Greetings from Belleville, Michigan
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Lifetime Track #1,880 & #1,881
Just a little bit more challenging…………….more in “The Details”. A pretty nice girl in more ways than one…………….more in “The Details”. No one wants to see this when they open up their hotel room door…………….more in “The Details”. I can be frank with you right?……………..more in “Race Review” Just a little bit more challenging? Carol and I woke up this morning in San Clemente, California. We went to bed in Middleburg Heights, Ohio. This is what today looked like. There are probably a few things that make my trackchasing efforts just a little more challenging compared to my fellow competitors. Maybe the most challenging item is my home base in Southern California. How does that add to the challenge? SoCal is a very long way from where about 80% of North America’s racetracks are located. Historically, more than 85% of all trackchasers have come from mid-Atlantic or east coast areas of our country. Why is that? I believe short track auto racing is much more popular, and has been for many years, in those areas as well as the Midwest. The Far West region of the country has large distances between the top 100 cities in the region. Population, except is a few major cities is not concentrated. Short track auto racing doesn’t have the history in the 13 Far Western states like it does “back East”. I live in Southern California. Most of the tracks are in the east and Midwest. If I want to be a trackchaser I have to go where the tracks are. That means I have to have a funding program that makes that happen and then be willing to jump through more than a few hoops. I have both. My sponsors supplement my meager retirement funds to help pay for the travel. For whatever reason I seem to have an insatiable desire to travel non-stop. I think that line of thinking keeps me young. Trackchasing has certainly taken Carol and me all over the world….a few times. A pretty nice girl in many more ways than one. On this morning Carol and I left our home at “zero-dark thirty” as we used to say in the Marines. I’ve got to give Carol credit for so many things. She’s really not the biggest race fan. She probably couldn’t tell you Jimmie Johnson’s car number or who his owner is. She wouldn’t be able to recall the details of most of her nearly 500 tracks where she has been in attendance. Of course, she could look at www.randylewis.org to remind her of the details! Nevertheless, she knows who Ronnie Weedon and Ronnie Shuman are and that puts her miles ahead of most. On this trip my wakeup call came at 2:55 a.m. Carol had gotten up earlier than that. We were out the door at 3:20 a.m. We were on the road so early that SoCal’s nighttime freeway work crews were still at it. We had to take a detour off the freeway, which is not all that unusual when traveling our freeway system from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Would I get up this early to assist Carol in one of her hobbies? Are you kidding me? Our first flight would take us from Los Angeles (LAX) to Chicago on American Airlines. There we would travel standby for a United Airlines flight going to Detroit. There were just a couple hiccups with that plan. First, at Chicago’s O’Hare airport the American and United terminals are about a mile from each other. Luckily, I had thought ahead and sent Carol to daily aerobics classes for more than 30 years. Without a doubt she is the most fit woman in all of trackchasing. We just kept walking and walking and finally made it to where we needed to be. We were fortunate to make our standby flight to Detroit. That sure beat having to drive to Michigan from Chicago. However, Detroit was experiencing some heavy rain that threatened to delay our arrival. Fortunately, much of that wet weather moved off to the East just as we were about ready to land. I’ll be on this trip for 27 days! The trip is so long that Carol will be with me for a week on the front end and a week on the back end of this adventure. In the meantime I’ll have to do my own laundry! You gotta spend money to make money. For the first part of this mega trip I made a reservation for a rental car covering 9 days at $370 U.S. That wasn’t a bad price for a full-sized car. I was thinking the boys and girls over at Priceline.com might be able to get me a better deal. I used some secret bidding strategies to get that rental car for nine days at just $200. Folks, that’s a savings of nearly two hundred bucks. If you save $200 here and $200 there you’re going to have some cash buildup sooner or later. We ended up with a Chevy Impala with XM satellite radio. However, a Chevy Impala does not get the fuel mileage a Hyundai Sonata does. Maybe that’s why American cars have lost so much market share. Had I stuck with my original reservation I likely would have gotten a Sonata, which yields a minimum of 35 M.P.G. I would end up driving this car more than 1,700 miles. Just a few pennies per mile of extra gasoline expense could really eat into my savings provided by Priceline.com. Nevertheless, you can rest assured I’m doing my best to spend my trackchasing money wisely. I have too. I don’t have folks riding with me that I don’t like in order to save on gas money. After the races….. Surprise. We concluded our rather long day by driving from tonight’s track over toward Cleveland where we grabbed a cheap motel. I don’t normally go “economy” when Carol comes along but given the time of night it was the best I could do. The desk clerk gave me the card key for room 101 on the ground floor. The first time I tried the key it didn’t work. I re-inserted it, got the door open about six inches, and then the fright of my life! Just as I opened the door a young man, without benefit of clothing jumped out into the door opening. I’m pretty much sure I scared him as much as he scared me. Carol looked up to see what all the commotion was about. Just at that moment the drapes opened a bit from the hotel room’s large picture window. In the darkness I could see a young woman holding the hotel room’s curtain from about her neck down to her knees. If I had to guess I would say she wasn’t wearing any more clothing than the young man at the door. I would love to have a transcript of our brief conversation with our new “friends”. They were happy we weren’t robbers. We were happy they didn’t shoot us for barging in. We said our “goodbyes” pleasantly. Then I returned to the front desk to get a key to another room. The desk clerk