Greetings from first Ellisville, Mississippi
And then Carson, Mississippi
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Back 40 Speedway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,772 Greens Creek Speedway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #2,773 THE EVENT Editor’s note: I don’t get down to the Magnolia State that often. But…when I do I find a beautiful place with really nice folks. I wish I had the chance to come here more often. 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, Mar 31-Apr 3, 2022. Have you ever been to Ellisville, Mississippi? I never had. This weekend’s trip was supposed to begin in Ellisville. The question for me was how in the heck was I going to get there? Ellisville, Mississippi is one of the most remote locations I could have to begin one of my trackchasing trips. Here’s why I say that. I almost always fly from Los Angeles, California to a major airport nonstop to start one of these trips. Then I will rent a car and drive from wherever I have landed to the track I expect to add to my lifetime trackchasing résumé. Doing that with Ellisville, Mississippi was going to require a long drive wherever I landed. I didn’t mind that one bit. This is what I do for fun. I opened up Google Maps. I put Ellisville, Mississippi inside the “circle” of all of the airports that were anywhere close (less than a 12-hour drive). Then I looked around for opportunities where I could fly nonstop from Los Angeles to any of those airports. The most obvious choice would have been New Orleans. There was a problem with New Orleans. It just turned out that the NCAA Basketball Final Four tournament games were being played there on Saturday. Everyone and their brother and sister would be flying in the day before on Friday. A Friday flight into New Orleans was not going to work for me. I also checked out flight opportunities from Oklahoma City, Dallas, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, and Houston. I would be flying standby. I would only get on an airplane if there was an unsold seat. Right now, it’s spring break. Spring break lasts roughly six weeks. I would say that spring break is the toughest time to fly standby over a long period. Christmas and Thanksgiving are probably a little bit more difficult but those holidays only last for a week or so around the actual date. The flight from Los Angeles with the most open standby seats was going to be going into Oklahoma City from Los Angeles. Oklahoma City was nearly an 11-hour drive from Ellisville. I could fly in there on Thursday night and drive all night. I could make it to Ellisville in time for their Friday night racing but I wasn’t relishing the idea of driving all night. This turned out to be my plan. I lined up a series of flights, all separated by an hour or two, departing Los Angeles for each of the cities named above. I passed on Oklahoma City. Eleven hours of driving was going to be too much if I could make a flight to any of the closer cities. The first flight I stood by for was going to Nashville. I made that flight. I got the very last seat. I only got the very last seat because the two people ahead of me were traveling together. They didn’t want to split up for that last seat so they didn’t go and I did. Welcome to the world of long-distance trackchasing! Please don’t think that traveling from Los Angeles to Ellisville, Mississippi is the longest trip I’ve ever taken. I’ve trackchased in places like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Zimbabwe, and India pursuing my hobby. I’ve got four upcoming European trips scheduled in the next few months. Ellisville wasn’t the longest but it was one of the more challenging trips for me to take in the United States. Overcoming the logistical hurdles is one of the more challenging and fun things I do with my hobby. Today I landed in Nashville at 1 a.m. I had a rental car reserved but I wasn’t gonna be able to use it when I landed. Why? The rental car facility shuts down at midnight in Nashville. It doesn’t open until 6 a.m. With no rental car, I would need to take an Uber ride from the airport to my nearby hotel which is exactly what I did. I always spend time talking to my Uber drivers. The guy who drove me tonight was from Jerusalem, Israel. He told me he lived on the “Palestinian” side. What impressed me about my driver was that he had made more than 25,000 Uber drives. That’s a lot of driving and meeting a lot of people. Sounds like fun to me. I had flown in on Thursday night. The plan was to pick up my rental car on Friday morning and make the six-hour one-way drive from Nashville down to Ellisville, Mississippi in time for their program. Hot laps were scheduled to begin around 7 p.m. I had been in contact with the folks who run the Back 40 Speedway in Ellisville. It’s kind of interesting how I begin these contacts. I can’t possibly imagine what people think who are on the other end of my communications. With the Back 40 Speedway, I started my first “communications” on Facebook Messenger. I absolutely LOVE Messenger. I use it frequently to set up my international trips where I can’t use my AT&T texting capabilities beyond North America. I didn’t get the name of the person originally whom I was speaking with at Back 40. I suspected during our back-and-forth messaging that she was the wife of a fellow named “Mike”. From what I could gather the two of them owned and operated the Back 40 Speedway. How many tracks in rural Mississippi or rural Michigan or rural Maryland or anywhere for that matter get a message from a guy in