Greetings from first Wytheville, Virginia
And then Prudenville, Michigan
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Apex Center Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,769 Houghton Lake Ice Oval Ice oval Lifetime Track #2,770 THE EVENT Editor’s note: I’m pretty sure no trackchaser has ever trackchased in southern Virginia on one evening and then appeared at an ice race the next afternoon in Northern Michigan. Why? You’re gonna have to ask the other trackchasers. I travel this way so you don’t have to…even though secretly you probably want to. How does that work? I tell you how I travel and then you get to decide if that’s a good idea for you. Welcome to my 2022 trackchasing season! I AM A TRACKCHASER. What’s a trackchaser? What is trackchasing? Trackchasing is a hobby of mine. With trackchasing I do just three things. Each one is of equal importance to me. I travel the world watching auto racing on ovals, road courses and figure 8 tracks. I seek out “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions” during my travels to keep myself entertained when I’m not at the racetrack. 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 I plan airline, rental car and hotel accommodations to get me from my home in Southern California to racetracks located in the United States and all over the world. Just the planning part of my hobby is as much fun as anything. I am known as the “World’s #1 Trackchaser”. How did I get that title? I have traveled to 85 different countries and seen racing at nearly 2,800 tracks…that’s how I got that title. 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 Thursday/Monday, February 24/28, 2022. Pre-trip. If you’re not early you’re late. I love that adage. I got it from my good friend and mentor Gerry O’Reilly. Gerry died just a couple of years ago at age of 95. My trackchasing this weekend will begin in Wytheville, Virginia. Relative to major airports Wytheville is out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not in the middle of nowhere but you can see the middle of nowhere from Wytheville. I wanted to be out there to see their racing by 6 p.m. on Friday evening. What was the best way to make that happen from Los Angeles? I looked at all kinds of flight combinations to get out toward Virginia. The best would have been for a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Charlotte. However, none of those planes had enough seats to make me feel comfortable flying standby and still getting to the race on time. Logistics is VERY important in my hobby. I settled for a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio. My racing destination was a five-hour drive from Columbus. My flight left Los Angeles at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday night. That was about 22 hours before the race was scheduled to begin nearly 3,000 miles away. There are very few trackchasers who leave for the races nearly a day in advance to get there. That’s the penalty, if you will, for trackchasing out of Southern California. FRIDAY I was scheduled to land in Columbus at 1 a.m. Eastern time on Friday. We did land on time but…there was a problem getting a gate at the airport. We ended up sitting on the plane for 50 minutes at 1 a.m.! I was staying at the Country Inn & Suites hotel located near the Columbus airport. In order to save a day on a rental car, I would take their “shuttle” from the airport to the hotel tonight and grab my rental car tomorrow morning. I bought the hotel at a significant discount on Priceline. I use Priceline to buy most of the hotels I stay in. I had filtered my potential hotel choices to limit where I would be staying to only those hotels that provided a shuttle from the airport. The shuttle from the Country Inn and Suites was a bit unusual. It was something, in more than 5,000 nights of hotel stays, that I had never encountered. The hotel didn’t have a traditional shuttle! What they did provide was a complimentary ride with a Lyft rideshare driver from the airport to the hotel. That worked for me. I arrived at the hotel at past 2 a.m. after our flight arrival delay and having to sit on the plane for so long after a four-hour flight. The first room they gave me smelled like smoke. I returned to the front desk to get a new room. Then on the way to my new room, I stopped at a soda machine and tried to buy a bottle of Diet Pepsi. I put my money in but nothing came out. I returned to the front desk! The clerk was most cordial and walked back out to the soda machine and used her hotel card to order up another drink. When she did that the drink I had paid for came out as well as the one she had selected. Now I had both a Gatorade Zero and a Diet Pepsi to tide me over…for just a buck fifty! Sometimes patience