Greetings from Peletier, North Carolina
And then Martinsville, Virginia
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway Paved oval Lifetime track #2,756 Martinsville Speedway Paved oval Lifetime track #157 (re-visit today) THE EVENT Editor’s note: As I go into my racing future more and more “trackchasing” weekends are also going to be “racechasing” weekends. That was the case with this trip. Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway was a trackchasing effort. Then moving up to the Martinsville Speedway was a racechasing adventure. I travel this way so you don’t have 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. Fair enough? Now get out there and go somewhere. Covid is in the rearview mirror and getting smaller every day. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with one of my friends at an Italian ice race). 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. 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 more than 2,700 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 Friday/Monday, Oct 29-Nov 1, 2021. How important is your car key when it comes to taking a trip? For most, it’s pretty important. Very few people take a trip anywhere without their car key being such an important part of the trip that they can’t start without it. For me, the car key example is a metaphor for my trackchasing. I take a lot of trackchasing trips. One of these trips would never happen if I didn’t have a new track to see. The new track is my “car key”. Most of you would likely say that your car key is not the most important item or memory of most trips that you make. That is normally the case with the new track visits that I make. Going to see a new track STARTS the trip but it’s not necessarily the main reason for the trip. In most cases, the new track visit is not the main memory of the trips that I make. It’s important to note that when I go on these trips the objective is to make memories. To begin this trip, I was heading to Charlotte, North Carolina. American Airlines operates a flight hub in Charlotte (above). They have several nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Charlotte. I had my pick of several departure times. Often times when I fly to the East Coast, I like to take the overnight redeye flight. That’s sort of “saves me a day”. I can do pretty much anything I want all day in Southern California and then grab a 10 p.m. overnight flight that will land me somewhere on the East Coast the next morning. Am I really saving a day? Not exactly. I have to sleep overnight on the flight if I can. Then when I arrive at my destination I’m not exactly “fresh as a daisy” as my mother was often heard to remark. FRIDAY I decided to take a leisurely 1 p.m. departure today that would get me into Charlotte at about 9 p.m. I would grab a hotel when I landed and get a good night’s sleep. The next evening, I would go trackchasing in Peletier, North Carolina. That was the plan. If you read very many of my reports you know the plan doesn’t always work out. It usually doesn’t go as planned! That’s not a problem for me. I’m used to it. I enjoy the challenges that come with change. Two important things changed at the last minute that would strongly affect my plan. First of all, one of the airline’s flight attendants didn’t show up for the 1 p.m. departure. They tried to find a replacement for the missing FA which delayed our departure by two hours. Now I would be arriving at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport at 11 p.m. The new race track I planned to see on this trip would actually be the third most important stop on my weekend agenda. Right at the top was the opportunity to visit the son of a very good friend of mine. Rich and his wife Emily live in North Carolina. I hadn’t seen Rich in two or three years. I was looking forward to meeting Emily for the first time. We had initially planned to have breakfast on Sunday morning. Then I suggested that we change our get-together to lunch on Saturday. Rich and Emily were up for the change. Now lunch on Saturday became a major part of my ever-changing plan. In point of fact, I did land in Charlotte (CLT) at 11 p.m. on Friday night. I used my Priceline smartphone app to corral a highly rated Hilton hotel in Raleigh for both Friday and now Saturday nights. It’s always nice to stay in the same hotel for more than one night on these trips. Most of the time that luxury isn’t available. At CLT I grabbed a Toyota Camry from National Car Rental. I love the Camry and rent one as often as I can. I usually end up getting about 40 miles per gallon with this model. The Camry has Apple CarPlay which allows me to project my Waze GPS map information on my video screen. That’s pretty important. It was going to be a three-hour drive from Charlotte over to my hotel in Raleigh. That meant I would pull into my hotel at a little past 2 a.m. That wasn’t the end of the world. I was still operating on west coast time so my arrival would only be 11 p.m. “my time”. Along the route, I got a case of the munchies. I was soon heading to a Steak ‘n Shake restaurant, a boyhood favorite, located on Dale Earnhardt Boulevard just north of Charlotte no less. During the pandemic, I’ve run into my share of restaurants that have limited hours, limited selection and/or apparently limited employees. I pulled into the Steak ‘n Shake drive-through lane with about three cars ahead of me. What was a little unusual was the woman standing behind the last car in the line? Was this a homeless woman begging for a handout? No, it was not. This was a Steak ‘n Shake employee who was positioned in the drive-through lane in order to tell me that they were now closed. She told me I had just missed being served by one car. I threw myself at the mercy of the court. Wouldn’t she just let me sneak in as the last customer of the day? She was a kind soul. She told me they only had three employees working tonight. They were closing early. She then gave me the go-ahead to be the last customer at the restaurant tonight. I thanked her profusely. Then she asked me a question. If I gave you one thousand guesses you would never figure out what she asked me. Rather than giving you 1,000 guesses, I will simply suggest that you think of a question or two in your mind and see if that matches up with what this young lady did ask me. As she headed back into the restaurant, she asked me if I would be willing to tell any other customers who might pull in behind me that the store was closed and they couldn’t be served. I was a little flabbergasted at that query. I really didn’t know what to say. I also really didn’t want to be telling other people that yes, I was going to be served but they were not. No! You could meet a lot of unfriendly people doing something like that. Lots of folks in the Tar Heel State have guns! I think she sensed my hesitancy. That was not hard to