the Los Angeles area saying “I want to come to your racetrack”? I would imagine that’s an unusual message to receive. The Back 40 Speedway is a “kart” track primarily. As you know by now the founding fathers of trackchasing turned thumbs down on “flat kart” racing. Well over 90% of all karting is done with flat karts. Does it sound to you as if the founding fathers were not interested in karting? That’s pretty much how it sounds to me. People can say anything they want but it’s what they do that explains their intentions. Because the founding fathers seemed to be saying “I don’t want trackchasers to go to any go-kart races. I don’t want anyone else to go to any go-kart races if they plan on trying to add a go-kart racetrack to their lifetime trackchasing totals”. Their decision so long ago has made my life a bit more difficult. I have to call up track promotors at karting facilities and ask if they have anything racing at their track that isn’t a flat kart. By the way, in case you haven’t guessed, I wish we had counted flat kart racing from the very beginning when ten white people sat around a pretty well used up conference table smoking cigars and made the “guidelines” that morphed into the ironclad rules of trackchasing. However, I wasn’t there. I didn’t make the rules of trackchasing. I only follow them. Why do I follow them? If everybody follows the same set of rules, they can compare their trackchasing list to any other trackchaser’s list that follows those same rules. Then it’s an apple to apple comparison. This is the only reason I follow the trackchasing rules. So here I was conducting my conversation online with a woman whom I would come to find out was named Alicia. Later she gave me her husband’s phone number. I called Mike. I got the good news. Back 40 had a class called “sprints” that other people might call mini-sprints or 600s. These cars are winged. They look a lot like your standard USAC midgets only just a little bit smaller in size and power. Mike expected to have a few of those at the Back 40 Speedway this Friday. Because of that fact, I was willing to fly from Los Angeles to Nashville and then get a hotel and then rent a car and then drive six hours down to the Back 40 Speedway. Like I always say. Don’t worry about me. I’m a volunteer. I do this because I love it. FRIDAY I was traveling on April 1. During my drive, on a beautiful spring day, I stopped at rest areas about every hour or so. At each stop, I walked for a minimum of 10 minutes which for me is a little bit more than half a mile. My goal for the day was to walk more than 4 miles. I reached that goal this Friday, April 1. Today I completed a string of 31 consecutive days where I have walked more than four miles. I was proud of that accomplishment. It was not difficult for me to find the Back 40 Speedway. Their address appeared on their Facebook page. I simply put that address into my Waze GPS and soon I was pulling up to within yards of the ticket booth. I will only say this about GPS. After tonight I will have seen racing at 2,772 tracks in 50 states and 85 countries. I can’t even remember I’ve how I found these tracks before I had GPS. Maybe I don’t want to remember. From the prices posted at the ticket booth, it looked to me as if spectators were charged $15 and people entering the pits were charged $15. Maybe I didn’t read that sign right for the spectator price. I told the young woman who was signing me in that I wanted to go into the pits. My decision generated a different wristband for me. Then I signed a liability release form which said that if I was stupid enough or unlucky enough to become hurt or killed at the track then my wife Carol would be responsible for all of my funeral expenses. I happily signed. It would never be me, right? When I walked into the track, I found about 20 flat karts in the pit area and another five sprints. I would enjoy the flat kart racing but it was the sprints that would allow me to add the Back 40 Speedway to my lifetime trackchasing list. From this point forward I began to meet a lot of nice Mississippi people. I’ll be honest. I haven’t trackchase all that much in Mississippi. Tonight, I was seeing my 17th-lifetime track in the Magnolia State. I haven’t been down here since 2017. I would come down here more but they don’t have all that many race tracks for me to visit. The first fellow I met came up to me and asked “Are you that World’s #1 Trackchaser”? How did he know to ask that question? The Back 40 Speedway page had advertised the fact that I was coming tonight. How did this young man know to ask ME this question? I guess I looked “like I wasn’t from around here”! I was now meeting a youngster named Markus Pope. Write that name down. I met NASCAR’s Chase Elliott when he was about 10 years old. Now you have seen what he has done winning a NASCAR championship. Markus Pope might do that someday but I kinda hope he doesn’t. I’ll tell you why in a moment. I spent quite a bit of time during the night talking with Markus. He’s a flat kart driver. He didn’t have his kart at the tractor tonight. He’ll be racing at the Greens Creek Speedway where I expect to be tomorrow night. Tonight, Markus was helping a buddy with his kart. Markus just turned 15 years of age. I will tell you this. Just about every parent I know would be proud to have a 15-year-old with his “head on as straight “as this fellow by the name of Markus. Over the course of our conversation, I learned that Markus had once won $3,000 racing flat karts in one night. You may or may not be a race fan but that’s a