pays off. I hope the reader can understand that even the simplest tasks like going to see a race in a place like Wytheville, Virginia come with their own perils. These perils don’t bother me. They have never bothered me. I think it has been my flexible attitude that has allowed me to enjoy my hobby for all of these years. I slept through the hotel’s breakfast timeframe of 9:30 a.m. Eastern. That was 6:30 a.m. California time. I don’t think anybody should get up in order to grab a hotel breakfast at that early hour! The hotel ordered a Lyft rideshare driver, at their expense, to take me from the hotel to the airport. My driver was a talkative fellow. He was concerned about the recent growth of his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. He told me Columbus was the third fastest-growing city in the country. Being in the Midwest that sounded hard to believe. I grabbed a Toyota Camry rental car. I almost always get a Camry. They are comfortable and give me nearly 40 MPG. I rent with National and get great prices, superior service and high-quality Toyota Camrys. I’ll bet I drive a Camry two or three times as many miles in a year as I do my own personal car, a Tesla Model X. As I was leaving Columbus, I noticed a sign for the “National Barber Museum”. That sounded like fun and I had the time. I found the place…but it was closed. The sign said it was supposed to be open from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. I was there at noon on Friday. Maybe next time! Most of my drive took me through rural West Virginia. I have been in all 50 states many many times. I find West Virginia to be the most rural state I visit. This is especially true when I’m near the intersection of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. Next Tuesday I’m going on a very restrictive diet. That being the case I would splurge this weekend. This logic is what has gotten me into a position of needing to go on a very restrictive diet. I stopped at a Dairy Queen. The drive-thru lane moved at a snail’s pace. I left the car and went inside. Service was slow. A sign said they had reduced staff. Folks, we are in an economy where rich people can’t get poor people to make this a brownie blizzard. I pulled into the Appalachian Regional Expo Center aka the “Apex Center” at just past 6 p.m. I was in plenty of time to see tonight’s winged kart racing show. They charge 5 bucks to park. That’s unusual. Admission was $15 which included being able to get in the pits. Fair enough. The Apex Center was modern and came with a nicely banked 1/8-mile or so indoor dirt oval. They hosted a demo derby here just two weeks ago. Tonight’s show was well organized. Indoor gasoline-powered racing can be “fumy”. To combat that they opened the doors to clear the air and then the place got cold. No problem. I used my battery-powered hand warmer. There were a handful of flat karts but most of the racers were winged box stock and winged outlaw karts. The program called for practice, qualifying, heat races and feature events. They didn’t waste much time. I like that. I spent most of my time in the aluminum grandstands. I did make one trip down to the pits. I also grabbed a serving of mac and cheese at the concession stand. At three bucks this hot and tasty treat was a great value. The only countable class in the building was the winged outlaw karts. There were 12 of them. They put six each in two heat races. For some reason when there is only one countable class at an event where there are LOTS of non-countable classes the one and only countable class races last. Why is that? Maybe the trackchasing founding fathers really screwed up on what should count and not count? I think so. I sat through practice, qualifying and the heat races for all of the cars. When the heats were finished it was only 9 p.m. I’ve had worse. However, with a two-hour drive down to my hotel and a 3:45 a.m. wake-up call tomorrow morning I did not fancy sitting through five or six classes running 20-lap features in order to see as many as 12 karts run their winged outlaw kart feature as the last event of the night. Had I stayed I would have gotten only two hours of sleep in my hotel. As it was by leaving after the heat races, I got all of FOUR hours of sleep in the hotel. It was what it was. I had a good time and spent three hours inside the Apex Center tonight. I had seen racing at my 33rd-lifetime track in Virginia. I had seen racing at my 324th East Region track and my 2,769th-lifetime track in the entire world. That’s good enough for now. SATURDAY I was flying this morning. The plan was to catch a 6 a.m. flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Detroit, Michigan. I would be trackchasing three hours north of Detroit in Prudenville, Michigan…on