Greetings from first Anmoore, West Virginia
And then Purcell, Oklahoma
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
MK Speedway Dirt oval Original Lifetime Track #2,778 McClain County Expo Center Dirt oval Original Lifetime Track #2,779 THE EVENT Editor’s note: I doubt any trackchaser has ever seen racing in West Virginia on one day and then in Oklahoma the next day. My ability to “move around” has always given me an advantage over my fellow competitors. I’ll take any advantage I can get. I always have to overcome the “penalty” of trackchasing out of such a remote location as Southern California. Remember…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/Sunday, April 28 – May 1, 2022. I think one of the things I have always liked about trackchasing is the “unpredictability” of the entire endeavor. I don’t know if my flexible mindset led me into trackchasing or trackchasing led me into a flexible mindset. I was talking to a medical professional the other day. He asked me if I had any stress in my life. I told him that I didn’t think I had a single percentage point of stress. He told me I must have “the perfect life”. I assured him I wasn’t implying I had the perfect life. I was simply saying I had no stress in my life. I am retired and have a good family. I’m in good health and in a good financial situation. What’s to stress about? Just about everything I encounter pretty much rolls off my back. However, in today’s trackchasing world I am finding it more and more difficult to find tracks to visit. Why? I’ve seen almost all the tracks…especially in North America. This weekend I would end up trackchasing in first West Virginia and then Oklahoma. As we go along, I will tell you how uncertain those race locations were until they became certain. THURSDAY I try to limit the discussion of the “who, what and where” to what happened to me from the time I left the house on one of these trips until I pulled into the driveway when the adventure was all wrapped up. Today on Thursday my first event of the day was an afternoon baseball game featuring the Los Angeles Angels and the Cleveland Guardians. I joined my longtime golfing buddy George Robertson for an afternoon of sitting in the stands and just conversing with a casual eye on the ball game itself. That’s how I enjoy Angels games. I go to the games with people I like and socialize with them with the ball game in the background. With the Angels winning 4-1, the game wrapped up at about 4 p.m. I might point out that I bought our baseball tickets on seatgeek.com. How much did I pay? I paid a dollar for each of the Angels’ tickets and another $3.75 or so in fees. George and I went to a major-league baseball game for less than $10 in total for our two tickets. I did notice that George bought a couple of hotdogs and a drink. His bill was $24. Refreshments are not cheap at pro sporting events. I brought in my Nutrisystem meats, fruits and vegetables. I didn’t have any food expense. It’s nice the Angels let me do that. I was planning on taking an overnight, “redeye” flight to somewhere back east later on tonight. I had just enough time to fit in a movie between the ball game and my airplane ride. I chose the current Nicolas Cage film titled “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”. The movie wasn’t that great but it was a time filler. I have the unlimited Regal Theater movie package. After I’ve seen two movies in a month any other movie I might see is free. Next, I headed up to LAX. I was considering flights to Washington D.C., Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio amongst other locations. I was willing to get on any flight that would let me on on a standby basis. I had rental car reservations in each one of these airports. Most of those rental reservations were for “one-way” rentals where I would pick up the car wherever and drop it in Pittsburgh. A return to Pittsburgh seemed like it might work best for the balance of the weekend. The first flight I tried for was heading to the Washington Dulles airport. I missed that flight by three seats. Then I changed terminals at LAX and tried for an overnight flight to Pittsburgh. I walk a lot inside airports! I figured if I didn’t make that flight, I might try for one more Washington D.C. flight. If I didn’t make that I would walk back to the parking garage, sleep for a couple of hours in the back of my Tesla Model X and try for a 6 a.m. flight to Cleveland which was wide open. People do stuff like this, right? I’m happy to say that I made the more than four-hour overnight flight from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. This trip was on. Pittsburgh was located just a couple of hours north of Friday night’s trackchasing