pretty impressive statistic. Far less than 1% of all kart racers have ever done that. I smiled when Markus told me he had just gotten his “driver’s permit”. He’s been racing karts at high speeds for ten years. I suspect he can pass a driving test in a four-door sedan. I didn’t think flat karts could be adjusted much. Markus schooled me on the idea that there were at least ten adjustments that could be made to make a go-kart go faster. He said the true secret in kart racing is the tires. The right tires will beat the best engine. The engine is only important when everyone has the same tires and tire prep. Markus was proud of his father. He told me his dad, who wrenches on his race machine was a chemical engineer and had graduated from Auburn. Markus was interested in becoming a chemical engineer as well. He’s in the ninth grade. Markus told me he gets “all As” and has already taken the ACT and gotten a high score. He was taking the ACT again tomorrow morning just for practice. As Markus and I continued to talk we covered the areas of finance, schooling and racing, and much more. Every time there was a pause in the conversation Markus kept saying, “I can’t believe you have seen all those tracks”. He would ask me if I had seen racing at this track and that track. Most of the time my answer was “yes”. Markus has a favorite track as he is a big Formula 1 fan. That’s the Circuit de Spa Francorchamps facility in Stavelot, Belgium. My visit to Spa came in 2011. The track was my 1,712th-lifetime track where I had seen racing. On the day of my visit, I saw a Porsche club race. I hope Markus makes it to Spa one day! A little bit later I would come to meet “Buster” who is the driver of the “General Lee” kart #01. Do you remember the orange General Lee car that appeared in the famous TV series? I’ll bet you I’ve seen 25 of those paint schemes on stock cars in the past. I had never seen one on a flat kart until tonight. Buster has been taken to racetracks since he was two months old. He told me his dad raced and he loved watching his dad race. Now Buster races his own kart. It wasn’t long before Buster’s significant other Lisa came up to say hi. I had seen Lisa taking photographs at the track earlier in the evening. She had some sporty checkered flag-type racing pants on. I knew she was a strong supporter of Buster’s racing. Lisa was a very friendly Mississippian. She gave me some good background on the Back 40 Speedway. She told me that years ago, where the race track now sits, it was a field where a donkey hung out. How many visitors from California will ever come to the Back 40 Speedway and get that background information? It was fun talking to Lisa. I attended the drivers’ meeting and Buster and Lisa soon introduced me to Buster’s parents, Mike and Alicia Jarrell. Soon I was meeting the entire Jarrell clan. Alicia in addition to being part-owner of the track was the track announcer. Occasionally she would break out into song when describing the race action. I don’t hear very many women announcers. Of the few that I have heard, I can’t ever recall having had any of them singing to their audiences. I loved it. I also talked to Mike who owns the track with Alicia. I had spoken to Mike on the phone a few days ago when he confirmed they would have some sprints racing tonight. Mike is the humble part of the couple and Alicia is the live wire! I’m sure Mike has been on a grader working on his Back 40 Speedway more than anybody. He told me the track began about nine or ten years ago as a “practice track” for their kids. Then as time went on about three years ago, they opened up the track to what it is today. Alicia explained that the track was a great location for youngsters to spend their time in a good way rather than getting involved in any of the bad things that can affect kids growing up nowadays. I also had a chance to spend some time with Mike and Alicia’s younger son. Tanner was racing a flat kart as well. Tanner took the time to explain to me a little bit about how to “manage tires” on a flat kart. My video from the Back 40 Speedway is going to be special. It includes interviews with Tanner, Buster, and Lisa. You’re not gonna want to miss that. The Back 40 Speedway looks like your traditional dirt oval race track but on a slightly smaller scale than Eldora, Knoxville, or the Peoria Speedway. The track has a nice bank to it. From what I could see it looks as if turns one and two are a little bit wider than turns three and four. Additionally turns one and two sit 10-20 feet higher than turns three and four. This makes for an unusual but entertaining race track. I walked all over the pit area taking photos and videos of the scene. I would say the track’s fencing is much better suited for flat kart racing than it is for mini sprint racing. Although I was willing to stand in an open area near the pit gate pit entrance to do my videoing, I would not recommend that for others or even me for very long. Right now, I’m doing the Nutrisystem eating plan in hopes of losing a few pounds. That being the case I stuck to a dill pickle and Diet Coke from the concession stand. They had a full menu of race track items that on any other night I would have been all over. I suspect I will remember the Back 40 Speedway for a long time. One way I will be able to do that is by simply rereading this Trackchaser Report that I’m sharing with you today. However, in my mind when I think back on the Back 40 Speedway, I don’t think I’ll be remembering the flat kart racing or the sprint racing which I found very entertaining