the ice. Not many trackchasers see a race in Southern Virginia on a Friday night and are at an ice race in Northern Michigan on Saturday morning. Don’t worry. It’s what I do. This morning I wanted to sleep as late as possible but still be on time for my flight. This meant my wake-up call came at 3:45 a.m. some two hours and 15 minutes before my flight departure. Folks, this was 12:45 a.m. California time. Lots of folks on the west coast hadn’t even gone to bed yet and my day was already beginning. When I’m flying early in the morning there are several things that need to happen before I can board the flight. “Several things”? Yes, several things. When my iPhone alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. I had just completed four hours of sleep. I had seriously considered just sleeping those four hours in my car. It took me about 25 minutes to get showered, shaved and dressed. The drive from the hotel to the airport would be nearly 20 minutes. Then I would have to return the rental car. I always gas up my rental car the night before to save time. Then I had to get my boarding pass and clear airport security. I did all of that and was heading to my gate by 5 a.m. The morning was not without some “setbacks”. First, I and about 10 other cars were stopped at a red light that refused to turn green! We might have been at the light for five minutes. Drivers were getting out of their cars and talking to other drivers about our situation. Maybe that’s a southern thing! Then I missed the turn on the spiral driveway into the rental car return area at CLT. This necessitated an exit and return to the airport. Oh my. Finally, when I tried to clear TSA security I was refused. The officer told me I had to return to the airline and get my boarding pass “updated” even though it clearly stated I was eligible for TSA PreCheck. While I was in the short TSA line several other passengers had the same problem. I think the agent’s machine was screwed up. I will tell you this. I am a frequent flyer. As a frequent flyer, I would NEVER want to travel without Global Entry and TSA PreCheck. This morning’s “normal” check-in line was 200 people deep. Nope. No normal lines for me. Despite the red light fiasco and the rental car return fiasco and the TSA PreCheck line fiasco, I maintained my cool. What choice did I have? Are people who “keep flying the airplane” aka the people who keep their cool rewarded for behaving well? Sometimes. Even though I was flying standby I was upgraded to first class on this morning’s flight. That was rewarding enough for me for the inconvenience of this morning’s travel plan. I did take the time before my flight took off this morning to check out my StubHub smartphone app. I picked up a ticket to tomorrow afternoon’s Michigan-Illinois NCAA basketball game in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had hoped to trackchase in New York tomorrow at an AMEC sanctioned ice race. Canceled! Those poor folks have only been able to race on ONE weekend during the past THREE years. Global warming? Maybe. Bad ice? Yes. With that ice racing stoppage, I figured I could catch the basketball game on the way back from Northern Michigan to San Clemente! Ann Arbor was sort of on the way. By going to the game, I wouldn’t get back to California until about 3 a.m. California time on Monday morning. Once again, I would be getting home just in time to go to bed when the area I left, Michigan, was just getting up to go to work on Monday morning. No problem. I would sleep in! In first-class I dined on potato chips and cookies. I drank Jack Daniels and Sprite. I arrived in Detroit at 7:30 a.m. My day had begun. When I landed a couple of thoughts came to mind. I could have driven from last night’s race in Wytheville, Virginia to Prudenville, Michigan site of this afternoon’s racing. It was only 649 miles. I’ve done that before. I left last night’s races at 9 p.m. Today’s racing was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. I had 14 hours to make what my Google Maps program told me was only a nine-hour and 46-minute drive. Silly me. I had chosen to fly first class for the first 485 miles instead. This thinking reminded me that in the entire history of trackchasing, which began with tracks being counted all the way back in 1928, there’s never been a trackchaser whose primary means of getting from point A to point B was the airplane. The Wright brothers invented the airplane in 1903. Why hasn’t anyone else thought to use an airplane to pursue the hobby of trackchasing? An individual’s own automobile has always been the transportation selection of choice for virtually all trackchasers. I have rarely used my own personal automobile to get to the tracks. Oftentimes, even when I was going to drive