location which was the MK Speedway in Anmoore, West Virginia. I’ve always said that West Virginia is just about my least developed trackchasing state relative to what they race. That is slowly being corrected. I have been to a number of West Virginia tracks in the last couple of years. I would add one more this weekend. FRIDAY I landed at the Pittsburgh International Airport at 6:30 a.m. Pittsburgh (PIT) is one of those airports that is now deserted because of previous airline mergers and acquisitions. US Air used to be a big deal in Pittsburgh. But when they got bought out by American Airlines US Air’s hub was moved from Pittsburgh to other locations. Now Pittsburgh has a huge airport with very little passenger traffic. I needed to hang out at the airport for a couple of hours. Why? I didn’t want to get my rental car too soon. I wanted to get the rental car just a minute or so later today than I planned to return it tomorrow. This strategy would make this 24-hour rental. A 24-hour and not a 25-hour rental would save me money. When the Pittsburgh airport was built about 20 years ago, they advertised they would have “retail pricing” which is better than “airport pricing”. I think Pittsburgh might be the only airport that I know of that has a full drugstore inside the airport in the form of a Rite Aid. They also have a McDonald’s which only a few airports across the country have. I was surprised to see the McDonald’s app being accepted. The app offered me an Egg McMuffin for just two bucks although they did charge me $2.75 for a bottle of water. That’s about twice what that would cost on the open market. For some reason, the hotels that I like to stay at such as Marriott and Sheraton were very high priced on this Friday night in Pittsburgh. I had no idea why. After not sleeping very much on the overnight flight I called around until I found a hotel that would allow me to check-in at 9:30 a.m. A couple of hotels wanted to charge me $25 extra for an “early check-in”. Why would they want to do that? Because they could. Bastards! I ended up selecting a Red Roof Inn from Priceline. The hotel was located in Washington, Pennsylvania. I bought my hotel room for $53 plus tax. That was over $100 less than the more upscale chains were selling for in Pittsburgh. One of “Randy’s five rules to fight inflation” is “find a substitute”. You can almost always impede inflation by finding a substitute. If the room wasn’t occupied last night and it was ready to rent today, does it really matter if I’m checking in at 9:30 a.m. or 2 p.m.? No, it doesn’t. However, people will do what they have to do to make a profit. I don’t begrudge anyone for making a profit. I just don’t want them to make their “normal profit” off of me. Tonight, I was visiting the MK Speedway. I would be the first trackchaser ever to come here. I was told the track opened in about 2017 so it’s only been in existence for five or six years. They race primarily flat karts and mini wedges. Neither one of those classes meets the trackchasing requirement of having the proper kind of car and/or a proper aged driver. However, the MK Speedway does race champ karts. Champ karts are different than flat karts in a number of ways. The flat carts at MK are both winged and caged. I guess if karts had a wing it would have to be caged! The difference between champ karts compared to flat karts come in a number of ways. The champ karts have shoulder harnesses whereas the flat karts typically don’t have any seatbelts whatsoever. The champ karts come with both front and rear bumpers. The champ karts have body panels that make them look like a midget or a sprint car. MK speedway runs just one class of winged champ karts. I had a little bit of difficulty getting information from the track. I do have some special methods which I call “fishing”. What is fishing? It’s where I try to find someone connected to the track in some way, any way, who can help me. The person who helped most was a flat kart driver named Logan Burkhammer (above working on the kart side panel). One night at about 1 a.m. his time he and I messaged back-and-forth several times. When I finished conversing with Logan, I was comfortable knowing that the MK Speedway first was going to be racing this Friday night. Secondly, I believed they would be racing a class of cars and drivers that could count in the trackchasing hobby. I have to rely on past experiences to confirm that I am talking to someone who knows the complete situation before I can commit to a cross-country trackchasing trip. Logan, thanks bud! I told you that it’s getting more and more difficult for me to find race tracks to visit. The MK Speedway was the only track in all of North America that I knew of that was