detect. She told me not to worry about it. Then she went into the restaurant presumably to make hamburgers and fries and some of their famous Steak ‘n Shake milkshakes. Folks, I’m virtually certain that you know that I could not make stuff like this up. I don’t need to. The unusual circumstances and people that I run into doing what I do fill my book of memories to the top with 100% true stories. As I waited in line, I reminded myself that Steak ‘n Shake is not the fastest drive-through restaurant server. Did I really want to wait behind four cars at midnight for three employees trying to get the job done? I didn’t. I went next door to a Taco Bell. There I was reminded that a Taco Bell is not really a Mexican restaurant. I was also reminded that I don’t really like Taco Bell. I ordered the burrito supreme which surprisingly to me came with no meat. I also picked up a dollar potato taco. Most of that taco ended up loose at the bottom of my paper bag. It was what it was. SATURDAY I grew up in East Peoria, Illinois, a lower-class factory town. What kept me on the straight and narrow when not everybody was keeping on the straight and narrow was sports. I played all kinds of sports but my specialty was basketball. I practiced basketball for hours and hours every day on most days pretty much all year. My best friend growing up from about the fourth grade on through high school was a fellow by the name of Larry Hallam. Larry and I were two of the better athletes in high school. Larry’s parents Beatrice and Hub were the nicest folks. They started taking Larry and me to high school basketball games, home and away when we were in the fourth grade. As fourth-grade basketball players, our high school team looked like the NBA to us. I spent a lot of time down at Larry’s house playing games with him and his parents. Granted that was approaching 60 years ago but those were some of the finest times of my life. I was the best man at Larry’s wedding to his wife Beverly. Although they didn’t end up staying together for the long term, they produced two very fine sons in Rich (above-right) and T.J. (above-center). Rich even carries my last name as his middle name. Larry and Bev, now married to separate folks, ended up staying in and around our hometown. In the meantime, Carol and I moved off chasing the corporate dream to places like Cincinnati, Phoenix, Southern California a couple of times, Connecticut and Chicago. When all of that happened, I became separated from Larry for the longest of times. I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a very good friend for staying in touch. I regret that. Now if we fast forward to 2021, I was down in North Carolina visiting Larry and Bev’s son Rich. I pulled into their hometown with the eager anticipation of meeting Rich’s nearly new wife, Emily. A bonus to this visit was going to be the fact that Rich’s mother Bev and her husband Mike of decades were visiting from Illinois. Bev and Mike only get down to North Carolina a couple of times a year. It was just my good fortune they were in town when I was in town. Emily and Rich picked up some catered Texas barbecue even though North Carolina barbecue is famous here as well. We sat around the dining room table reminiscing about all of the important things that folks reminisce about. The food was good but the company was better. In today’s world, not all young people are thriving. I’m happy to say that Rich and Emily are thriving. They’ve got a beautiful new house; great jobs and their heads are screwed on straight. They will have a successful future and I’m proud of them. Of course, it’s always fun to meet up with Bev and Mike. They are a very active couple. Mike does his own form of “trackchasing”. He’s a marathon runner. Believe it or not, he has run two marathons in each of our 50 states! Impressive. Bev is following along in his footsteps so to speak. She has done 5K runs in 48 states and plans to knock off Washington and Oregon this year. Yep. They sound like they’re doing their own form of trackchasing to me. From Rich and Emily’s place in North Carolina, it was now time for me to head down to Peletier, North Carolina. I would be visiting Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway. Peletier is located just outside of Jacksonville, North Carolina. Few of you probably know that when Carol and I were married in Illinois I was actually a resident of North Carolina. As a matter of fact just a couple of days after we were married, I headed back to North Carolina to live by myself. Was our marriage not going well? Quite the contrary. For the first three months of our married life, I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina as a member of the United States Marine Corps. Yep. That’s how our married life started out. I have a couple of memories of my time at Camp Lejeune. Mind you I was 23 years old at the time so maybe I’m just making this stuff up but I don’t think so. I remember going to the base movie theater. It was a pretty spartan operation. I think the tickets were a buck apiece. I had a couple of fellow Marines who were from Elkhart, Indiana. We would get on a Greyhound bus and ride it from Camp Lejeune, through the tiny towns of North Carolina, up to Washington D.C. for the weekend. We did that just for something to do. I’ve always been a traveler. Yes, we played our share of cards for both money and CD collections. Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway is the last permanent track in North Carolina where I hadn’t seen any racing up until today. There are several states in the country where I’ve seen racing at every one of their permanent tracks. When that happens, I normally will continue to trackchase at county fair venues and those “pop-up” tracks that seem to pop up on a fairly frequent basis. Tonight, I paid 15 bucks for my general admission ticket. I walked inside. I saw a very unusual racing facility. I heard some unusual stuff. If the announcer referred to Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway as “Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway” one time he did it 500 times. That’s kind of a mouthful, isn’t it? The announcer liked to bill Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway as the “nicest track in America”. I’m not sure about that but the place is very unusual. Next spring they’re holding a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Not very many tracks get to say that. I’m going to guess that the paved oval at Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway is about a third of a mile in length. It’s slightly banked but had one feature that I didn’t care for at all. There are several permanent buildings constructed in the infield of the track. One of those buildings (obstacles) is a restaurant. Couple that with the race car haulers being pitted in the infield and you have a recipe for a disaster. At first, I