track back in 2013, helped out. Wendy got me in touch with Amanda. It’s important to maintain friendships, isn’t it? Getting the lay of the land. By the way, Wikipedia helped explain the geographical relationship between Buffalo Lake and Lake Montello. “According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.15 square miles (5.57 km2), of which, 1.91 square miles (4.95 km2) is land and 0.24 square miles (0.62 km2) is water. The Fox River flows from east through the middle of Montello. There is a dam in Montello, and the upstream portion of the river to the west of the dam is called Buffalo Lake. The Montello River flows from the North meeting the Fox at the south end of Montello. The upstream portion of the river above the other dam is Montello Lake.” Got that? Meeting the drivers. I had a chance to talk to some of the front-wheel drivers after they finished their heat race. They pitted right next to where we were parked. One of them had raced yesterday in the front wheel division at Beaver Dam Lake. They liked the idea that their track was much larger than the Buffalo Lake track that was also racing nearby today. I’m not sure why the drivers at Beaver Dam Lake (who raced yesterday) don’t support the racing at Montello Lake. Montello and Randolph are only 33 miles from each other. Lake Dexter Ice Oval – Pittsville, Wisconsin – Lifetime track #2,680 And now we were headed to our fourth and final new track of the visit. From there we headed up for the 80-minute drive north to Dexter Lake in Pittsville, Wisconsin. I was able to message my primary contact Dustin who had been helping me with information from CWIRA all week. Thanks Dustin. Appreciate it. I have seen racing run by central Wisconsin group previously. Dustin’s (above) help was really appreciated considering we had to manage our arrival at just the right time to see the UTV racing that we wanted to see. We arrived at Lake Dexter at just a few minutes past 3 p.m. At that point there was no admission being charged because they had already been racing for five hours. I’m not sure if CWIRA has a normal admission price or not. It didn’t take long to park just beyond turn four of the large nearly half-mile sized ice oval. This place was packed with racers. There were a lot of racers and race car haulers and race car trucks on the lake! I’m not sure how thick the ice was but I guess it was thick enough. Wikipedia told me this about Lake Dexter. Lake Dexter is a reservoir in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The lake has a surface area of 287 acres (116 ha) and reaches a depth of 17 feet (5.2 m). Lake Dexter was formed in 1965 when a dam on the Yellow River was completed. The lake takes its name from Dexter township.[2] A variant name is “Dexter Lake”. These folks have a lot of races! When we arrived they were on class #10 (of 34) with their feature racing. Each race was short maybe three or four laps for the bikes and quads. Luckily they had very few spills. They kept the races moving. Nevertheless it was more than two hours before they got to race #34 for the four UTV racing machines that showed up. We brought our own warming hut. Becky and Carol chose a warm viewing location. That was from the National Car Rental Racing Audi Q7 with the engine running. Bob and I went onto the ice for the next couple of hours. Where was the best place to watch the racing? I was able to walk all over the pit area seeing the race competitors today. I spent quite a bit of time at the starting line. This was a very exciting location as the groups of quads and motorcycles left the starting gate. Hey Dustin. Thanks. I also had a chance to meet up with Dustin. He normally drivers a UTV with CWIRA but today was only competing with a quad aka ATV. It is people like Dustin who are very generous with their time who make my trackchasing possible. I messaged Dustin many times over the past few days and he always got back to me with good information quickly. I also got to meet a couple of the other drivers, Brice Peterson and one of the Meddaugh boys who was driving UTV #23. All nice guys. The weather was good but getting worse. Today the weather was cloudy and a bit windier than yesterday when it was sunny and calm. Temperatures were in the high 20s. It began to snow lightly as soon as we arrived on Dexter lake. That would become a problem later on. My brother-in-law Bob was having fun out on the ice. Finally…feature race #34. At little bit past 5 p.m. it was beginning to get dark. There were no lights. It was then that the UTV feature event took to the ice and ran nonstop. I’m impressed with the CWIRA racing group. They draw a lot of competitors although not very many UTV’s and race efficiently. This was the most competitive racing of the weekend for us. I had been out on the ice at Lake Dexter for more than two hours to get to this point. Another