Greetings from Moultonborough, New Hampshire
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Berry Pond Ice Track
Ice oval
Lifetime Track #2,296
THE EVENT My trackchasing hobby takes me all over the world. Each year I will visit 25-30 American states and several foreign countries. Long ago I moved into the #1 trackchasing position in both the number of different racetracks seen as well as the number of countries where I’ve seen racing. During my media interviews and discussions with friends and fans they often ask, “When did you start trackchasing?” Yes, that’s a question I get frequently. I never know how to answer it. I started out as a “racechaser”. I went to the very best tracks where my favorite drivers were racing. Somewhere along the line I decided I liked seeing a race at a track for the FIRST time rather than the TENTH time. As I went along I learned I liked the CHASE as much or more than the RACE. By the time I started trackchasing more than racechasing I was hundreds of tracks behind the leading trackchasers most of whom started in their 20s. Here’s a list of the number of tracks I had seen by a certain age: Age 5 – 1 track Age 30 – 71 tracks Age 40 – 180 tracks Age 50 – 404 tracks Age 60 – 1,517 tracks Age 68 (today – still a kid) – 2,296 tracks Today’s adventure was one more of the 2,000 trips that have taken me up, down and around the long and dusty trackchasing trail. If you would like to see where I’ve been and experience those adventures here’s the link: 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 Following my unsuccessful attempt at an ice trackchasing event in Crystal Lake, Iowa I headed to Minneapolis. At MSP I would take an evening flight over to Boston’s Logan international Airport. Boston is the nearest airport for tomorrow’s planned ice trackchasing adventure on Berry Pond in Moultonborough, New Hampshire. It was nice to be upgraded to first class for the two-hour flight over to bean town. I had a couple of Bailey’s cocktails and a shrimp salad as a very minor reward for my efforts today. However, I was reminded of something very important in life. One should not mistake activity for achievement. For the second consecutive night, which doesn’t happen very often, I was sleeping overnight in an airport. One should not mistake this statement to mean that I was sleeping near the airport in a hotel. I wasn’t sleeping in a hotel at all. I would sleep IN the airport itself. My adventure in the Boston airport would not be nearly as comfortable as last night’s stay in Minneapolis. That’s one of the reasons I consider Minneapolis to be an excellent airport and Boston’s airport not so much. In any commercial airport there are two “sides”. There is “airside” and there is “landside”. Airside is inside the secured part of the airport. Landside, as you might have guessed by now, is in the unsecured part of the airport meaning the baggage claim area, etc. For unknown reasons to me, Boston’s Logan International Airport does not allow passengers to stay overnight in the terminal. That’s a little surprising for an airport as large as Boston’s. I would think they would have flights departing throughout the early morning hours of the day/night. If that were the case passengers would need to be allowed in the terminal. Can it be that the Logan International Airport has virtually no flights from midnight until six or seven in the morning? Nevertheless, no one can stay “airside ” overnight in the airport. That means that for folks like me who might like to sleep in the airport that sleeping will be done landside. I learned all about this somewhat unique procedure at www.sleepinginairports.net. Lots of very small airports close their terminals to passenger traffic overnight. Boston was the first large airport I had ever seen do such a thing. Nevertheless, I consider myself to have a large tolerance for ambiguity. I grabbed the most remote spot that I could find in the baggage claim area. All of the airport’s chairs have arms. That meant that there would be no lying across several seats to form a bed. The one positive was that free Wi-Fi was offered even in the landside portion of the airport. This allowed me to watch the UCLA–Washington game live time on my laptop computer. That was a nice feature. UCLA won 107-66. The airport did have several annoying announcements periodically through the night. They even had a seven second Lexus automobile commercial that ran about every 15 minutes. Despite the bright lights and useless announcements I spread out my makeshift bed on the floor and I actually slept pretty well until about 4:30 a.m. ON THE WAY TO THE RACES SUNDAY At about 6 a.m. I came up with the somewhat bright idea of spending the next few hours in the American Airlines