racing tonight, that would count in my lifetime totals, and that I had never visited. If I hadn’t found this Friday night choice I probably wouldn’t have trackchased anywhere this weekend. I almost never hop on an airplane in the United States to see racing at just one track. After sleeping pretty much all day I made a quick stop at a Foodland grocery store on the way to the track. There I picked up some fruits and meat to tide me over as I enter my ninth week of the Nutrisystem eating plan. So far, that’s going very well. I pulled into the MK Speedway at 7 p.m. They had advertised that racing would begin then. Of course, everyone has a different idea of what “racing” is. At 7 p.m. they began with hot laps and then went to time trials. Actual racing began after 8 p.m. I was impressed with the layout of the MK Speedway. I was told it started out as a “fun” track and then morphed into the idea that it would become more and more competitive. The track sits at the base of small valley. Cars can be heard buzzing past on the highway high up on a hill behind the start/finish line. I paid $10 which I thought was a very reasonable price since it included a pit pass. Then I went about taking pictures and meeting people. I met Angela a very friendly woman who had helped me with some of my questions about the speedway. I also met the track owner, Paul Wilmoth, who is a former late model driver. Then I found Logan Burkhammer in the pits. He and I talked for several minutes. I thanked him for all of the help. Logan really knows his go-kart racing. On the other hand, I know very little about the mechanical part of go-kart racing. Logan explained the ins and outs of kart chassis and engine options. He confirmed what I was thinking in that with all else being equal it is really the tires that make the difference in kart racing. I’m really going to encourage you to look at my photos and video from the MK Speedway. You may have been to Daytona or Indianapolis. I’ve been to those places as well. I would just as soon spend an evening at a place like the MK Speedway in Anmoore, West Virginia than at any of the “big” tracks. It’s all very unique and interesting. I won’t go back to very many of the smaller tracks but seeing them for three or four hours one time is a lot of fun. It was worth noting that some of the drivers racing tonight couldn’t have been more than about three feet tall. They were decked out in their racing uniforms. I’m sure they couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. This is how Kyle Larson and Jeff Gordon got started. These younger drivers race at a certain speed their first year. Then they turn a year older and race a little faster the next year because they have more experience and maybe a better race car. They do that from year to year so that by the time they are in their late teens they can race just about the fastest machines on earth. At that point, it doesn’t seem like a huge deal because they’ve been racing 30-40 weekends a year or more for 15 years. It is not unusual for the one and only go-kart class that meets trackchasing rules, usually caged champ karts, will race last after 15-20 classes of flat karts. Why didn’t trackchasing’s founding fathers want to count flat karts? I have no friggin’ idea. You will have to ask them before they die off or become so senile as not to understand your question. I’ve heard it said that flat karts were not counted when the first trackchasing rules were laid out because they weren’t considered a “race car”. Really? A beat-up $50 1984 Dodge Neon on the way to the junkyard before a stop at a democross race is a race car? A champ kart is more of a “race car” than a flat kart? Most of the leading World Formula 1 drivers started out in flat kart racing. I believe it was an egregious error for the founding fathers of trackchasing to have made this decision. They made a lot of other mistakes as well but this was one of the biggest. Tonight, I am happy to report that the champ karts were the FIRST class to race. Yes!! There is a trackchasing god! There were seven champ karts in the field tonight. They ran two heats (4 and 3) and a feature race. The first heat had four champ karts in it. Those four karts ran side by side and were almost in formation every lap. By the end of the race, every driver had led a lap. The champs have a very unique rule, and a rule I love, at the MK Speedway. The driver in the lead must race in the high groove. The preferred groove at MK is the low groove. With the leader racing in the high groove the second-place driver, or even a driver further back, can make the pass much more easily. Without this rule, the entire pack would hug the bottom in single file formation. Please watch the