tonight. What will I remember? I will easily remember the friendly Mississippi people that I met tonight. They all went out of their way to make a fellow who had come from California comfortable. It’s nice to be having conversations with people that in my normal life, whatever that is, I wouldn’t get a chance to meet. If any other trackchaser ever comes down to the Back 40 Speedway I hope they avail themselves of the opportunities of not just watching the racing but meeting the people. SATURDAY If you have followed my hobby of trackchasing for any length of time you know that the entire hobby revolves around three things for me. They are all of equal importance. One of those three ingredients would be the racing itself. Shocker, right? But equally important is what I call “Trackchasing Tourist Attractions”. I want to see and try to experience whatever folks living near the tracks that I visit are seeing every day and experiencing. Sometimes that includes local sporting events. Today my TTA efforts revolved around local museums. Normally I will do a Google search for the top 10 things to see and do in “XYZ” city. That search always finds good results. When I no longer trackchase I will want to remember the people and the places I visited more than anything. Oh yes. The third important part of my hobby? That would be the logistics of getting from point A to B. I’ll often go into some detail, as I did in this report, about what it takes to get from Southern California to a place like Ellisville, Mississippi. There’s a lot of planning that goes into making something like that happen. There are airplanes and rental cars and hotels and weather planning and race track contacts and probably another hundred things I’m not thinking about right now to consider. My wife says that I enjoy the planning of these trips as much or more than I do the doing of these trips. She’s probably right. Last night’s racing was in Ellisville, Mississippi but after the races, I drove an hour and a half up to Mississippi’s state capital Jackson. I would stay in Jackson for a couple of nights. In Jackson, I could see some interesting local sites that would tell me just a little bit more about Mississippi. In all of the 50 states where I have trackchased, I would probably say that the Magnolia State of Mississippi is one of my least visited. My first stop on my Mississippi tour today would be at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. I’ve been to a few of these halls of fame and museums that honor the state’s best athletes and sportsmen. I was most impressed with today’s venue. It looked much newer than having been built in 1996 as my ticket taker explained. Two of the inductees into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame caught my attention. The first was a baseball player by the name of Don Kessinger. Kessinger would become the starting shortstop for the Chicago Cubs and later actually become the player/manager of the Cubs. I first saw Donnie Kissinger playing shortstop when he came up to my hometown area of Peoria, Illinois to play in the Central Illinois Collegiate League. He was a great fielding but light-hitting shortstop. He did end up with a 16-year career in the majors and a batting average of .252. It was fun to be able to watch him all summer in my hometown. I followed his exploits as he progressed to the majors and ended with a nearly 2,000 hit career. The other person of interest for me was a fellow by the name of Jay “Dizzy” Dean. Dizzy Dean first broke into the majors in 1934. That was 15 years before I was born. Later he would have arm trouble and be out of the majors before I was born. I became aware of Dizzy Dean when he was the broadcast partner of Peewee Reese on the major league baseball game of the week. Dizzy Dean had that old country charm. He was not overly modest. He was fond of saying the phrase, that I have come to repeat many times on my own, “It ain’t braggin’ if yuh can do it”. I agree with Dizzy Dean 100% on that one. Dean had back-to-back pitching seasons with records of 30-7 and 28-12. I was amazed to learn that Dizzy Dean had a career BATTING average of .225. That’s very good for a pitcher. He had 8 career home runs and five stolen bases. He once appeared in a game as a pinch-runner. That was all the more remarkable because, by the time Dizzy was doing his TV broadcasting, he weighed more than 300 pounds. I had a wonderful time at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum and recommend it to anyone. Don’t miss my many photos from this visit. My second stop was actually to see two museums for the price of one. The first museum would be the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. This museum was brand new having opened in 2017. That was followed by my visit to the Museum of Mississippi History, all in the same structure. The civil rights museum highlighted the sordid racial history that plagued and still plagues the United States. The museum focused a good deal on slavery, racial problems, and civil unrest in the state of Mississippi which was going on in several locations across the United States. I gained a little insight into why Mississippi is often ranked so low in areas of economic prosperity, schools, and such. A couple of major situations impacted the state which has made it difficult for them to recover. The Civil War came along in the early 1860s based upon the entire idea that slavery should be abolished. It was the north versus the south. It was the confederacy versus the union army. Mississippi was on the union side of this