Greetings from California City, California
.
.
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Cal City MX Park Dirt road course Lifetime Track #2,699 THE EVENT Editor’s note: Because of my remote geographical location in the U.S. (I’m talking about California) it’s nearly impossible to take our SoCal grandkids on one of my flying trips across the country. The same goes for the Texas-based grandkids. So…when I go trackchasing in either California or Texas I’m on the lookout for a situation that might include our grandchildren. They won’t be “little” forever. I AM A TRACKCHASER. Despite the expense, we could not have had a better time on this trip. My name is Randy Lewis (above – Carol and I one a trackchasing trip in Sweden). I live in San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Trackchasing for me is all about three things. First, I enjoy auto racing. Secondly, my hobby requires a good deal of overnight travel. When I venture out to see a race at a track I’ve never seen before I do not want my trip limited to racing only. The very last thing I want when I’m done trackchasing is to have memories of only racing. I want to take some time to see the local attractions of wherever I might be visiting. Those visits in many cases will provide more long-lasting memories than whatever I saw on the track. Finally, I want to create a logistical plan that allows me to accomplish the two points mentioned above without depleting my retirement account. That’s trackchasing for me. Hundreds of trackchasers have stopped for a moment to create their own personal trackchasing list. I think that is great. However, I will tell you that no one has ever taken trackchasing more seriously than I have. Do I have any data to back up that assertion? I do. To date, I have seen auto racing in 85 countries at more than 2,690 different tracks. Does that sound serious to you? 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 After each and every event that I attend I post a YouTube video, a SmugMug photo album and a very detailed Trackchaser Report about the experience on my website at www.randylewis.org. My trackchasing contributions generate a good deal of interest in what I am doing. My YouTube channel (ranlay) has more than 1.3 million views. My website gets more than 20,000 views every month. Because I have seen racing in 85 countries at this point I am considered the World’s #1 Trackchaser. That’s good enough for me. Now I encourage you to drop down a few spaces and read about today’s trackchasing adventure. As you discover what went on at this track just think about the idea that I’ve done this nearly 2,700 (2,699!) times. I don’t mind admitting I am addicted to the hobby of trackchasing. It’s just fun! 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 Saturday, May 15, 2021. I got to be honest with you. I began my interest in racing at a local racetrack in Peoria, Illinois. The Peoria Speedway at the Mt. Hawley Airport (above – 1961) and later the Peoria Speedway on Farmington Road were my hometown tracks. The Farmington Road location replaced the old Mt. Hawley airport location in 1964 when I was 15 years old. Of course, for most people, a lot of things have changed since they were 15 years old. When we used to go to the races at the Peoria Speedway. We were normally one of the first ten or fifteen people in line. We waited for the gates to open. Then we rushed up to get a top-row seat. We would sit there while they ironed out the track, time trialed and race heats and features for just two classes, the amateurs and the late models. Yes, times have changed. Somewhere along the line I morphed over from a racechaser to something else. What’s a “racechaser”? A racechaser is a race fan who goes to the track to see the quality of the racing as well as his or her favorite drivers and classes of racing machines. After a while, I came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that I preferred to see a race at a location for the very first time more so than the 10th time or the 20th time. That was the beginning of my “trackchasing” hobby. A trackchaser pulls into a racetrack property because they’ve never been to that location before. Although they would like to see a nice evening of competitive and entertaining racing it’s really not all that important. For a trackchaser, the racing can be absolutely horrible. Not a problem. The trackchaser will eagerly ask, “That’s a horrible idea. What time does the race start?” The trackchaser will leave the track with a wry smile on his face…because he has been able to add one more track to his lifetime totals. You the reader can decide for yourself whether being a racechaser or a trackchaser or none of the above is a good idea. This weekend I will be traveling to a very remote location in central California, California City, California. The population was 14,120 at the 2010 census. California City has the third-largest land area of any city in the state of California. The California City Whiptails were a professional baseball team competing in the unaffiliated Pecos League. The team folded in 2019. Their home games were played at Balsitis Park. To my knowledge I have never been to California city and if I had it was only to pass on through. Why California city this weekend? The