from my personal residence to a racetrack, I ended up renting a car. Why? I didn’t want to put “trackchasing miles” on my personal car. I’ve seen other trackchasers ruin their cars by putting too many miles on the odometer chasing tracks. Today I rode the rental car bus for nearly 10 minutes from the airport terminal in Detroit over to the National Car Rental Center. During the pandemic, some rental car locations have been fully out of cars. I’ve had to wait even though I am a frequent renter and enjoy the privileges that come with being one of their better business partners. I had to sort through about 50 cars. Finally, I found the car I was looking for in the very back row. I was looking for a full-sized Toyota Camry. My Camry showed just 6,000 miles on the odometer. I told you that airplanes have always been my primary way to get from our home in San Clemente, California to all of the tracks across the United States and Canada as well as for my foreign country travel. Did I just make a typo? Do I not consider Canada to be a foreign country? No, I do not consider Canada to be a foreign country. I think of Canadians as a sort of “Minnesota lite”. That’s not a criticism but a complement to both Canadians and folks who live in Minnesota. I’m going to guess in the last three years I have driven rental cars roughly 100,000 miles. I probably did about 90% of those miles in a Toyota Camry. In three years at home, I will drive my 2020 Tesla Model X about 36,000 miles. That means I’m driving a rental car nearly 3 times as many miles as my own personal car. I am a flying trackchaser but I am also a driving trackchaser. There might not be a single trackchaser, since Ed Esser, who will drive more than 35,000 miles getting to the tracks they visit in a single year. I remember Ed telling me once that he drove 90,000 miles in a very well-used up Chevy Blazer…in a single year. That’s crazy! I think he told me that with one of his Chevy Blazers, he had more than one over the years, had something like 800,000 miles on its odometer. Again, crazy. Yes, that’s Ed’s Blazer sitting in his driveway. Photo taken by Randy Lewis Racing authorized representatives. Now it was time to hop in my rental car and make the drive from Detroit up to Prudenville, Michigan home to Houghton Lake. It was time to go trackchasing. As I passed by the town of Frankenmuth, Michigan I made a mental note that I would stop at the Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland store on the drive back to Detroit after the races. Why had I decided to come to Prudenville, Michigan to trackchase on this particular Saturday? They were several reasons. First, I never like to travel out to the Midwest or the east to see one track. By coming to Michigan after trackchasing in Virginia yesterday I would at least get two tracks out of this weekend’s trip. Additionally, I had seen ice racing at 64 different tracks in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Neighboring Michigan had only provided two ice tracks for me in the past. That’s a huge difference. Given the fact that the climates are somewhat similar, I’m surprised the difference is that dramatic. I guess Michigan isn’t quite as cold in the winter as Wisconsin or Minnesota. Yes, that’s me on an ice track in Vermont above. Probably the biggest reason that I came to Michigan today was that I didn’t really have much choice! That’s a pretty poor reason but it’s true. You never want to say that you came to someone’s dinner party because that was pretty much the only entertainment option that you had for that particular day. However, it’s not really impolite to say that about a track that you might plan to visit if you are a trackchaser. I’m not sure if this is the first car racing that has ever occurred on Houghton Lake or not. I know this. Until today no trackchaser has ever stood on a frozen lake, Houghton Lake, and watched cars compete on a wheel the wheel racing basis. I would be the first. When today’s race was in the books, I will have seen racing in 2,770 different racetracks. The Pennsylvania-based trackchasing group conducts an annual census. Last year they came up with about 1,600 race tracks in the United States and Canada as being active. I’ve got a question about that one. If they’re going to cover racing in a major portion of North America, why wouldn’t they include Mexico? I don’t have the answer to that question but I have trackchased in Mexico more than 10 times and hope to visit again in 2022. I love those adventures. There might be about 100 tracks in the trackchasing census group of 1,600 that I haven’t seen. Most of those 100 tracks would be the commonly “in and out of business” or side-by-side race locations that often are “one and done”. Why is the trackchasing