sat in the top row of the main straight grandstand. The legends car feature event, tonight every race was a feature, had the cars turning laps in about 16 seconds. For a full eight seconds or half a lap I couldn’t see the cars at all and/or I couldn’t identify them if I could see their rooftops. Car counts were slim. There were five classes racing tonight. None of them had more than 11 cars. One of the best things about most North Carolina asphalt short track racing is they run feature-only events. I like that idea. I hate time trials. I’m not a huge fan of heat races either. I loved the “East Coast Flathead Fords”. I don’t know if these were originals or replicas. These were some beautiful-looking old racers that dominated the tracks well over 50 years ago. The main event of the evening was a 60-lap feature for the “Bowman Gray” street stocks. That baby took a long time to run! They had 11 cars but they had at least 11 cautions. I watched much of that race along the backstretch. This “catwalk” arrangement gave me a good view of the backstretch…but again I could only see cars for about half a lap. There were a lot of pissed-off drivers in this field by the end of the race. Only five cars took the checkered flag. An 11-car, 60-lap should not take an hour or more to run. I did have a funnel cake at Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway. I don’t do that very often but for five bucks it was good value. I passed on the bologna sandwich, which is a staple at southern tracks, I rarely do that. I guess I was living on the edge tonight. I had one last opportunity to turn a disappointing trackchasing outing into a positive one. Up to this point, I really hated the fact that I couldn’t see the racing. That problem almost never exists at an oval race track. Just to complete five feature races (the legends ran two features) it took them more than three hours. That’s three hours for five races with an average car count in each race of about eight cars. Please. Promoters are you listening? Yes, listen up. Don’t do shit like that. Remember, the fans vote with their feet. They’ll be gone never to come back before you know it. I had one last hope from Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway. This hope could turn my frown upside down and into a smile. The last race of the night was going to be an enduro. Sixty laps or a one-hour time limit. Why was it so optimistic about this race? The promoters were going to place “obstacles” on the track for the cars to race around. I was thinking these obstacles might force the drivers to turn both left and right. If that happened, I could count tonight’s enduro race track as a road course configuration. That meant I could add another “track” to my lifetime totals. Once again, I was disappointed in how Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway handled the enduro “obstacle” track situation. Yes, they did place a series of stacked tires and plastic highway roadside barriers around the track. This took them an additional 30 minutes to set up. In my view as a complete waste of time. The ten or so junk car enduro entries raced around the oval and the obstacles almost as if the obstacles weren’t there. You would think if you were going to take the time to put a series of obstacles on the track that the race cars would at least have to turn both left and right to get around them. Nope. Not tonight. I was disappointed. Overall, I was disappointed in Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway on many levels. I might have been most disappointed in having to hear the words “Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway” as many times and more than you have read those words today. Nevertheless, when it was time to exit, I had seen racing at my 62nd-lifetime track in North Carolina. That gives me a third-place trackchasing rank here in the Tar Heel State. I had also added my 2,756th-lifetime track. My 2021 trackchasing season is winding down quickly. I might get two or three more and I might not. SUNDAY I woke up this morning in a very nice Hilton hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina. Today’s destination was just two hours up the road in Martinsville, Virginia. Martinsville Speedway is one of my top three most favorite NASCAR tracks. Of course, I suspect you are dying to know what the other two would be. Bristol and Talladega. I’ll take racing at Martinsville or Bristol or Talladega just about every day of the week. As a matter of fact, today I was going to be seeing my ninth-lifetime race at Martinsville. I first came here with my stepfather Bill and good friend Jim Sabo in 1986 (above on a trip to Richmond). I’ve seen famous race drivers like Ricky Rudd, Brad Keselowski, Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte and Rusty Wallace win here. These drivers are pretty much all hall of famers! Yes, I’ve been coming to Martinsville for a long time. The Martinsville Speedway is my 157th-lifetime track where I’ve seen racing. I didn’t have a ticket for the race. Of course, I would need a ticket for the race. I never come to Martinsville or any other NASCAR track, with the notable exception of the Los Angeles Coliseum, with a ticket. I’ll be telling you more about the coliseum in 2022! How does that work? I have other people come to the track carrying my ticket. When they park their car at Martinsville, they don’t really know that they’re carrying MY ticket… but they are. You see I’m sort of lazy. I also don’t have all that much money to spend on leisure. I commonly say to my friends “if I had your money, I would burn mine”. You often read about how fragile my travel schedule is. I might be somewhere and I might not be. I can’t afford to be buying an expensive NASCAR race ticket and then not be able to come to the race, right? That being the case I don’t come to the race with a ticket. However as soon as I am parked, and it’s nice to know that NASCAR tracks all offer free parking, I go looking for the person who has my ticket. How do I find them in a crowd of 50,000 people or more? That’s an interesting question. I have an interesting answer to that question. I come to the track with a simple sign that reads “Need One”. I don’t want to put the person’s name on my sign who has my ticket. People like their privacy, right? My sign alerts the man or woman who is carrying my ticket that I’m the guy that needs to get that ticket. I make my signs at home. I’m not much of an artist but I can spell “Need One”. My strategy is not a terribly different strategy than the folks who are hanging out at your street corner or stoplight. You’ve seen their signs. The folks on the street corners are excellent at marketing. They use all the right words like “Veteran” and “Children” and “Hungry” on their advertisements (signs). In both examples the street person and I need something and we don’t want to pay much for