Admirals Club. I don’t even want to tell you what it takes on my part to make that happen. I will simply plead the fifth. In the Admirals Club I could get some food there at no charge and sleep for a couple more hours. Boston has an excellent Admirals Club. I wanted to pick up my rental car at about 9 a.m. Why 9 a.m? Because that’s the time I needed to return it on Monday. It is important to control expenses in my hobby. By keeping the car for 24 hours or less I would avoid a full day’s extra rental car charge. Yeah. There is constant strategy going on as I manage my hobby on all fronts. Last night, while still in Minneapolis, I had secured a hotel room for tonight in the Boston area. My hotel was about a 15-minute drive from the Boston airport. By using my proprietary Priceline buying method I got a good deal on the hotel. At just past 9 a.m., I was pulling out of the National Car Rental lot at the Logan International Airport with a Nissan Ultima full-sized rental car. I was going to be driving about 250 miles round-trip up to Moultonborough, New Hampshire and back. I asked the rental car agent if National still had their 29-minute grace period. I’m always asking what the rules are so I know how to max out my performance. She surprised me by saying, “It’s two hours. Most people don’t know that.” That was surprising to me. I would need to check out such an aggressive assertion with other people before I could take that information to the bank. Nevertheless if that was true I was golden. The winters definitely don’t seem to be as cold or snowy as they have been in the past. Both Minneapolis and Boston had a minimal amount of snow on the ground. I would say that less than half of the land surface in these two areas, both noted for their winters and snow, had any snow on the ground whatsoever. The temperature when I entered New Hampshire was 32°. That’s warm up by ice trackchasing standards. Yesterday’s temperature in Iowa had been about 27°. I have trackchased in weather far below zero during my ice trackchasing career. The Boston area is noted for its toll roads. I wanted to avoid that toll road expense if I could. I set my Waze GPS system to “no tolls”. Before I do that I always check what the difference is in both time and mileage from using toll roads or not. By taking roads today that did not charge tolls it would add only one mile of driving distance and 16 minutes to my ETA. I had the time so I bypassed the toll roads. I have no idea how much money I saved but it would probably buy my next lunch. In the south you will find a Waffle House on just about every street corner. In the Northeast you’ll find a Dunkin’ Donuts on just about every street corner. I don’t get to DD that often so a stop was mandatory. A couple of thousand calories later I was headed to the ice track. THE RACING Berry Pond Ice Track – Moultonborough, New Hampshire The Lakes Region Ice Racing Club has been hosting races in New Hampshire on frozen lakes for decades. Back in 2007 I saw them race on Lee pond (lifetime track #1,156) in Moultonborough, New Hampshire. I’ve wanted to get to their second ice-racing venue, Berry Pond, for well over 10 years. Today was the day. I’ll bet on that cold day in 2007 I didn’t expect that I would see more than one thousand tracks before I would get back to the ice racing in Berry Pond. I’ve got to give Dylan Cook lots of credit for my coming to see Lakes Region Ice Club Racing today. I must have messaged him 50 times with questions and the like. After each message I would quickly get a reply from with all of the information and latest updates. Thank you Dylan! The club races mainly on Sundays. It seems as if they race more on Lee Pond than they do Berry Pond. It looks as if they reserve racing on Berry pond for their biggest event of the year the Latchkey Cup. This is an event that raises money for charity. The Latchkey was held on Berry Pond. I couldn’t make it because I was attempting to go ice trackchasing in Crystal Lake, Iowa. It’s too bad I meant missed the Latchkey because the Crystal Lake opportunity turned out to be a fiasco. I did learn at the driver’s meeting that the club earned more than $3,100 in revenue from yesterday’s race. That’s got to help them bankroll whatever line items are in their annual budget. Today’s admission price to watch the races was $10 per carload. That meant I could have skated around town and scrounged up a few friends, charged them three dollars each, and made a profit. As it was, it was just me in my carload so $10 was my personal admission price. These folks race on an ice oval. I’m going to guess the ice thickness is somewhere in the 15-18-inch range. That’s plenty for this type of racing. Fans drive their cars and trucks out onto the frozen