census limited to just 1,600 active tracks when I have seen roughly 2,800? Well first of all about 300 of my track visits have been in countries outside of the United States and Canada. That leaves my US/Canada total at about 2,500 tracks. Let’s try to do some math. The trackchasing census shows that I have seen about 1,500 of the 1,600 tracks they show. How do I account for the difference between my 2,500 U.S./Canada tracks and 1,500 U.S./Canada tracks that I have seen that are part of the census? It’s simple. More than 1,000 of my 2,500 tracks visits in the United States and Canada are no longer active! What do you think of this? If a trackchaser started from zero today. By the way, I don’t necessarily recommend anyone doing that, but for the purposes of this example let’s say they started trackchasing with zero tracks today. If they saw every single track in the trackchasers census, 1,600, they would still be 1,200 tracks short of my current total. And yes, it would take them forever to see those 1,600 census-listed tracks. Then when they DID do that, they would only come up with about 60% of the number of tracks I’ve seen as of today. The rookie trackchaser would have no chance whatsoever of ever surpassing my totals. Why would they want to do that? For the same reason I did it. It’s just fun! I might point out that I never ever intended to try to become the World’s #1 Trackchaser. I was tracking along in 7th place in the worldwide standings and was very happy with that. I was also playing a lot of golf at the time. Then I needed rotator cuff surgery on my shoulder. I would be away from golf for six months. Needing something to do I picked up my rate of trackchasing. The rest is history. Today it was easy to find Houghton Lake as I motored into Prudenville, Michigan. I simply looked over to the right and saw a huge crowd of people standing out on a frozen lake on a fairly nice but very windy winter day in northern Michigan. Yes, this was northern Michigan in the lower peninsula. The upper peninsula is the true northern Michigan. Today’s event was being promoted by Fast Eddie’s Classic and Vintage sleds (snowmobile) from Houghton Lake. I actually talked to Mr. Fast Eddie on the phone. He had a most unique message on his phone! Eddie was very enthusiastic about today’s promotion. I also talked with the people at the Great Lakes sprint car organization. They were equally enthusiastic about their sprint cars racing on ice. Apparently, ice racing fans from the area, lots of ice racing fans, felt the same way I did about this race today. They showed up in droves. It cost five dollars to park on the ice. There were a LOT of cars parked on the ice. Most fans were standing around an ice oval about a third of a mile in distance waiting for the race action to begin. I didn’t wanna park my car where the other fans were parked. If I did that, I couldn’t watch the races from my car. I would have about four rows of parked cars blocking my view. I had a solution. I drove by the “ushers” who were running around on ATVs directing traffic. I parked in the pit area right next to one of the racers. This would be a perfect place for my car to act as a warming hut and for me to see the racing action. Wouldn’t you know it? One of the “ushers” tracked me down and said I couldn’t park in “his pit area”. I looked him in the eye and thought to myself if I had a company this is exactly the kind of employee I would like to have. He was taking “ownership” of his responsibilities. When I thought there was no way of talking him out of the idea that I couldn’t park here I moved on. I found a place where I could barely squeeze in just beyond turn one of the bigger ice oval. That would be my final resting place for the National Car Rental Racing Toyota Camry. This spot would be today’s race headquarters for me. I mentioned I parked next to the “bigger” oval. That statement meant there would also be a smaller oval in use for the racing today. I had hoped I might be able to squeeze a second track location out of Houghton Lake today but that wouldn’t be possible. I am a very optimistic person. They were racing mini wedges on the smaller oval. Mini wedges are a class in this area that is limited to children as their drivers. I talked to a couple of the dads of the caged mini-wedge drivers. They told me that the age limit topped out at 14 for drivers with this group. At least I tried. When I talked to the Great Lakes sprint car group, they told me they would have four sprint cars at the track today. They had three. Close enough. These sprint cars had huge spikes in their tires. You wouldn’t want to get run over with one of those tires! It looked to me like the cars got as much traction on the ice as they do at a local dirt track