it. From what I’ve seen these people can get rich doing what they do. I’m not trying to get rich. I’m just trying to find that one person in the crowd who is caring MY ticket. Yes…I have thought about taking my sign-making skills to the streets. I could walk to work (stoplight) from my home. I just don’t know if I would have to skim anything off the top for the people who already control that corner. I know to the nervous or curious or both readers this might seem like I have an unfair advantage when I show up at a major entertainment event. Why would someone feel like that? Because it’s true. I do have an unfair advantage. I am looking for that person who bought my ticket at full price about a year ago. They’ve been without the use of that money for a full year. Now they’re going to give me MY ticket for a fraction of what they paid for it. Why would they want to do such a thing? Is it because I’m just a nice guy? This is how these things work…in the real world. A guy or gal and their buddies decide they want to go see the NASCAR race up in Martinsville, Virginia. I don’t blame them. It’s one of the very best places to watch a NASCAR race. They all thought, over a few beers, that buying the tickets and getting a great seat location in advance (when the tickets went on sale a year ago) would put them well ahead of the pack. I’ll be sharing below why ideas hatched over a few beers are not always the best ideas. A lot can happen in a year. People move away. People don’t always enjoy the company of the same people today that they liked a year ago. Lots of things can happen in a year. When a “life event” happens maybe one person in the group of two or four or whatever decides they can’t make the race. What they thought was such a good idea year ago isn’t such a good idea in their life today. Now three people out of the original group of four show up at the race. They have an extra ticket. They’re not too concerned about that. Bubba or Bobette has already paid them for the ticket so they’re not really out any money. Then they encounter me. I seem like a clean-cut upstanding fellow. They see my sign. It reads “Need One”. To the person who sees this sign, who has an extra ticket, my sign seems like a neon light. A lightbulb goes off in their head. They see “beer money”. What are they thinking? They say to themselves and possibly to the entire group, “This guy needs a ticket! We have a ticket. We have Bubba’s or Bobette’s ticket. That ticket has already been paid for by Bubba or Bobette. Why don’t we try to sell Bubba’s or Bobette’s ticket to this fellow who obviously needs a ticket? We could either give it to him…naw…or maybe we could get a couple of bucks for it. We could buy beer with those couple of bucks, couldn’t we?” A lot goes on in the mind of the person who has an extra ticket when they see my sign. Of course, there are other people who see my sign. Sometimes police see my sign. They don’t have an extra ticket…and I don’t want them to give me THEIR kind of ticket. When I see them, my sign comes down and I walk in a different direction. That’s good enough for the men and women in blue. They really don’t want to hassle me anyway. There are still other people who catch a glimpse of me and my sign. They have yet a different thought. They look at me just as if they were looking at the poor homeless person standing at the end of the stoplight. They shake their heads just as they would do when they pull up to that stoplight. What are THEY thinking? At the racetrack they are thinking “This poor fella doesn’t have a ticket. This is a big event. Earl bought our seats last year. That locked us in with our tickets. Yes, our daughter Sally did schedule her wedding at the last minute during “Martinsville weekend” but we couldn’t go because we “had tickets” already purchased. Maybe she’ll get married again sometime.” There are a lot of people who bought their tickets well ahead of time at full price. Now they are looking down their noses at “that poor soul who doesn’t have a friggin ticket”. The folks who think this, don’t have an extra ticket. They can’t help me. They can only feel sorry for me. Little do they know that at the end of the day I’m going to be the “winner”. I’m not going to have to commit a year in advance to buy my ticket. I’m not gonna pay full price. I’m only going to pay a fraction of full price and I might not pay anything at all. I am GIVEN a ticket about half the time. Today I had my clear plastic bag which is required at most major sporting events. The biggest item inside my bag was a robust noise-canceling headset which is a requirement when attending a NASCAR race. I had also had a special Racing Electronics RE3000 race scanner/radio. This device would allow me to hear the pit communication between the driver, crew chief and spotter as well as the radio broadcast for today’s race. Those are essentials. My bag contained a bag of M&Ms, a granola bar and a large bottle of Gatorade Zero berry flavored. NASCAR lets fans bring food and drink into the races. How many other major sporting events other than NASCAR auto racing allows fans to bring in their own refreshments? Here’s the answer to that question. Zero. Now, it was time, in a crowd of more than 50,000 people, for the person who had MY ticket to find me. This was about as close to finding a needle in a haystack as I could get. How was this exactly going to happen on a beautiful blue-sky crisp 70° fall day in Martinsville, Virginia? This is how it was going to happen. I simply held up my “Need One” sign for all to see. My sign had a pink background with blue magic marker writing. I use this color combination to appeal to both men and women. Yep. Always thinking. On one side the sign read “Need One”. On the other side it read “Need 1”. See the difference? I figured any English-speaking person would be able to figure this out and deliver my ticket to me quickly. By the way, I also have this sign in French, for when I travel to Quebec. I will tell you that it rarely if ever takes more than five minutes for the person who has my ticket to show up and get my attention. Why would I make such a statement? Simply because it is true. Today was no exception. Soon a black man about 55 years of age and wearing a very cool retro-looking Cubs blue Chase Elliott T-shirt came up to say hello. He had my ticket. As a matter of fact, he had two tickets for me. He asked, “Do you have anybody with you today? I have an extra ticket for them as well if you need it. I don’t want anything for it. It’s an extra.” What he didn’t say specifically say but it was implied was, “This is a ticket that I have for Randy Lewis. I’ve been waiting for you to come along and identify yourself and you did that with your sign. Now I’m going to give you a ticket to this nearly sold-out and very popular NASCAR event at no charge. I have YOUR ticket.” I told him how grateful I was