lake. The first time I ever did that, many years ago, I was a bit apprehensive. After seeing nearly 80 tracks race on ice and snow it doesn’t faze me at all to know that 8-10 feet of water or more is only 18 inches below my chassis. I took a brief walk through the pits and photographed virtually every racing competitor at the track today. Then I sat in on the driver’s meeting, which is always interesting and informative. The race director told the drivers he wanted the show to run efficiently so they could all get home to see the Super Bowl. Most people in New Hampshire had a strong interest in the outcome of the game. The New England patriots were playing the Atlanta falcons When I get down to my hotel after the races today, in Woburn, Massachusetts, I watched the Super Bowl myself for the first time in probably 20 years. The Lakes Region Ice Racing Club does a couple of things, which are very fan friendly. I’ve now seen ice racing at 78 different venues. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do the two things they were doing today. Before each race they send a pick up truck around the track with a person in the truck bed holding a huge placard that tells the fans what race they are about to see. That’s a nice touch. Then at the intermission after the heat races were finished more than half the cars were driven out onto the front straightaway and parked so the fans could get up close and personal with the cars and drivers. It’s just little things like this that allows an ice-racing club to attract probably 75 carloads or more of race fans. For ice racing that’s a very large crowd. I would estimate that today’s ice oval was 1/3 of a mile in distance maybe a little bigger. Of course the tracks surface was flat. Why is that? Water seeks its own level! They also gave out a complementary four-page program. That’s nearly unheard of with ice racing. The program listed of the order of races as well as the point standings and driver roster for the season. This club has their act together! The temperature was about 32° with overcast skies and not very much wind. Actually, those are just about the most ideal conditions for watching ice racing. I was dressed in layers and probably didn’t need everything that I was wearing. During the heat races and at intermission plow trucks came out and moved away all of the ice dust and snow that accumulates quickly when these high-powered machines are racing. I had raced on ice. It’s not nearly as slick as you might expect. Most ice racers use either studded tires or what is called “rubber to ice” which are simply tires that come directly off the highway. The guys/gals that race on Berry Pond do it differently. They use huge tire chains on the power wheel. This area of the country is pretty much the only place that I’ve ever seen ice racing with tire chains. That’s got to chew up the ice a little more I would think. AFTER THE RACES When the last checkered flag flew I headed off fuck Frozen berry pond. It was about an hours drive down to my red roof plus hotel in Woburn, Massachusetts. After I checked into the hotel I ordered Chinese food to be delivered to my room. It wasn’t long before I was enjoying my shrimp fried rice and watching the Super Bowl. It was a good game. It was the first time in 51 years that Superbowl ever going to overtime. I didn’t know if it was remarkable or sad that I remembered the very first Superbowl back in 1967. I was a Packers fan then. Since then I’ve lost track of the NFL. Their player/owner strikes turned me off the game even though I follow college football closely. THE TOURING BEGINS MONDAY Some of the best trips are when Carol and I have plenty of time for local sightseeing. It’s not really a requirement that she be part of the trackchasing effort. In the long run it’s probably the touring that we will both remember most about the trip. Today I will be flying from Boston to New York’s JFK airport. Carol will be flying from Los Angeles to JFK. It’s nice when you have a partner to whom you can simply say, “Meet me at baggage claim terminal four in JFK at 8 p.m.” Lots of people would have a hard time with that. My flight from Boston required an early morning wake up call. Since Boston is heavily laden with tolls I was using my Waze GPS system to find a route without tolls. The non-toll journey was interesting. Boston has some pretty poorly maintained streets. After the last two or three miles in the warehouse district I arrived at the airport. It was about this time that I received a text message from Carol. Her flight had been delayed by nearly 2 hours. I was getting into JFK at about 1 p.m. She wouldn’t arrive now until past 8 p.m. I hung out in the American Airlines Admirals Club while doing a little powerwalking when