Cal City MX Park was hosting the Dirt Series LLC off-road racing group. Dirt Series organizes races with a group of motorcycles, ATVs and UTVs. I’ve seen several of their shows over the years. In their genre they do a good job. As a young trackchaser, I never would have ever considered attending an event like this. It would have had no interest to me. This is absolutely not a criticism of this type of racing. It’s just that some people like stock cars and some people like sprint cars and some people like motorcycle racing. I respect and value every form of motorsports even though I have my own favorites. My favorites? Dirt late-models, modifieds and wingless sprints and midgets. Then exactly WHY was I making the 170-mile trip up to California City? I was doing this for two reasons. First, for family purposes, I needed to be in California this weekend. Secondly, also because of family purposes, I needed some unusual entertainment options. Why? We would be hosting our grandkids for several days. That being the case off we went to California City! Carol and I have been spending the last few days with our San Clemente-based grandchildren, Mitch and Astrid. They are 12 years old and in the sixth grade. They are twins! Whenever we get this opportunity, we love it. Of course, this was not our first trackchasing trip with Astrid and Mitch (above – nr Houston, Texas). The twins’ parents were joining J.J. and Dustin for a houseboat trip up on the Utah/Arizona border. This was in celebration of Dustin’s 40th birthday. Happy birthday, Dustin!! In the meantime, Carol and I took over the parenting duties of Mitch and Astrid. For me that meant dropping them off at school and picking them up from school and taking them to their afterschool activities. In total, considering waiting times, I spent about 5 1/2 hours each day in the car. I can do that for a few days but doing it every day seemed like a pretty challenging task. I pretty much knew that a long drive to see a handful of UTV racers running around in the middle of the desert with howling winds in a minor dust storm might need to be supplemented by some other activities for the kids. I am nothing if not a supplemental of activities for other people. SATURDAY Did you like to sleep in when you were a 12-year-old? I’m pretty sure I did. Getting two 12-year-olds up and ready to go in the car for 8 a.m. departure on a Saturday morning required some persistence on Carol’s and my part. Ultimately, we were successful. I would be driving the EECU Credit Union sponsored Tesla Model X on this trip. I absolutely hate driving my own cars on these trips. Why didn’t I just rent a car? Because my car is so much fun to drive that I couldn’t help myself. I needed to take it on this adventure. We were making memories! Of course, my car is electrically powered. Aren’t all Teslas? We would be driving nearly 500 miles. That would likely require two stops at a supercharger during the trip. Our first stop for food was at Carl’s Jr. For those of you that don’t know Carl’s is a fast-food hamburger place headquartered in Southern California. Next up was a stop at a liquor store. A liquor store. Had the pressure of this trip already gotten to me? No, it had not. Nevertheless, we absolutely needed to stop at the 4 Point liquor store in Palmdale, California. Palmdale is not a very prosperous city. The 4 Point liquor store not only had bars on the windows and bars on the doors but it had a bank teller quality bulletproof glass separating us from the proprietor. Welcome to Palmdale! Why did we need to stop at THIS liquor store? They sold Adventure Passes. We needed a National Forest Adventure Pass for tomorrow’s hike up in the Angeles National Forest. We would be trekking at an elevation of 6,500 feet on a rather challenging trail. The 4 Point liquor store stop would ensure we were fully qualified for the hike. The Adventure Pass was only five dollars for the day. Most Tesla supercharging stations are located next to a shopping mall or a strip mall or at a minimum a huge truck stop. Today’s first supercharger stop was at the Antelope Valley Mall in the aforementioned Palmdale. Astrid got her first shot at charging an electric automobile. With charging time pegged at about 40 minutes we took the time to go into the mall and shop around. I’m getting a message from inside my car that my key fob battery is running low. I needed to get that fixed. However, no one seemed to carry the Tesla battery needed, even a major battery fix-it shop in the mall. At least they told me which battery number I needed. Later in the trip, I actually checked on that battery at Amazon and ordered one for $29.95. Amazon’s price seemed high. I did a little more research and came across a company called Esslinger. Those folks would sell me two batteries and ship them to me for a total of 18 bucks. I canceled Amazon and went with Esslinger. That made me wonder just a little bit about Amazon pricing for future purposes. From the mall, we motored directly to the Cal City MX Park. I don’t know if you would say their location is at the end of the world. But I’m pretty sure you can see the end of the world from the Cal City MX Park. The Dirt Series LLC groups start their programs promptly at 10 a.m. In the past, I’ve seen a few of