for him hanging around outside the stadium waiting for me. The man looked at me quizzically but he seemed to understand. He was here to make me feel as comfortable as possible in the warm Virginia sun. He went on to explain my ticket’s location. That was nice of him. I am nothing if not a gracious recipient when anyone gives me a gift. I listened patiently to him explain the seat’s location and where I would be able to find that seat location. I listened as patiently as when someone tries to give me verbal driving directions when I know that I won’t be using them at all. I only use GPS for driving directions. With this as background, I accepted one of the two complimentary tickets that were offered to me. I didn’t want to be greedy although I could have taken the second ticket and sold it and made a profit. I’m not that kind of guy. OK, I am that kind of guy but it didn’t seem appropriate in today’s circumstances. I wasn’t at all interested in the seat location printed on the ticket that I was given. Why would I say that? My printed seat’s location inside the stadium didn’t interest me in the least. Why? I have some different philosophies than others. One of those philosophies is a ticket’s seat location is only a “recommendation” by the provider. While I nearly always appreciate anyone taking the time to offer me a recommendation what I am being given is only a recommendation. It is not a mandate. I see the sporting organization as offering me admission to their stadium/arena and giving a recommendation to me on where I can sit. They are nice enough to print that recommendation on the actual ticket they give me. Then when I go into the stadium, I will surveil my surroundings. At that point, I will decide if the ticket recommendation that I have is where I want to sit or if there is a better location for me. If I don’t want to sit where the ticket recommends, I simply sit where I want to and enjoy the event. That’s how I do it. I’ll take a moment to comment about my new unnamed black friend. Lots of people think that if you make a comment about black people, simply mentioning black people is racist. What a crock. It is true that most players in the NBA are black? Is it racist to make that statement? No, it is not. This is a pure fact. It is true that most fans at a NASCAR race at white. In 2019 data shows that about 58% of the people in the United States are white. I’m going to guess that 98-99% of people who attend NASCAR racing at white. Why the disconnect? Why, with only 58% of the country’s population, do white people make up the entire audience at a NASCAR race? I suspect there are many reasons for all of this. I’ll share a couple of my theories. First, there’s the Civil War! But let’s pass over that for now. There have been almost no black drivers in NASCAR. The most famous black driver in NASCAR history was Wendell Scott (above) from Danville, Virginia. Scott raced in 495 NASCAR races at the top level. He won one race. When he won in Jacksonville, Florida, they said another guy really won and gave that guy the trophy. Then later that night after everyone had gone home, NASCAR said that Wendell Scott actually won the race. NASCAR gave the Scott family the trophy about 40 years later…just sayin’. Just recently NASCAR finally got around to banning Confederate flags at their racetracks and parking lots. I wouldn’t say they were ahead of the curve on this one. Don’t think the Confederate flag is a big deal? Maybe you haven’t had any black folks over to your house recently! I’m happy to report that I saw more black fans in attendance today in Martinsville than I have ever seen. The number is still infinitesimal small but hopefully moving in the right direction. I’ve got to believe that NASCAR executives spend a LOT of time in conference rooms asking themselves how they can attract that 42% of the population (non-whites) that don’t currently come to the races. I’m sure they don’t want to offend the 58% of the population (whites) that currently do come to the races. I would say this. Maybe NASCAR and society, in general, don’t need to cater to folks who might be offended if minority populations started coming to NASCAR races. I say bring one and all and make everyone feel welcome. That won’t be easy…but one new fan at a time…like water dripping on a rock. Now I had my ticket. I always pose for a “victory photo” with my sign and tickets. Why not right. I’m all about creating memories! I had my plastic bag which contained a gardener’s kneeling pad which I use as a seat cushion. I also had my racing radio and noise-canceling headset. I had my food and drink being a 32-ounce bottle of Gatorade Zero, a package of M&Ms and a granola bar. I was pretty well set. I wanted to make a stop at the Racing Electronics radio trailer. I’m too lazy to remember how to program my RE3000 scanner. It only takes about 30 seconds if you know what you’re doing. I didn’t have a problem asking the people in charge to program my scanner. I am perfectly comfortable with asking others to do things for me. If they are experts in their field then everything gets done right and I don’t have to educate myself on how to do it. The woman at the RE trailer could not have been more helpful. She took my scanner and then told me my batteries were dead! In order for her to finish her programming responsibilities, I would need some batteries. I quickly pulled out a threesome of AA batteries. I had asked Carol for these before leaving on the trip. The woman helping me quickly reminded me that these were the wrong batteries. I had asked Carol for the wrong size batteries! I can be a dumbass at times. This is why I have a strict aversion to doing things myself. No problem! The lady pulled out a package of brand new AAA batteries and put them in my race scanner. Soon it was programmed in a matter of a minute or so. She wouldn’t charge me for the batteries and wished me a happy day. I told her she was a “sweetheart” because under these circumstances I felt that I wouldn’t be sued for sexual harassment and she truly was a sweetheart. I did a quick survey of all of the driver’s souvenir truck trailers. Granted it was only about 10 or 15 minutes before race time but the crowds there were small. I don’t think the souvenir business does nearly as well as it did 15 or 20 years ago…by a long shot. The financial crisis of 2008 pretty much killed that business and it never came back. I did see one fellow standing out in this area with his arm and hand extended in a one-finger salute. No this was not a Hitler replication nor was it a one-finger salute offered to his fellow competitors. This fellow was taking the position to let other fans know that he needed a ticket. I thought about walking up and offering him my sign at least on a rental basis. If he had my sign, he could get the ticket he was looking for much quicker. In the end, I thought his approach