feature. The race was 25 or 30 laps in distance. There was a pass for the lead on nearly EVERY lap. Brilliant! I watched all of the heat racing with the flat karts and mini-wedges. I love the mini-wedge body style. The predator flat karts were going to be running a 100-lap feature race to end the evening. I had never ever seen a 100-lap go-kart race. I still haven’t. With a two-hour drive back to Pittsburgh and an early morning flight tomorrow to Dallas I couldn’t afford to get back to my hotel at well after midnight. I had flown overnight, with very little sleep, last night. I have to “manage” my program or I won’t have a program to manage. I was very impressed with the set up at the MK Speedway. What a rustic setting! I met some really nice people. I can’t thank Logan Burkhammer enough for his help. The racing was spectacular. I have never seen a long-distance feature race where the lead changed hands on nearly every lap. The entire experience widely surpassed my expectations. One more thing. Because of my current dietary restrictions, I only drank diet soda at the track. However, their concession menu was long, diverse and the prices were low. Very impressive! But wait! One more thing. I’ve seen a lot of porta potties at the racetracks I visit. Tonight, at the MK Speedway I saw something with their porta potties that I had NEVER seen. There were lights inside the toilet! Not much of a light…but a light. Impressive. SATURDAY I pride myself on being able to see racing at tracks that no other trackchasers have ever been to. First, I find it amazing that after seeing racing at nearly 2,800 tracks that I can find tracks that even I haven’t visited. Secondly, it’s almost equally amazing that I can find tracks that all of the hundreds of other trackchasers, who first became recording tracks as early as the 1920s, haven’t been to. After tonight’s racing, I will have seen racing at 19 new tracks in 2022. Obviously, all of those 19 tracks were brand new for me. However, at nine of those 19 tracks, I was the very first trackchaser to ever darken their door. I truly do find that surprising and satisfying. I probably had 10 or 12 Saturday night options to consider for tonight. Most of them were in the east or the southeast. Virtually none of them were in the Midwest or the west. For some reason, it seemed as if all of my Saturday night choices had a little bit of rain in the forecast. They were all so far from each other that if I made the attempt to go to one of them and got rained out, there wouldn’t be time to go to anything else. I didn’t like that option. Then I got a message from Frank Bardaro (above with his wife Michelle) who lives in Harrah, Oklahoma. Frank is the promoter of FMS Motorsports. He and I met when I visited the OK Corral in Harrah, Oklahoma a couple of years ago. He and I sort of hit it off. We have stayed in contact ever since. I got a message from Frank saying he was going to promote some special races first indoors and later outdoors in Purcell, Oklahoma. These races would be at the McClain County Exposition Center. No trackchaser had ever been there. I was happy to be the first. Today’s racing was going to be indoors. Finding an indoor race on the last day of April is very unusual. Most indoor racing happens during the winter months. A huge benefit of indoor racing is there are no rainouts. With all of this in mind, I secured an airplane ride from Pittsburgh to the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas International Airport (DFW). There I rented a car and drove a couple of hours north up to Purcell, Oklahoma. Just two days ago I had absolutely no intention or understanding that I would be trackchasing in Oklahoma tonight. That’s how my hobby goes. The news comes to me. If that news is a better idea than the current idea, I will drop the old idea and go with the new one. Trackchasing requires a flexible mindset. I have a flexible mindset. They say timing is everything, don’t they? I landed at 10 a.m. at the DFW airport. It was going to be a three-hour drive from the airport up to the race location in Purcell, Oklahoma. I didn’t want to leave for the track right away. Why? The promotional information given to me by the race promoter, Frank, told me that hot laps would begin at the McClain County Expo Center at 2 p.m. Just to confirm things I messaged Frank. He told me hot laps would now begin at 3 p.m. I figured they might run behind schedule. That happens in short-track motorsports quite a bit. I figured hot laps might take for at least a couple of hours if not longer. The last show I attended promoted by these folks was indoors in Harrah, Oklahoma. They had 150 entries at that event. I was thinking hot laps might start sometime