their shows. I’ve always been at the track for the very first event. We went with a different strategy today. Normally, I don’t start off being 170 miles from the track with two 12-years old folks who need to get going in the morning! I knew the Dirt Series ran two “motos”. A Moto is sort of like a feature event would be at the Kokomo Speedway. By the way where I grew up watching racing, we never ever called a feature a “main”. Every entry at a Dirt Series race is either a motorcycle, ATV or UTV. Each racing class runs two motos or two races during the day. I suspected that the second moto would begin at about 1 p.m. which is about what time we arrived today. Dirt Series runs 15-20 classes within each Moto. Only two of those classes are countable by the trackchasing rules. Wouldn’t you know it? When we pulled in the very last class from the first moto was racing. These were the UTV unlimited and UTV 600 classes. They only had two or three starters. We caught the last couple of laps of their event three-lap moto. Honestly, when we sat in the car and watched the UTVs go around the course we didn’t know if they were racing or practicing. Later research told us that we had actually seen a race. At that point, we would’ve been fully within our rights as an upstanding trackchaser to have left the Cal City MX Park because we had seen “countable racing”. If we had done that we would have saved $40 in cash. We didn’t do that. By the way, today I learned for the first time, that anyone aged four or over pays the $10 gate fee. We signed for the kids since they were out and about when it came time to get our wristbands. I think we could have totally avoided all gate fees because we had arrived three hours late by simply “looking the other way”. That wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. Here’s what we did do. I did some research and got the schedule for the day. I could see the main UTV group was going to be the 11th race of the second Moto. That would happen about two hours after we arrived. I went about the paddock area taking photos for your enjoyment. Mitch followed me around for a bit and then went on his own excursion to scope out the Cal City MX Park. For the most part, Carol hung out in the grandstands with her sweater. Astrid, being a very smart girl, decided to watch from the comfort of the EECU Credit Union-sponsored Tesla Model X. Everyone had their own way to kill the next two hours. Today’s temperature was 87°. You might think that was pretty warm. However, with a wind of 25-30 miles an hour, the windchill was probably somewhere in the high 60s. At least that’s how Carol saw things. Fortunately, very fortunately, the wind was at our backs. We watched the racing on the one mile or so and mostly flat, but with some serious jumps as well, dirt road course. Had the wind been blowing into us I don’t think I would’ve ever heard the end of it from Trackchasing’s First Mother. Carol quickly made friends with one of the young racers. This gal was racing motorcycles. She was in the first grade! What were YOU doing in the first grade? I know this. I wasn’t racing motorcycles. I got a lotta good video clips and photographs from today’s racing. The car counts were down dramatically from what we had seen from the Dirt Series race in Barona here just a few weeks ago. I guess that’s because of Cal City’s fairly remote location. California City is in a remote location! Barona (above) was muddy. Today things were dry as a bone. We watched motorcycles, ATVs and UTVs do their thing in the desert. Then when race #11 for the 1000 open UTVs came along we were at the starting line to see five UTVs compete in their second Moto. This was a good race. We could see almost all of the action from our grandstand area viewing position. As I mentioned earlier this is not my #1 auto racing spectator sport. I came here because the track counts in my lifetime trackchasing totals and it was going to be an unusual activity for the kids. From there we were off to our hotel in San Bernardino, California. We drove through Mojave, California which is home right now to an unusual sight. They have hundreds of airplanes stored out in the desert. Why? It’s because of the overall lack of demand that came along with the Covid pandemic for air travel. The Mojave Desert is chosen as an airplane storage area because of its low humidity. Mojave has been a storage location for excess planes for decades. On the way to the hotel, we made our second and final supercharging stop. We tied that stop into a visit to Five Guys hamburgers. I’m not really a big fan of Five Guys. I think their food is good. I just think it’s too expensive. When we finished eating the Tesla was fully charged. From here it would take us back to our modest seaside cottage in sunny southern California tomorrow afternoon. It’s always fun staying in a hotel with kids. We did quite a bit of traveling when our three children were smaller. As I remember it, normally we did our travels in one room. Today we were staying at a Residence Inn by Marriott. We had a nice suite with actually quite a bit of room. We popped microwave popcorn and recounted the events of today and the expectations of tomorrow. It was definitely a good family get-together. A major part of my trackchasing hobby is