war. Mississippi was pretty well decimated after four years of war. Think Ukraine after being constantly bombed by Russia and that’s only been going on for about a month. I read that 12,000 Mississippians died in the Civil War but 15,000 more died from dysentery from bad food and water. An outcome of the Civil War, that being the abolition of slavery, affected the number one industry in Mississippi at the time which was cotton. Mississippi’s free labor force of black cotton pickers went away almost overnight. That made the whole idea of their number one cash crop being a viable economic idea much more difficult. The Civil War and slavery ended about 160 years ago. That’s a long time ago. However, as recently as in the 1960s schools were still segregated in Mississippi. Turning that around caused a lot of conflicts and hard feelings as today’s museum pointed out. The United States is still a long way from having racial equality. I can’t imagine the way things are going now that it will ever really get back to “normal” where everyone is treated equally. It’s a very complex subject. I would highly recommend the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum here in Jackson, Mississippi. The second museum that was part of the “two-for-one” ticket buying idea was the Museum of Mississippi History. I didn’t quite get as much out of this museum although it did tell me how Mississippi came into being as a state (1,817 – 20th U.S. state). This museum touched on slavery, the Civil War, and then the moving into today’s world over the past 100 years or so. Again, all very interesting. I wish I had the patience when I visit these museums to read the description on every display. If you would like to see some of what I saw, I will have separate photo albums from these museum visits. They will be placed in the Trackchasing Tourist Attraction section of my website and added to my Halls of Fame section as well. Take a look. I think if you do, you’ll feel as if you were there standing right beside me as I experienced everything. To complete my tour, I took a walk around the Mississippi State capital building area. It was a beautiful spring day. The buds on the trees were just beginning to bloom. This was a very beautiful area and a very beautiful capital building. With my touring finished now it was time to go trackchasing. I headed on down to Carson, Mississippi to check out the Greens Creek Speedway. Surprising to me was the fact that the Greens Creek track is located only 8 miles from the Carson Speedway. They both race in similar classes. I’m thinking they alternate dates. I sure hope so. Tonight, I arrived a little later than usual at 8 p.m. Nevertheless, they still hadn’t begun racing but had finished qualifying. I paid my $12 pit admission and walked on in to see what there was to see…a process I have done 2,772 times before. The first person that I ran into was kart driver Markus Pope. I met Markus last night but he wasn’t racing. Tonight, he had his beautiful blue and white kart number 21 all set up and ready to go. Markus was racing in three go-kart classes tonight. He was racing in the predator division. This division is reserved for karts using a predator motor. Each of the predator classes that Markus was competing in had a weight limit. Weight limits in karting include the driver and the kart. Markus told me his kart weighed about 370 pounds with him in it. This allowed Markus to qualify for the weight limit requirement for three different racing classes. That’s got to be a lot of fun. It also has to keep the crew pretty busy getting their driver ready for three different heat races and three different main events. As I mentioned from last night’s visit to the Back 40 Speedway Markus is a very impressive young man. He just turned 15 years of age. He’s a very good kart race driver. In addition to being at the top of his racing game, and likely much more importantly, Markus looks to be very well on his way to a successful future life. He’s comfortable talking with adults. He makes good eye contact and has a lot of interesting things to say. Tonight, I had the chance to meet his mother. I told her how impressed I was with her son and that she should be very proud of having such a young person in their family doing so well. I am sure she is! In my previous corporate life, I did a lot of recruiting and took a lot of training classes. Good eye contact, a strong handshake, and a friendly demeanor can go a long way. One of the strongest assets of life is simply having people like you. There are so many things an individual can do, when properly schooled, to accelerate that process. Markus told me that in tonight’s qualifications he had the fastest kart at the track. Tonight, I saw his three heat races where he finished first, second, and about sixth. With his sixth-place finish, he got in a skirmish with another driver. The first thing that happened was that the other driver strongly pushed Markus out of the way for a position. Marcus wasn’t going to take that and, on the restart, shoved his competitor out of the way. This resulted in a yellow flag and having Markus put to the back of the pack. Flat kart racing is often a one-lane affair around the bottom. To get past somebody, you have to lightly tap them in the rear to get them out of shape and out of the groove just enough so you can scoot by on the inside. Markus told me that he has perfected this move. That benefits him a good deal considering he did have the fastest car tonight. I could see him close the gap on anybody he might be