I could. Airports are perfect for powerwalking. Everybody’s in a rush and no one notices anyone else. Carol did arrive some seven hours later. By that time I had messaged probably 50 people, many of them in foreign countries, about upcoming trackchasing trips. I couldn’t do this hobby without the help of all of the people out there interested in racing and helping me with my trackchasing. I did take the time to make a reservation to see the 911 Museum. The memorial is free. However, in order to not have to wait in line for the museum tickets I bought them in advance. For the ride into Manhattan I selected a special promotion that would take us from the airport to our hotel for just $35. The normal taxi fare is $52.50 plus tolls and a 20% tip. We used “UberPool”. That’s an Uber ride where they might stop to pick up a passenger who is going in the same direction you are. Our driver pulled up within 30 seconds of my sending my Uber request. I’ve never had faster service in my life. We waited another 30 seconds while he picked up a second passenger. We dropped her off in the city. Then our driver picked up one more passenger for a short five-block trip. We were deposited at the Staybridge Suites Hotel at 40th and Ninth Avenue a few moments later. My Uber receipt from my phone showed that the entire trip was only 12.2 miles. With traffic that took us about 52 minutes navigate. I was most impressed with UberPool. I had selected the Staybridge Suites Hotel from Priceline. I do almost all of my hotel shopping, especially in cities, with Priceline. My savings are normally 30-60% off of the hotel’s best online rate. I looked at my pedometer. It read 3.5 miles. I needed another half mile to make my goal for the day. I ran outside and finished up that half-mile. Of course I couldn’t stop myself from going into a small grocery store to pick up some water and soda. By the way, our hotel has a complete kitchen set up as well. With that in mind I couldn’t resist buying a couple of slices of pizza at a corner pizza shop. We’re in New York right? We had to have “a slice”. New York is one of our favorite cities to spend a few days. I’m going to guess we’ve been to New York more than 50 times. When I was in business we used to hold our meetings in the city while our wives were entertained with hair cuttings at Vidal Sassoon and the like. Yes, the corporate life was a very upscale lifestyle. However, I have been retired for 15 years now. The best thing about retirement is I don’t have to go to the meetings anymore. What’s the worst thing? They don’t send me any paychecks! TUESDAY Our New York City hotel, the Staybridge Suites Times Square offered a fully cooked hot breakfast buffet each morning at no charge. During the evening they provided appetizers and drinks again on a complementary basis. If someone wanted to do New York on the cheap they could easily exist on these two meals alone. After breakfast we ordered an Uber car. Our driver took us to lower Manhattan where we toured the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. I had ordered tickets in advance for the guided tour of the museum. I’m glad I did that way. I think we got so much more out of our tour with someone giving us so many of the important details of that fateful day and what followed. I highly recommend spending time at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum (above). From there we grabbed another Uber car for the ride up to Times Square. Once there we located the TKTS Broadway show ticket selling kiosks. At TKTS most show tickets can be purchased at 50% off the regular price. However, TKTS is under contract to sell the best seats first. This means that even though you’re getting 50% off you’re still going to pay a somewhat hefty price. We chose the off-Broadway musical “Newsical – The Musical”. Half price for the show still came in at $50 per seat. The show carried a Saturday Night Live theme. To be honest the production had some clever tunes but overall it wasn’t our best Off-Broadway production we’ve ever seen. Despite using Uber throughout the day we still did a lot of walking. At the end of the day my pedometer showed an even 5 miles. The weather was rainy and cold. Although we could have had dinner at the hotel for no charge we chose a Yelp recommended dim sum place, appropriately named “Dim Sum Palace. Unfortunately, I’ve had better dim sum in Orange County than what was offered tonight in New York City. Following dinner and our theatrical production we were back at the hotel by 10 p.m. WEDNESDAY Today was going to be another fun touring day in New York City. We were going to see some very unique things that many tourists might overlook. An additional bonus was the weather was going to be outstanding for