was his business. If he wanted to try to buy a ticket in a much less efficient manner than I had done that was on him. I continued on a little further only to find a fellow actually selling a paper ticket. I didn’t think they did paper tickets on cardboard stock anymore. I thought it was all touchless. I asked this fella what he wanted for his ticket. His reply included two egregious mistakes. These are mistakes I would never make but then I have been trained extensively in the art of negotiating. I mention this only so that the reader does not make these mistakes. First, he showed me that the ticket had a face value of $76 and that he had paid that amount for the ticket. That was all fine and good but that was just about as germane as telling me he had an aunt that lived in Evansville, Indiana. None of this information had any impact on the value of the ticket he wanted to sell. I didn’t really care that he paid $76, full-price, a year ago to make sure he had a good seat at today’s Martinsville Speedway NASCAR Cup race. I only wished he had read what I am telling you today and what I’ve told you many times before. If he had followed my advice around the entire “Need One” scenario he wouldn’t be standing out in the parking lot trying to get some of his $76 back. Then he made his second negotiating mistake. Even though he asked me what I would pay for his ticket, before I had a chance to respond, he went with “Would you give me $40 for it?” Folks when you have something to sell you do not bid against yourself. If you want to sell something have the prospective buyer offer you a price. When he asked if I would pay $40 for his ticket he was essentially “bracketing” himself. What is bracketing? Bracketing is the price range that whatever you have to sell fits into. When an item has been “bracketed” the top price and the bottom price are well-defined. Now the sales price range for his ticket was $0 to $40. Previously when he mentioned that he had paid $76 and the face value was $76 the bracketing range was presumably $0 to $76. With one fell swoop, by indicating he would sell for $40, he had immediately knocked the value of his ticket almost in half. I hadn’t said a thing up to this point! When I did speak, I told him I would think about it. If I really wanted his ticket, I would have held his feet to the fire. After he asked me if I would pay $40 for the ticket, I would’ve said no I can’t pay that much. I would have come back with “What’s the lowest you will take?” That’s right! I would have been asking him to bid against himself AGAIN! If you are saying something like, “Randy, you really are a relentless grind them into dust kind of guy” you would have been right! Have I always been this way? Yep. Pretty much. I used to try to encourage my step-father to take out a mortgage on his and my mother’s house. He didn’t want to do that. I asked him why. He told me, “If I got a mortgage, you would probably buy the bank and foreclose on me”. Geez. That was from my own stepfather! Had I asked today’s ticket seller what was the lowest price he might accept he might have said something like $20 or $30. Now the bracketing range would’ve been $0 to $20 or $0 to $30. Then I would have probably offered half of that. We might have negotiated from a base of $15-$30. We probably would’ve settled on $20 or maybe even less. This fellow needed to attend my negotiating school. Now it was time to enter the stadium with a ticket I had been given by Mr. Cub, not Ernie banks, but today’s Mr. Cub in the Chase Elliott T-shirt. My ticket was printed out on a piece of paper. My friend could’ve printed this ticket 10 times. The first person to clear security with it at the Martinsville Speedway would’ve gotten in and the nine other people would have gotten rejected. However, my friend who had my ticket would not have done such a thing. Why? Because my friend had a special ticket that was earmarked for just one person…Randy Lewis. He knew I was me when I showed up with my “Need One” sign. He could have given that ticket to anyone in today’s crowd of more than 50,000 people. He didn’t. He waited until he saw my sign then walked up to me and gave me my ticket. Say what you will. I only report the facts. That’s how things work in my world. Soon I was inside the stadium. The race was going to be starting in 12 minutes. I had one very important mission to accomplish before I could find my seat. I needed to get my “Martinsville hotdogs”. If you are a NASCAR fan, you know all about Martinsville hot dogs. But…did you know this about Martinsville? The Martinsville Speedway is the only track on the 2021 race schedule that was on the very first NASCAR race schedule all the way back in 1948. The track began as a dirt track. In 1951 only four cars finished the race. In 1955 the track was paved because the fans didn’t like getting dusted down. In 1956 the track hosted its first 500-lap race. At just .526 miles in length, Martinsville is the shortest track on the entire NASCAR circuit. The winner of each Martinsville race gets a Ridgeway grandfather clock, one of the most unusual trophies offered anywhere, valued at $10,000 U.S. Next year the track will celebrate its 75th anniversary and I hope to see at least one of their two NASCAR Cup races. Why has Martinsville been so successful? In part because of the Martinsville hotdog. What is that? If you get one of these dogs with the works, it’s a steamed bun with a bright red hot dog, topped with mustard, chili, vinegar-based slaw and onions. That’s called ordering the hot dog “all the way”. I like all of that stuff with the possible exception of the coleslaw. However, in this part of the country pretty much everything comes with coleslaw. When you went to your last professional baseball or basketball game and ordered a hotdog how much did it cost? Maybe as much as 10 bucks if it was a bratwurst? Probably as little as 4-5 bucks? Stuff at a NASCAR race is a bargain. A Martinsville hot dog costs just two dollars. It’s been two dollars for about as long as the hotdog and soft drink at Costco have been $1.50. Today people were lined up 40-50 people deep waiting for their Martinsville hotdogs. Those people were not going to see the drop of the green flag. I scouted around until I found a line that was only about a dozen persons deep. Even with just 12 people ahead of me making the green flag start was going to be tight. Nevertheless, I hung in there. I ordered four Martinsville hotdogs and a bag of chips. 