between 3 and 4 p.m. and maybe closer to 4 p.m. If they lasted a couple of hours and then they took some time to groom the track the first race might not start until 7 o’clock at night. I didn’t want to arrive at 1 p.m. if that was the case. Also, the later I picked up my rental car the later I could return it tomorrow. With so little sleep on this trip, I was looking forward to sleeping in on Sunday morning. What would I do at the airport while I waited? I would “get my steps in”. That would be easy. DFW is a huge place and even though it is packed now with post-Covid travelers I could walk forever there. With all of the above being in case, I hung out at the airport for the next three hours. I walked some, a bit more than three miles. I did some research for my upcoming international trips. I picked up my car at 2:09 p.m. Then I drove straight north to Purcell, Oklahoma. I had never been to Purcell. Purcell, Oklahoma is a small town of about 6,500 people. The town is named after Edward B. Purcell a railway executive from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Surprisingly, I learned that Purcell is the site of the first planned double-wide trailer park with underground utilities, paved roads, greenbelts and other amenities, according to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. The largest area employer is Oklahoma Department of Corrections at 2 nearby prison facilities Joseph Harp Correctional Center and Lexington Assessment and Reception Center. It’s surprising what someone can learn by doing a little research, isn’t it? My GPS system didn’t “exactly” take me to the McClain County Expo Center. The expo center itself can be seen clearly from the freeway. It seemed as if I had a choice. I could take the first exit and then sort of be on my own for finding the building or I could drive past the expo center so that I could see where it was located and take the next exit. I chose the second option. This was nearly a fatal trackchasing mistake but I didn’t know it at the time. That seemed normal. No one in their right mind would intentionally make a fatal mistake, would they? As I drove north on route I-35 I saw the McClain County Expo Center over to the right. It’s just that the next exit wasn’t for about 5 miles. I did see something that minorly alarmed me. There didn’t look like they were that many race team haulers sitting outside the expo center. The building was good-sized. Maybe quite a few race competitors were pitted inside? Maybe? Once I did take the next freeway exit I kind of just eyeballed what road it was going to take for me to get to the race building. I soon pulled into what I considered to be the spectator parking lot. There were only one or two cars there. I got out of the car and walked up to what looked like the ticket selling table. There were two women seated there and one of them was Michelle, Frank’s lovely wife. For some reason Frank and Michelle sort of consider me a long lost son… even though I am older than both of them! They are very friendly people. They are the race promoters. I have a lot of race promoter friends and these are two of the very best. I can’t recall any other promoters giving me a big bear hug but Michelle and Frank did. Yep. Michelle got up from behind the table where she was sitting and said “Randy! From California!” And she gave me a big hug. Just over her shoulder, I could see the winged outlaw karts running at speed around the short fairly flat 1/10 mile or so dirt oval. Were they practicing? Was this a heat race? I asked Michelle if they were “practicing”? She looked up at me and said “No, this is the LAST race. We didn’t get very many cars today”. Oh my. I asked her if I could step over toward the turn three and four fence and get some video since this was the last race. Six winged outlaw karts were running their feature race paying $500 to win. Just shortly before I began videotaping, I saw the starter show the “crossed” flags. The race was halfway finished. I continued filming until they took the checkered flag and headed back to the pit area. I think my film took one minute and 42 seconds. What does all of the above mean? It meant that I came within one minute and 42 seconds of missing today’s racing. If I had missed this last minute and 42 seconds, I wouldn’t be able to count the McClain County Expo Center as lifetime track number 2,779. Oh my. According to trackchasing rules, I had seen “competitive racing”. This happened to me probably 20 years ago or more at a track in Houston. I showed up just in time to see the last half of the last feature race of the night. The funny thing about tonight’s racing in Purcell, Oklahoma is that I THOUGHT when I arrived, I was probably catching the