mid-February. The high temperature would be 62°. Our first stop on our self guided tour for the day would be at Carnegie Hall. The question is often asked, ”How do you get to Carnegie Hall”? The answer to that question is, “Practice! Practice! Practice! However, we chose to simply walk over to Carnegie Hall and take the one hour guided tour. Don’t miss the photos on this one. Maybe next time we visit New York we’ll actually get a chance to see a production at the famous Carnegie Hall. There are one million little hole in the wall little eateries in New York City. You could eat at one for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and not go back to the same place for years. We chose a little place called Fluffy’s. There we had some delicious pasta and a cannoli for dessert. After lunch we headed over to Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center has in the neighborhood of 25 different production spaces, concert halls, theaters and the like. We chose to attend their film Festival and saw an excellent movie titled, “Mr. Gaga”. Highly recommended. Just across the street from that part of Lincoln Center is the famous Julliard School. On the walk back towards the hotel, in the warmer than normal weather, we stopped inside the Church of St. Paul the Apostle Cathedral, a very impressive place. It was interesting to see all of the fresh fruit stands showing their wears the day before a major snowstorm was going to city. We finished off the day by riding the subway up into the Bronx. When we got off the train at the Fordham Road stop we emerged from the underground. When we did we got a full illustration of life in the Bronx. For the next 15 minutes or more we didn’t see a single person who looked like a us. That was good thing. What were we doing in the Bronx? We would be visiting Fordham University. One of Fordham’s most famous alumni was Vince Lombardi. Fordham is home to a very unique basketball venue. It’s called the Rose Hill Gymnasium. Rose Hill was constructed in 1925. It’s the oldest basketball arena on campus being used by a Division I basketball school in the country. Tonight Fordham would be hosting LaSalle a member of the Atlantic 10 conference. LaSalle is located in Philadelphia. The Roseville gym seats 3,200 people. Tonight it might have been about half full. LaSalle won the game 67-52. I like seeing and touring unusual sites. I’m also a basketball fan. Whenever I get a chance to go see a game at the college level, especially at a gym as noteworthy as the Rose Hill gymnasium, I don’t want to pass it up. Riding the train into such an unusual demographic location was a highlight as well. When the game was finished we rode the train all the way back to our hotel. If you have followed my trackchasing hobby for long you know that it’s all about racing, touring and the logistics of making everything “work”. Today involved a lot of touring and a lot of logistics to get from one place to the next. It was a grand day. THURSDAY I told you this trip included a lot of things that the typical New York City tourist doesn’t do. This morning we had another activity that I hadn’t even considered until I started doing a little bit of research for this trip. We got some tickets to the “Live with Kelly” TV show. It was being recorded near Columbus Circle. Again, we rode the to train and did a little bit of walking to get up there. The most noteworthy aspect of today was probably the weather. Yesterday they had an unseasonably warm day with a high temperature of 62°. This morning a major snowstorm hit! The weather forecast predicted 8-12 inches of snow. I’m guessing they probably got at least 8 inches if not more. Nevertheless most of the trip up to the TV taping was done underground. No snow there. Kelly’s guest hast today was Jeffrey Dean Morgan. We actually got to see two shows being taped. The guest highlight was seeing Jake Gyllenhaal and Daymond John, a regular on one of my favorite TV programs, Shark Tank. On the way back to the hotel we stopped for cheesesteaks at a place called “Shorty’s”. The interior was that of a dive bar. The food was excellent. After lunch we ran over to TKTS to get some Broadway theatre tickets for tonight. We ended up with row 8 center seats for the production of ”Waitress”. This was one of the best Broadway musicals that we had ever seen. Carol and I both loved the show. Tonight is our last night in New York City. We’ve been in town for five days celebrating our wedding anniversary. We will wrap up the trip with some ice trackchasing. However our planned ice-racing venue wasn’t going to be in the Northeast. Tomorrow would be a major travel day. Don’t worry. It’s what we do. Stay tuned. Good day from New York City. New Hampshire The Granite state This