during the summer. I wasn’t really disappointed in the sprint car count. They were upfront and honest and said they were only gonna have four in the first place. I had been told they really weren’t sure when the sprint cars were going to run in today’s program because of the racing from all of the other “classes”. Classes? What were the classes were they talking about? If I go to a dirt track in the summertime there will be some tracks that will run seven or eight different classes. Often times there won’t be very many cars in any of those classes. Once in a while, there will be. I hate seeing seven or eight classes at a single track. Way too many heat races and downtime for my tastes. Today there were two other classes that had ice racing competitors show up at the track. Since there was no announcer to explain any of what I was seeing I concluded that the street stock division had one racer and the mini stocks had two. I’ve always been pretty good with numbers. Here goes. We had three sprint cars. We had one street stock (above). We had two mini stocks. We had one of the largest crowds I’ve ever seen standing around a 1/3-mile ice oval. Something was wrong with this picture. Whatever Mr. Fast Eddie had done to draw a crowd had been very successful. Congratulations on that. Whatever had been done to attract racing competitors was a dismal failure. What do you think all of those people that came out on this relatively nice winter day were thinking? Were they thinking that six cars were exactly what they expected when they pulled on the ice today? Were they more than satisfied? I doubt it. In business, we used to say “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”. The fans who came out to the track today to see some really good wheel-the-wheel ice racing had to be severely disappointed. Was I disappointed? Not really. Would I have liked to see a field of 40 racers on the ice today? Yes. However, I am a trackchaser. I came to COUNT the track. When I left the ice today, I was able to count the track. There are lots of positives about trackchasing. One of those positives is that you never have to come back to a track that doesn’t warrant a return visit. I guesstimate that I have returned to about 10% of the tracks I have visited. It looked as if the one single street stock racer broke early in the event. When the two mini stocks were on the track it almost seemed as if they were hot lapping because they weren’t very competitive with each other at all. The three sprint cars did put on a good show. They were fast. But how entertaining can an event be if its main attraction is three sprint cars? I did quite a bit of walking around both tracks and talked to a few people here and there. I went into the sprint car area and got some close-up photos of these machines. They were pitted “off the ice”. I saw the sprint cars run at least two races. I didn’t know if that was a heat and a feature or maybe two heats or what. With this many people, it would have been nice to have an announcer. They did have a speaker set up for music so it could’ve been just as easy to have an announcer telling the crowd what was up. I guess if there had been an announcer, he or she would not have had much to talk about. When I had seen all of the “racing action” that seemed like there was going to be I joined a long line of cars that were exiting the ice. I don’t know if this race promoter will run any more ice racing in the future or not. I did talk to a couple of his employees. They were pretty dejected at the car count and said they had been expecting some racers from “out east”. Out east? Where would that be? They do race sprint cars on the ice in New Hampshire. I can’t imagine any sprint car ice racing teams from there towing hundreds of miles over to northern Michigan to take a few laps on an ice oval. On the return trip back to Detroit I stopped at the Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland store. It took me forever to make my first ever stop at Bronner’s but now I NEVER pass Frankenmuth, Michigan without a stop at Bronner’s. Bronner’s is the biggest Christmas store in the world. They have more than seven acres of Christmas stuff under one roof. I bought Carol and myself a 50th wedding anniversary Christmas ornament recognizing what I think is a pretty nice achievement. As I was driving back to my Sheraton Hotel in Ann Arbor, Michigan I noticed a billboard. The billboard told me that a place called Halo Burgers had the best burger in Michigan. I stopped at their location in Flint. Does Halo Burger really have the best burger in Michigan? I have no idea. I haven’t eaten that many burgers in Michigan. However, when I compare Halo Burgers to the gold standard of burgers, that would be In-N-Out burgers