last part of practice and not the last race of the night. It’s really funny or maybe it’s ironic or maybe it’s just crazy that sometimes when you think one thing the other thing is absolutely what turns out to be true. That’s weird, isn’t it? I spent the next hour and a half talking to Frank and Michelle as they tidied up there promotional duties. The race drivers loaded up their cars and headed on back to wherever they had come from. Someone told me there were 40 entries today. Frank told me he was only featuring two classes, the 250 and 500 winged outlaw karts. I didn’t see anywhere close to 40 entries. The 500 class feature had six competitors racing when I showed up. It looked to me like there might’ve been 20 racers entered today but that’s just my guess. The life and responsibilities of a race track promoter are difficult. The promoter has a lot of fixed costs like renting the property if they don’t own it, electricity, hired help, the race purse itself, insurance, and lots of other things I’m not even mentioning right now. The promoter pays most of those expenses whether it rains or not or whether no cars or very few cars show up. That makes a pretty good risk for the promoter. This was the last day of April. There are almost no racing events being held indoors this late in the year. Indoor racing takes place during the winter when racing outdoors doesn’t make much sense in most locales. Frank was at a loss for why so few racers showed up today. He could only make some educated guesses. Maybe some of the winter racers had packed up their race equipment for the season and wouldn’t be racing during the summer. Maybe some of the people didn’t show up today because they were racing at other summer locations. He didn’t know for sure. Today’s car count was going to be a money loser for him. We talked about what he might be able to do to salvage the rest of the season. His promotional card showed a full summer schedule when they would be racing outdoors at the McClain County Expo Center in Purcell, Oklahoma. If it was true that some of the winter racers only race in the winter and some of the winter racers would be racing at other locations in the summer then getting a good car count for his warm-weather outdoor series would be challenging. Frank was going to have to work hard to find out why people didn’t show up today. He did have the phone numbers of all of his winter racers. It might be time to get on the phone and ask everyone what was up. I was disappointed for Frank and Michelle. They are such nice people. I’ve come to know them, sort of like I am their son, and not losing sight of the fact that I am actually older than they are. They are just that nice. Frank told me that he lived for more than five years in Huntington Beach, California. As a young man, he was a motorcycle racer hired to race 750 BMW motorcycles all over the country at some of the most popular and famous motorcycle tracks. Michelle reminded us both that if Frank hadn’t returned to Oklahoma, he never would have met her! She makes a good point. After we had talked about all of this and renewed our acquaintances it was time for me to make the lonely drive back to Dallas, Texas. I had a Marriott hotel waiting for me down there. This entire weekend sort of showcases “the state of future trackchasing” for me. Essentially, “I’ve seen all the tracks”. The few tracks that are available for me to see from this point forward are tracks that might not have existed in the past, tracks that may or may not have a class that meets the trackchasing rules or tracks that are brand new and racing for the very first time. So far in 2022, I’ve seen racing at 19 new tracks. At nine of those, I was the very first trackchaser ever to see racing at these locations. What does that mean? Either the tracks just began racing or just started racing with a class that meets track chasing rules. It also showcases the fact that I have a very robust trackchasing research department. I believe all of that is true. I am no longer going to the Daytona 500s or Eldora World 100s or Knoxville Sprint Car nationals to add those tracks for the very first time. I will go back and see those types of races but that will be the “racechasing” side of me and not the trackchasing side. This weekend I will be traveling internationally and seeing a racetrack that no trackchasers have ever visited. Trackchasers almost never go to Mexico. I’ve seen racing at 11 different tracks in Mexico in six different Mexican states. Did you know that only five trackchasers have ever trackchased in Mexico? Two of those five went there to work at the jobs they have in racing. None of those trackchasers have ever visited more than ONE Mexican track. Can it be