afternoon I saw my 21st lifetime track in the Granite state, yes the Granite state. I’ve seen 21 or more tracks in 26 separate states. No other trackchaser can match that stat 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 New Hampshire sayings: Masshole ‘Cause sometimes our neighbors to the south are… well, you get the idea. QUICK 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 565 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 20 countries of my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Sunday, February 4, 2018. We were all set to run up to the Lake George Winter Carnival for some Sunday afternoon ice racing. However, the power of a smartphone and the ability to use it saved us the trouble. They had cancelled their program earlier this morning. Warmer temps and rain had caused their course to flood. Yes, ice racing can be fickle. I check my email and social media sources about every 10 minutes during the day. If there is new news I usually find out about it quickly. It was 10 a.m. Carol and I were in the Best Western parking lot in Albany. We would not be heading north now. We already had a hotel reservation in Boston tonight. That meant we were staying the night on the east coast. I checked into the idea of seeing a college basketball game on this Sunday afternoon. The good news was that both New Hampshire and Vermont had home games starting at 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. respectively. The bad news was that we couldn’t get to either game in time for the tip-off. I checked into a couple of ice racing opportunities. One group had already cancelled their show today. I kept trying. They were going to race on the Berry Pond in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. I’ve got a great racing contact in Linda Hanson Cook with the Lakes Region Ice Racing Club. It would be a four-hour drive over to Berry Pond. It would be touch and go to see if we could get there in time. They were expecting rain. If it rained they might shorten their show. We didn’t have much to lose. The entire drive would take us out of our way by about two hours. In the big picture that wasn’t much. I had been to Berry Pond just last year. However, this would be a new track for Carol. She was up for the drive. I rarely go out of my way to visit tracks that are new for Carol and not me. We just don’t roll that way. Had either one of the basketball games been accessible we would have gone there. Linda was a great help in keeping me posted on how their program was going. We arrived at 2:17 p.m. onto the Berry Pond. They had a huge crowd. They always do. We had missed the first two feature races but were in time to see the last four classes race their mains. The Lakes Region club is one of the strongest in the country when it comes to ice racing. Thank you Linda for all of your help! We finished off with a fantastic Chinese early dinner at the Lee Wah Chen Chinese restaurant in Moultonborough. We weren’t sure how good it would be and it was great. From there we made the drive down to our Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Revere, Massachusetts. We had stayed their two nights ago. Again, they gave us all the upgrades and freebies befitting my platinum status. Monday, February 5, 2018. This had been a fantastic week of celebration. We first came to New Orleans to celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary. We ate all kinds of delicious Cajun food in and around the French Quarter. We saw the Mardi Gras parade, enjoyed a fantastic food tour in New Orleans and visited the huge New Orleans World War II Museum. From New Orleans we made it to Harvard University for a college basketball game. Then we saw two vastly different racing operations in two different states in one day. Although suffering a last minute cancellation we turned that into a plus for the World’s #1 Trackchasing Couple. It was a great trip! Randy Lewis – 77 countries – 2,418 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 QUICK 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 600 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 20 countries of 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. Ice racing – 2017 . . Ice racing – 2018 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. 2017 Ice racing from New Hampshire PLUS our complete New York City trip . . 2018 A last minute switcheroo had us ice trackchasing in New Hampshire 
3 comments
Missed ya by a day, I was at the Latchkey on Saturday. Maybe we’ll see you at Tamworth in the fall.
Hey Bruce, Sorry I missed you. I thought I might see you there but everybody sort of looks the same in their ice racing gear! Best, Randy
Ya it was some cold on our day, spent most of it watching from the truck.