successful trackchasing adventure was nearly in the books…but not quite. Our trip was a major success. From a trackchasing point of view we couldn’t have asked for anything better. We knocked out four ice racing tracks in the Badger State. We also got the chance to spend the weekend with my sister Becky and her husband Bob. We were able to meet up with John Simpson who was traveling this direction from the state of Kansas. We had some good bar food, stayed in quality hotels and everything worked out pretty much as planned. I expected snow but I didn’t expect the snow’s impact on the local roads. However when we left Lake Dexter the snow was starting to accumulate. It had been coming down strong enough that we had to wait a few minutes until one of the race car haulers could show us the plowed path off the lake. Until we found this trailblazer everything was so “white” we might have been on Lake Dexter until spring when all of the ice had melted. We had about 20 miles of two lane roads to navigate before we would get to the interstate. We could only drive at about 30 mph. Tonight we needed to drive some 220 miles to get back to Becky and Bob’s home. At 30 miles an hour along with the fact that it was now dark and the roads were snow-covered made us reconsider driving back to Illinois tonight. New plan. Time to double back. That being the case we decided to double back and stay at the Holiday Inn Express where we stayed last night in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. That seemed like a very judicious decision. New plans can be a good idea but lots of downstream things need to change. However with this change of plans it meant that we were going to have to delay our return to Los Angeles. We would end up catching a later flight on Monday. It also meant we would have to change airports from Chicago’s O’Hare airport to Chicago’s Midway airport. The airport change meant that we had to change our rental car drop off location for Midway as well. These trips are so sharply choreographed that one minor change such as staying at a hotel up in Wisconsin on Sunday night made us change our airline, our airport and our rental car return location on Monday. MONDAY All clear! By Monday morning the snow covered and slick roads were now clear. We enjoyed chitchatting during the more than three hour drive back to Northern Illinois. How about some Mexican food. We stopped in Dekalb, where Carol and I went to college, at my request. I wanted us to have lunch at a place called “Flamingo Ice Cream”. The place is both an ice cream shop and a Mexican restaurant located in a former bank building! Our lunch wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it being on previous visits. This thing was a gas guzzler. Then we motored over to the Midway airport and returned our rental car. In three days I had driven it 807 miles. We didn’t get very good gas mileage but then I didn’t expect our big SUV would. 4 tracks. 1 weekend PLUS a whole lot more. That’s about it. Four ice tracks in one weekend. Great people time. Outstanding cultural experiences. We could not have asked for more. Next weekend? I’ll be playing it by ear. Next weekend is the last weekend in February. The temperatures are going to be warmer. Those warm temps might jeopardize what is normally considered the last trackchasing weekend of the year. If they do ice race next week I plan to see some of it. We’ll just have to wait and see. Good afternoon from all over the Wisconsin ice racing trail. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,680 tracks. Wisconsin The Badger State This weekend I saw racing at my 105th, 106th, 107th and 108th lifetime tracks in the Badger, yes, the Badger State. During this trip I moved into the #3 trackchasing ranking in Wisconsin. I’m only ten tracks out of a first place tie with Ed Esser who has seen 118 tracks in his home state. Wisconsin ranks #6, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Wisconsin state trackchasing list. I have made 71 separate trips to Wisconsin 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 Same swear word as “cripes” just with a little pizazz “For Cripes Sake” 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 790 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. Stock car racing on the ice at the Beaver Dam Lake Ice Oval . It’s the Manawa Snodeo…snowmobiles and UTVs racing on the Bear Lake Ice Oval . Lake Montello…stock cars on the big Lake Montello Ice Oval . Quads, bikes and UTVs…great racing on the Lake Dexter Ice Oval 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. From California to Beaver Dam Lake…a real long but fun adventure . . The Manawa Snodeo! The name says it all! . . Lake Montello…the Rustic Saloon and more . . Lake Dexter…the best racing…the most snow and getting home…late 
Wisconsin sayings: “Cripes Sake”
JUST THE FACTS