true that I have seen racing at more than twice the number of tracks compared to the totals from the hundreds of other trackchasers in Mexico? Maybe they don’t speak Spanish? Maybe they don’t like Mexican food? Maybe they are scared to travel to Mexico? All of these questions are kind of like Frank trying to understand why he’s not getting more cars for his race series this year. I’m trying to understand why trackchasers won’t go to Mexico? These are unanswered questions. Tonight, I drove right past the Southern Oklahoma Speedway in Ardmore, Oklahoma. This is one of the best tracks in Oklahoma and one of the better tracks in the United States. They were racing tonight. However, I drove right past them on a beautiful Saturday night when they were probably just getting ready to go feature racing. In the past 48 hours, I had flown about eight hours. I had driven nearly 600 miles. I hadn’t slept very much. It was time to get back to the hotel and sleep in late on Sunday morning something I very rarely do. I did stop at a grocery store once I got back to Dallas. I picked up some microwavable green beans, turkey breast, and a couple of packages of blueberries and blackberries. Those will be my hotel provisions and snacks for tomorrow’s flight. SUNDAY. I was flying home today. I had two choices. I could leave from the larger DFW airport in Dallas or I can leave from Love Field in downtown Dallas. I chose Love Field. I could fly home on my “own” airline and sleep in this morning. My flight wasn’t departing until 3 o’clock. I would say that Sundays, when people are coming home from their weekend trips, are probably the most difficult day of the week to fly on a standby basis. Flights were filling up. I wasn’t guaranteed that I would get home today. I hoped I would. It’s just that I didn’t have a paid ticket and I wasn’t guaranteed to get home today. No trackchaser in the history of trackchasing has ever flown to their races under the circumstances. Some wouldn’t want to. I love it. I did discover an “Amazon One” store. Talk about tech! Once I signed up I simply entered the store with my palm print. Then I bought what I wanted to buy and walked out of the store without talking to anyone or doing ANYTHING! Slick. If this is the future, and I think it will be, shopping just got easier. My flight was delayed by two hours but I got on the flight. I listened to “Better Call Saul” episodes on my iPad during the entire flight. Even though there is some uncertainty with flying standby the flexibility outweighs the uncertainty. I had seen some of the most competitive racing ever at the MK Speedway in West Virginia on Friday night. Then I made it by the narrowest of margins (less than two minutes) to add one more track in Oklahoma. I met some nice folks who helped me succeed with my trackchasing hobby. Logan Burkhammer spent a lot of time helping me understand the race situation at the MK Speedway. It was nice to reunite with Michelle and Frank Bardaro, the Oklahoma race promoters. All nice folks whom I would never get to meet without my trackchasing endeavors. I will be trackchasing way down in Mexico this week. Wish me luck. Hope I don’t get kidnapped but if I do and live to tell about it…there will be quite the story! Randy Lewis – 85 countries (86 coming soon?) – 2,779 tracks. West Virginia The Mountain State This evening I saw racing at my 13th lifetime track in the Mountain, yes, the Mountain State. I’m not even in the trackchasing top ten in West Virginia. But…I am getting close. West Virginia ranks #44, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time West Virginia state trackchasing list. I have made 13 separate trips to West Virginia to see these tracks. West Virginia State Track List Oklahoma The Sooner State This Saturday afternoon, I saw racing at my 46th lifetime track in the Sooner, yes, the Sooner State. I hold the #1 trackchasing rank in Oklahoma. Oklahoma ranks #19, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Oklahoma state trackchasing list. I have made 31 separate trips to Oklahoma 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 West Virginia sayings: Let’s grab some Tudor’s! Not the royal English family, but rather some of the most delicious biscuits in West Virginia. Oklahoma sayings: “Oh, honey, I’m from Oklahoma! This is who I am – middle-class all the way!” 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 875 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. See the most competitive race…ever…MK Speedway The first ever race in Purcell, Oklahoma…indoors! 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. The red-eye flight to paradise…West Virginia and more Indoors in Oklahoma and then the Amazon One store at Love Field! 