10 bucks was my total. Credit cards only. No cash. Remember, we need to go touchless because we are in a pandemic no matter how former Governor Cuomo wants to behave. From the hot dog line, it was a matter of about 20 steps before I grabbed a seat about 15 rows up from the track, just beyond the starting line right in front of Kyle Busch’s pit box. What a wonderful seat to watch the start of the race. Please don’t miss my video. My plan was to eat two of the Martinsville hotdogs at the green flag and try to finish off the last two somewhere during the second stage of today’s race. I hadn’t eaten anything this morning in anticipation of chowing down on Martinsville hotdogs. What really happened? All four hotdogs were consumed along with a bag of chips by lap thirty! NASCAR has something called “stage” racing. Lots of old-timers don’t like stage racing. Why don’t they like stage racing? Because they are old-timers. Don’t be an old-timer. People will think you are a crotchety old person and they will be right. There was a fellow up in Vermont named Ken Squier. He was a track promoter and a track announcer and one of the first voices of NASCAR on TV. In a way, Mr. Squier was a pretty brilliant guy. He determined that the fans liked three things at a race. They like the start of the race. They like the end of the race and they liked restarts. He came up with a brilliant idea. Most races have only one start and one finish. What if he could triple the number of starts and finishes? Wouldn’t that be a good idea? Yes, it would. This is where “stage” racing was developed. NASCAR started stage racing about three years ago. I think it has worked out perfectly. The first stage is always going to be about 25% of the total race distance. The second stage will be that distance as well. The third and final stage will be about 50% of the laps in distance. Now we have three starts, three finishes and at least two restarts with every race. That’s eight actions at a minimum that the crowd likes. That’s so much better than just three. Of course, there are going to be many more restarts in a NASCAR race than two. There may even be an additional start and finish if and when the race goes into overtime like it did today. At the end of stage one today I decided to change my seat location. I can do that… because I think of my printed ticket location as a recommendation. In the end, I get to decide where I will sit. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? I looked over toward turned two. The crowd wasn’t as thick over there. I had never sat in turn two at Martinsville. Today that location seemed like it might be a good place to give a trial run. I had a couple of choices. I could sit right at the exit of turn two in the sun. Or, I could sit in the middle of turns one and two in the shade. I chose the shade. I had a great panoramic view of the entire track including the pitstop positions of Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski. It is here where I watched the last two stages, about 370 laps, of the 500-lap Martinsville Speedway race. I’m going to tell you that the last 50 laps or so of this race might have been the best racing I have ever seen. Here’s why. I go to about 10 major-league baseball games a year. I am a huge (in my eyes) Los Angeles Angels fan. I seem to focus on their All-Star players like Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and formerly Albert Pujols. There are other bit players that I am vaguely familiar with. I probably couldn’t tell you their first and last names if you paid me a million bucks. I take Carol and various family and friends to the Angels games. I think of it as a social outing. I am much more interested in conversing with my guests than watching every aspect of the baseball game itself. I understand baseball strategy as well as anybody because I played baseball and I’ve been to hundreds of major-league baseball games. However, if the Angels lose, I’m not really bummed at all. This year the Atlanta Braves played the Houston Astros in the World Series. Back when I was a “real” baseball fan I knew everything about every team. I remember as a 14-year-old boy talking to my neighbor. He was a man probably in his 40s. I mentioned something about the World Series which was going on at that moment. He asked me in a perfectly clueless fashion “When do they play the World Series?” I was aghast. Now I am almost that guy. I didn’t watch a single pitch of this year’s World Series…although I saw a game at both the Men’s College Baseball World Series in Omaha and the Women’s Softball World Series in Oklahoma City in 2021. Of course, I know when the World Series is played. This year I was certainly aware the Braves were playing the Astros. However as this is written if you were to offer me a brand new Tesla pickup truck if I could name even one player on either of these two teams, I couldn’t do it. I simply have no interest in that aspect of baseball. On the other hand, I can tell you how many stolen bases and what the slugging percentage was for Shohei Ohtani this year. I’m just a major league baseball specialist (Angels) and not a well-rounded baseball fan. I am sure if I had watched one of the World Series games this year, I would not enjoy it nearly as much as someone who knows every player on every team and every batting average and on and on and on. People who know more stuff get more stuff out of stuff. Does that make sense? It’s the same way with NASCAR racing. I can imagine someone going to a NASCAR race who doesn’t know the first thing about what they are seeing. They would be clueless. All they’re going to notice is that the cars are running around in a circle for a very long time. They’re going to get bored and possibly fall asleep! The rookie NASCAR visitor won’t know what to look for. By the way, all of the “stock” photos for the search word “clueless” were of young women. I apologize for that social misstep on the part of the world in general. I know NASCAR Cup racing. I don’t follow Xfinity racing or the truck series because I think about that about as much as I think about the Astros and the Braves. Yes, I guess I’m a NASCAR Cup specialist as well. I know the NASCAR drivers and the NASCAR car owners. I know the car numbers although the paint schemes are a little bit difficult to keep up with. Lots of teams have a different paint scheme for nearly every race. I don’t really like that part of racing in today’s world. I would never ever consider going to a NASCAR race without having a quality noise-canceling headset. Probably something stronger than a Bose…and I love Bose. Why do I say that? Despite all the races I have attended over the years I still have very good hearing. I’d like to keep it that way. Attached to my quality NASCAR noise-canceling headset is the aforementioned RE racing radio/scanner. I use the radio to listen to the radio broadcast and to tune into the driver’s communication with his spotter and crew chief. This gives me all the behind-the-scenes information that I need to have a really enjoyable race. Today’s racing was a “cut-off” race. If you’re not a NASCAR fan you probably have no idea what a cut-off race is. Here’s the deal. NASCAR is in the midst of their “playoffs” just like the Astros and Braves are in the midst of their