following and then wait for his chance to pass. In the main events, Markus came up with two wins and a second-place finish. Well done. I was expecting the “sprints” also known as mini sprints or 600s to be the only trackchasing “countable class”. They would allow me to add the Greens Creek Speedway as my 2,773rd-lifetime race track where I had seen racing. However, in reality, that honor went to the senior champ class. They began their heat race with four competitors. I think the winner might have had a problem with the scales after the race. In addition to those four champs, 11 sprints showed up. As always if you want to see what the racing looked like from the two Mississippi tracks, I visited this weekend you can! Simply take a look at my YouTube videos (channel: RANLAY) and my SmugMug photo album which is linked to my Trackchaser Report. If you visit my website, www.randylewis.org use the search feature located in the upper right of my site’s home page. You can find my story, video, and photos from every one of my posted tracks using search. You’ll get a chance to see exactly what things looked like. I think you’ll have a greater appreciation for what both the Back 40 Speedway and the Greens Creek Speedways were all about. SUNDAY Today, my main mission was to get from Jackson, Mississippi back to our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente, California. That would be a little simpler idea to think about than to implement. I planned to return my rental car where I picked it up at the Nashville airport in Nashville, Tennessee. Along the way I wanted to stop in Ripley, Mississippi to do some sightseeing. Why Ripley? A good buddy of mine lived for a few years in this small town while he went to high school. I’m talking about Greg Robbins. I figured since Ripley was almost on the way to Nashville I would stop and take a few pictures and send them over to Greg. I did exactly that. I think he enjoyed seeing what his old homeplace and hometown looked like. As you know for most of my domestic trackchasing trips I fly on a standby basis. I started looking at the “flight loads” on the flights leaving Nashville tonight and headed to Los Angeles. Sunday nights are always one of the more difficult times to fly on a standby basis. Things didn’t look all that promising. If I didn’t make the flight I would be stuck in Nashville for another night and I wanted to get home. I had also been monitoring standby flights out of somewhat, in my world, nearby Memphis, Tennessee. There was a flight on Allegiant Air that looked like it had a few extra seats open. I decided to change my departure from Nashville to Memphis. That idea came with pluses and minuses. To change the return location for my rental car I was going to be charged an extra $120. That amount of money was offset just a little bit by my airplane fare being reduced by $20 and not having to drive an extra 120 miles up to Nashville so there were some gas savings. I figured it still cost me about 80 bucks to make the change but I was virtually guaranteed of getting home tonight. I thought that was worth it. In summary, I’ll tell you that I had a quick and enjoyable visit now down to Mississippi. The highlight was meeting so many nice folks who made this Californian feel welcome at the race tracks. I was impressed with those Jarrell kids, they were very focused on their racing, and Markus Pope. There was a 12-year old mini-sprint driver, Leroy Boone, whom I didn’t get to meet but several folks told me about. That’s got to be quite a ride for a young man just 12 years old. A year or two ago I had never heard of the two tracks I was able to visit this weekend. You need to know that I do a lot of research trying to find the locations of the tracks I visit. It’s pretty unusual when I’ve been doing this research for decades and I don’t know about pretty much every track racing in United States. Nevertheless, I don’t. What keeps me going after I’ve seen so many tracks? Finding the new ones that seem to pop up at the last minute on my radar screen. For now, I’ll say goodbye to Mississippi and dream about the time I’ll get the opportunity to come back again. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,773 tracks. Mississippi The Magnolia State This weekend I saw racing at my 17th and 18th-lifetime tracks in the Magnolia, yes, the Magnolia State. I hold the #2 trackchasing ranking in Mississippi. Mississippi ranks #35, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time Mississippi state trackchasing list. I have made 13 separate trips to Mississippi 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 Mississippi sayings: “How’s your mama ’n ’em?” This phrase is commonly used to ask how someone’s family is doing. (Hey, just because things tend to move at a slower pace in Mississippi, doesn’t mean we don’t like to take a few shortcuts from time to time.) 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 870 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! The 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. Don’t miss the interviews with the drivers from the Back 40 Speedway and more! More Mississippi kart racing…from the Greens Creek Speedway 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. A trip down to the Back 40 Speedway in Ellisville, MS…a little bit of everything Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum…I had fun here Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Mississippi State History Museum…both very worthwhile The trackchasing finale of my trip to Mississippi…and how I got home 