never apologized for her error in the least. She simply handed me a new key to a different room. It absolutely amazes me how many people (often young and poorly educated but not always that demographic) who don’t know how to say, “Please, thank you, you’re welcome and/or I’m sorry”. About the best they can do when thank you or you’re welcome is appropriate is to say “no problem”. However, as I have to remind myself at times there’s a reason someone is working at a cheap motel at midnight on a Wednesday night. Wayne County Fairgrounds – Belleville, Michigan Tonight’s fairgrounds was just 12 miles from the Detroit airport. How convenient was that? General admission to the races and fair was just $10 per person about the price of a movie ticket. However, none of our local movie theatres charge five bucks to park. Tonight we would be seeing racing on two different tracks. There would be traditional county fair figure 8 racing. They would also be having something called “off-road derby” cars racing around two huge tractor tires in an oval track configuration. Coming from California there really wasn’t anything “off-road” about tonight’s racing at all. There wasn’t much “derby” associated with the event either. However if it walks like a duck etc. you know the drill. I can be frank with you right? Let me make a couple of points on the above. When I was a racechaser I can never recall attending an event of this nature….ever. However, the folks who came up with the original trackchasing rules thought this kind of “junk car” racing was just great. I think this type of racing was chosen simply because it pads people’s trackchasing totals. I wasn’t involved in making up the original rules. However, I did vote for adding figure 8 tracks (which passed) but did not vote nor was I asked too on whether figure 8 tracks should be added “retroactively”. They were. Folks this type of racing is not “Daytona”. Nobody said it was or it should be. This type of “rock ‘em sock ‘em” competition is just plain fun though. People come to relax, not spend too much money and see people destroying other people’s cars. If you like that kind of thing you ought to come to one of these events. The crowds really show up to see these “races” and as they say “People vote with their feet”. There were about 12 off-road derby cars racing on the oval to go along with V-8 powered figure 8 cars. These guys put on a good show as well. It’s a little hard to believe I can pick up two tracks in a situation like this when sometimes just getting one additional track in a faraway place is difficult to do. I wouldn’t have set the rules the way Trackchasing’s founding fathers did. Sometimes I don’t think of this is true racing although the people who are in this part of the sport are very passionate about what they do. That makes me think this really is a good form of racing. We were lucky with the weather as we normally are. The weather forecast and radar weather map looked very bad for tonight’s racing. Earlier in the day rain forecast calls for 50% chance of precipitation. The radar had lots of yellow and red in it indicating severe thunderstorms rainstorms nearby. However when we showed up it was all blue skies and 80°. Overall, it was very comfortable evening. These folks do their jobs well. Tonight’s program was promoted by Unique Motorsports. They do a nice job. UM’s owner is the announcer. He’s very funny and entertains the crowd. Whenever there is a break in the action they throw lots of cheap plastic prizes into the crowd. The crowd screams and yells their appreciation. Folks, this is a grand piece of Americana. No zipper. The overall fair itself was small. They didn’t even have a zipper ride the carnival area. The animal barns and fair exhibits looked a little on the skinny side as well. Following the races Carol and I headed over toward Pittsburgh. We hope to catch a baseball game there tomorrow afternoon. Can’t wait for this event. During the drive I got a call from Bob Marcos executive director of the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame. He was calling to discuss this weekend’s Hall of Fame induction for Darrell Dake my all-time favorite driver. Bob asked me to speak at the ceremonies, which I will look forward to gladly. STATE COMPARISONS Michigan The Wolverine State This evening I saw my 91st lifetime track in the Wolverine state, yes the Wolverine state. If I had to bet or had inside information (which I do) I would guess I’ll go over the century mark in lifetime Michigan tracks before the 2013 season is wrapped up. 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 Michigan sayings: How many great lakes does your state have?
Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Chicago, IL (ORD) – 1,745 miles Chicago, IL (ORD) – Detroit, MI (DTW) – 234 miles RENTAL CAR #1 Detroit Metro Airport – trip begins Belleville, MI TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Wayne County Fairgrounds – $10 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 350 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. 1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 1,881 Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 10 countries of my lifetime total. 1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 65 Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results 1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 5.10 That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report
Who does this?
I try to always be thinking ahead.
My longest trip of the year.
We always enjoy meeting new friends.
Two tracks = ten bucks.
The racers are passionate.
QUICK FACTS
AIRPLANE
2 comments
I remember checking into a Holiday Inn in Greensboro many years ago and it took 4 try’s before they finely gave me a key to a room that was not occupied. Of the three that were occupied only was actually had a someone in the room at the time I opened the door.
As for replying to thank you I agree with Mr. Ingram that the appropriate response to a “thank you” is “you’re welcome”. However, I don’t think not saying “you’re welcome” has anything to do with education but with parenting.
I realize I’m probably a curmudgeon, but it annoys me when someone says “no problem” when “you’re welcome” is the appropriate response. When I say “thank you” to a server, it never crosses my mind that it’s a “problem” for the server to do their job, so for them to say “no problem” makes no sense to me.
All that to say that I wholeheartedly agree with you, Randy.