in California Halo fails miserably. In-N-Out Burger is absolutely no question the leader in two of the three important categories of a hamburger chain. In-N-Out Burger has the best burger customer service, of any chain I’ve ever visited by far. In-N-Out Burger employees are on a par with Chick-fil-A and Chick-fil-A is at the top of customer service in the fast-food business. Nobody ever talks about what a value eating at In-N-Out Burger is. Their prices are low. When I compare In-N-Out burgers with Whataburger another one of my favorites In-N-Out Burger trumps Whataburger in the area of customer service and value. No comparison. Most people who rave about In-N-Out burgers are not thinking about customer service or value. They are thinking about the taste of their burgers and fries and shakes. I love In-N-Out food. I love Whataburger food and I enjoy McDonald’s and Wendy’s food as well. Taste is more “personal taste” whereas value (pricing) and customer service are more quantifiable. So…what about Halo Burger today? I’ve got to give them a solid D. Their customer service was very poor. I had to repeat my order several times. Then when they served me at the drive-through window they forgot to give me my Diet Coke. When they did give me my Diet Coke, I had asked for light ice and most of the cup was filled with ice. Customer service at Halo Burger? Very poor. F! How was the double cheeseburger? Not very good at all. It was small and the bun was not fresh. Their tater tots were excellent. The Diet Coke didn’t taste as good as McDonald’s, the king of fast food Diet Coke. I also got a small vanilla shake which was OK but not outstanding. Why a vanilla shake, tater tots and a double cheeseburger along with a Diet Coke on just one order? I’m going on a diet on Tuesday and I figured, “What can it hurt”? Food grade: C-…the tator tots saved them. Value/price grade: C. I would stay overnight in a Sheraton hotel in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I probably could’ve made it home to California tonight. However, I had decided that I really needed to see a first-time local Trackchasing Tourist Attraction in order to make this trip to first Virginia and now Michigan for auto racing a worthwhile endeavor. Tomorrow I plan to see an NCAA college basketball game with the Fighting Illini of Illinois visiting the Michigan Wolverines. They will be playing at the Chrysler Center just a couple of miles from my hotel. I have come to the conclusion that with the remaining tracks that I have available to see that the entertainment value will be limited in most circumstances. If that is true, and I believe it to be true, I’m going to have to be able to see and experience some other activities on these trips. More Trackchasing Tourist Attractions will be needed in order to make these long outings worthwhile. Finally, I will tell you that being the first trackchaser to visit a track gives me a good feeling. It reinforces the fact that the Randy Lewis Racing research department is doing a good job. There are hundreds of trackchasers out there. If I can beat them to a track that’s a good thing. During the 2021 season, I saw 88 tracks for the first time. Exactly fifty of those 88 tracks had never been visited before. Most trackchasers making new track visits today are going back to tracks previously visited by others and often by me. Now in 2022, I have been to ten tracks for the first time. At half of those tracks, I was the first trackchaser to ever get to the track. I was also the first trackchaser ever to come to see ice racing at Houghton Lake in Prudenville, Michigan. From time to time, but not all that often, another trackchaser will share the “first” designation at a track I visit. That was the case today. While I was sitting in my hotel room I got a text from Kansas-based trackchaser John Simpson. John had seen my message on Facebook, I guess, indicating I trackchased at Houghton Lake today. He had been there as well today although we didn’t hook up. We texted back and forth for the first time in several months about our mutual hobby. I was in a state of shock to hear that John’s “Need 1” sign did not work for him when he tried to see a Detroit Red Wings game tonight. I wish a good 2022 trackchasing season for John! SUNDAY/MONDAY Honestly, the racing I saw this weekend wasn’t all that great. I did get two countable tracks to add to my lifetime list which now totals 2,770 tracks. That’s a good result. Just seeing marginal racing shows is not going to be good enough to make these 5,000 mile trips though. However, I expected what I would be doing today would be the most entertaining and memorable aspect of this adventure which began on Thursday. It was! I was planning to add another stellar Trackchasing