searching out the local sites and attractions wherever I might be visiting. I’ve told you in the past that racing is important but my hobby is not only about the racing. It’s about touring and planning. I had a good plan set for today which included touring! SUNDAY With a little advanced research, I found a hike that was going to be perfect for our group today. We would be hiking the Big Horn Mine Trail. Just to make things a bit more challenging our trek would be at an elevation of 6,500 feet in Wrightwood, California. I took several photos of us during the hike. Unfortunately, I don’t really believe any of those pictures capture the dramatic views that we were seeing. There were a couple of parts of the trail that were probably a foot wide with loose rock and a dirt wall on one side and a fall of several hundred feet on the other side. This was definitely something that required our attention. The air temperature was about 55°. That might have seemed chilly. However, in the sun when you’re hiking at such a stout elevation it seemed perfect to me. Carol and I have done a few hikes in the past. We really need to do more. There’s so much to see during these hikes and it’s good for physical fitness as well. From there I had one more major item on the agenda. I told the kids we were going to go to the most exciting museum of any in San Bernardino, California. Carol and the kids were intrigued. What could it be? Soon we were pulling into 1398 North E. Street in San Bernardino. What was so special about this place? This was the location of the original McDonald’s hamburger store! It was run by the McDonald brothers. They began in the restaurant business back in the late 30s. If you’re interested in the background and history of how McDonald’s got started, I recommend the movie, The Founder. It’s outstanding. A milkshake salesman from Chicago named Ray Kroc discovered that the McDonald brothers in San Bernardino California were selling tons of hamburgers and tons of milkshakes. They would be the perfect customer for his eight shakes at a time multi-mixer milkshake machine. It didn’t take too long before Mr. Kroc was partnering with the McDonald brothers…and later bumping them out of the business entirely as he went on to create the largest restaurant chain in the world. I’ve seen the movie a couple of times. I’m going to watch it again. From there we used Yelp to select a local Chinese food restaurant, named Rui’s Shanghai Bistro. This was the kind of restaurant that we would never have found on our own. This is why I like Yelp so much. Soon we were back in San Clemente. Perfect trip! We ate fun and delicious food. We got in a good amount of exercise on a challenging mountain trail. We went to a very unique museum that not very many people have been able to see since it only opened to the public recently. We spent a lot of time in the car together without computers or cell phones to distract us. It was the perfect family event. Oh, one more thing. We did spend a good deal of time in the car driving nearly 500 miles. My car has a special “streaming” service. This allows me to press a button and simply ask for any song by any artist to be played. It’s a very cool system. Carol and Astrid and Mitch and I all agreed that each of us could order up two songs to play. When those two songs were finished the next person would get the chance to hear their two favorite songs. It became immediately obvious that all of us seem to like different genres of music. I think Carol and I were pretty much stuck in the 50s and 60s. The twins have a totally different musical appreciation. Below are two songs that each of them ordered up just so you can get a feel for what they liked to listen to. Aliens Exist by Blink 182 Can’t Stand It by Never Say Never If you haven’t heard these two “tunes” check ‘em out. Lifetime track #2,699 was now on the books. Where is #2,700 going to come from? If you picked Louisiana or maybe Texas you might be close. Stay tuned. Randy Lewis San Clemente, California Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,699 tracks. California The Golden State This afternoon I saw racing at my 177th-lifetime track in the Golden, yes, the Golden State. I hold the #1 trackchasing ranking in California. California ranks #1, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time California state trackchasing list. I have made 148 separate trips all over California seeing 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 Vague references to “the industry” might be a little confusing to people not from southern California. When someone says their husband or wife works in “the industry,” they don’t mean they’re an industrial worker, though they may belong to a different kind of labor union. Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, art directors, film editors, and talent agents are just a few people who make up the huge entity that is “the industry.” Show business is so prominent in Los Angeles that southern Californians should immediately get the reference. 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 800 tracks of my lifetime total. That’s a fact, Jack. 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 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. 
California sayings: “The industry.”