Tourist Attraction to my resume. That would be attending the Michigan-Illinois NCAA Division 1 basketball game. The game was being played at the Chrisler Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I bought my ticket on StubHub for just nine dollars plus about four dollars in StubHub fees. I was amazed at what a good seat I could buy for that price. The game was nearly sold out but I did see a few seats in the lower bowl that I could have moved into at halftime. Nevertheless, the seat I had was so good and there wasn’t anybody sitting on either side of me that I was too lazy to improve the seat by just a little bit. Yes, I might be getting soft in my old age. The #15 ranked Fighting Illini (I guess that nickname is still politically correct) was a slim 1.5-point favorite in the game. Illinois led the game the entire way with leads in the plus or minus 10 point range. During the last couple of minutes, Michigan reduced the lead to four and the crowd was really excited about that. In the end, Illinois would beat Michigan in the Chrisler Center by a score of 93–85. Tonight’s flight back to Los Angeles from Detroit wasn’t leaving until 11:15 p.m. That gave me time to catch a movie between the basketball game and my flight. I saw “Death on the Nile” which was only marginally good in my opinion for my tastes. My day had begun at 7:30 a.m. Eastern time in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After sitting on a jet airplane for five hours flying into the wind back to Los Angeles, I landed at 1 a.m. Pacific time. On the way home I needed a quick charge for my Tesla Model X and snuck into our bedroom at 3:30 a.m. Pacific time which was 6:30 a.m. Eastern time on MONDAY MORNING. My day had lasted 23 hours. Nobody has ever traveled the way I do in the entire history of trackchasing…and I never get tired. I’ve mentioned this before. The remaining racing venues that I have to see are not going to be coming from Martinsville, Knoxville or the Eldoras of the world or anything close to that. I’m going to have to be judicious in my travel and schedule as many high-quality Trackchasing Tourist Attractions as I can in order to make my travel trackchasing weekends enjoyable. I plan to do just that. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,770 tracks. Virginia The Old Dominion State This evening I saw racing at my 33rd-lifetime track in the Old Dominion, yes, the Old Dominion State. I hold the #4 trackchasing ranking in Virginia. Virginia ranks #23, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Virginia state trackchasing list. I have made 26 separate trips to Virginia to see these tracks. Michigan The Great Lakes State This afternoon I saw racing at my 141st-lifetime track in the Great Lakes, yes, the Great Lakes State although sometimes called the Wolverine State. I hold the #4 trackchasing ranking in Michigan. I’m just two Michigan tracks away from moving into a third-place tie here. Michigan ranks #2, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Michigan state trackchasing list. I have made 67 separate trips to Michigan to see 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 Virginia sayings: “The Rivah” There are so many rivers in Virginia, but there’s seldom any confusion when someone shares that they’re headed to “the rivah” for the weekend. Not only does it sound lovely, but it will certainly involve time on the pier, boat, and eating fresh seafood. Specific whereabouts really aren’t too important when you’re on rivah time. Michigan sayings: “I was trying to make a Michigan Left today…” Ah, the classic Michigan Left. Rumor has it that these sorts of turns exist in other states, but they’ll always be known as Michigan Lefts to us — and the mere mention of them might make our out-of-state friends scratch their heads in confusion. 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 865 tracks of my lifetime total. Why is this noteworthy? Because it’s true. 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. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Why doesn’t anyone create a fun video of indoor winged outlaw kart racing from Virginia?” Your prayer are answered. Click the link below. Got 80 seconds? Everybody has 80 seconds. Spend the next 80 seconds watching my trailer from sprint car ice racing on Lake Haughton. See it in pictures! 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. Each trip includes a lot of photos of the “trip” and not just the racing. From one U.S. senator, “I think if I wanted to see what this adventure was like and didn’t have all that much time, I would just look at the photo album.” All photo albums are fully captioned. Part of the fun is just getting there…my view of West Virginia and then the racing in Virginia 