playoffs. Baseball is in its final round, the World Series. Briefly here’s how the NASCAR playoff system works. There are 36 points-paying races in each season. The drivers are awarded various points for their finishes in the first 26 races of the year. The drivers are shooting for one of the 16 positions that will get them into the NASCAR playoffs. The playoffs happen during the last ten races of the year, races 27-36. The top 16 positions are awarded to those drivers who have either won a race and or achieved a high level of points based upon their racing finishes. When the 26 race regular season is finished those 16 top drivers move into the playoffs. The next three races (#27, #28 and #29) determine which of the 16 drivers advance to the final 12 drivers. Those 12 drivers race another three races. The top eight drivers after these three races advance. The best eight drivers will race in races #33, #34 and #35 in an effort to become one of the final four drivers. Today was that cut-off race, race #35, which was going to reduce the playoff field from eight drivers to four drivers. Those four drivers would advance to the final championship race in Phoenix, Arizona, next week. I’ve been to the Phoenix track well over 20 times. However, I don’t plan to go to next week’s championship race. I expect to be trackchasing in West Virginia and Texas at this point. At Phoenix, the final four championship drivers will compete with all of the other drivers in the same race. The driver in the final four who finishes best, they don’t have to win just beat the other three championship drivers, will become the NASCAR champion. I like everything about the playoffs. However, I’m not super wild about the overall championship going to the best finishing of the final four drivers in the final championship race. For most of NASCAR’s 70+ year history, the driver who earned the most points in all of the races in a given season was the champion. Nearly 20 years ago they stopped doing it that way. NASCAR started a playoff system of sorts which has changed a little bit over time. Three drivers have won seven NASCAR championships each. Those drivers are Richard Petty (above), Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jimmy Johnson. Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr. won their championships when the driver with the most points over an entire season was the champion. If Petty and Earnhardt had to go to a final race and beat their next three strongest fellow competitors, would they have one seven championships each? I can almost assuredly say they would have not. However, when they won their championships, they won by the rules that were in effect at the time. Every driver who has ever won a NASCAR championship won their championship under the rules of that particular year. Fair enough. A good thing about watching a race live rather than on TV, especially on a short track like Martinsville’s half-mile track, is that the fan can see battles happening all over the track. Today I could see drivers battling for 26th spot and running into each other. Then I listened in on the scanner to hear how frustrated they were with the other driver who wouldn’t let them gain one position even though it was for the 26th spot. I watched all of that as well as playoff battles for all of the top positions. The points were so tight that if a driver passed one car, he might make it into the final four by that single point. If another car passed him, he might not. As I mentioned this might have been the most exciting race that I’ve seen certainly this year and possibly ever. That’s a pretty strong statement for someone who has seen racing at 2,756 tracks… and I’ve been to some of those tracks well over 50 times each. When the race was finished drivers Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. were heading to the championship four. Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch and Ryan Blaney were not. I’m a big fan of Larson, Elliot and Truex. Not so much for Hamlin. Today’s race winner was Hendrick Motorsports driver Alex Bowman. Bowman readily admitted he made a mistake and took out race leader Denny Hamlin during the last couple of laps. Mr. Hamlin was quite bent out of shape over this episode. When Bowman went to make his victory celebration burn out on the front stretch Hamlin drove his car into Bowman’s front end preventing the celebration. In all of the NASCAR races I’ve ever seen, I’ve never seen anything like that. Today’s race was in Virginia. Denny Hamlin (above) is from Virginia. A couple of years ago Hamlin wrecked NASCAR’s most popular driver Chase Elliott at Martinsville. The crowd didn’t like Hamlin then and they didn’t like him today…despite Hamlin being the hometown boy. Apparently, there were a lot of Georgia fans (Elliott) in the stands because Hamlin was loudly booed for his reaction today. On the ride back to Charlotte I listened to the postrace comments on NASCAR’s Sirius XM satellite channel. Almost everyone thought Hamlin was a bum and Mr. Bowman was within his rights to simply drive through Hamlin on his way to victory. I wondered about that. Granted, Denny Hamlin can be a little “much” at times. He’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind. However, was Hamlin in the wrong today or Mr. Bowman? Hamlin had been the leader of the race. Mr. Bowman had intentionally or unintentionally wiped him out and went on to victory. How should we look at this? Was Denny Hamlin the villain like the fans seemed to think? Simply because he isn’t as popular as some of the other drivers should the fact that he would be taken out of the race by another driver relegate him to a secondary position? It seemed that’s the way the crowd thought it should be. They didn’t seem to care about what the offense was. They just liked to they liked. I didn’t exactly like that! I was a little concerned about getting out of the parking lot today. The parking lot at the Martinsville Speedway, which is free to patrons, has a large rolling hills grassy farmland-type landscape. I was pretty much the last one into the lot today. There were thousands of cars parked today at all kinds of crazy angles. There is an accounting concept called “LIFO”. LIFO stands for last in, first out. It took me a good deal of time to walk out to where my car was parked. When I got there, I noticed that last in was going to be first out! I was pretty happy about that. Once I got in my car, I was leaving the Martinsville Speedway grounds in less than five minutes. That’s so much different than when my good buddy Jim Sabo and I used to go to the races in North Wilkesboro. We carried a portable charcoal grill and spent three hours barbecuing until the traffic had finally cleared. Yesterday had been a marginal day of trackchasing at Bobby Watson’s Carteret Speedway. The trip was vastly improved with my visit to see Rich and Emily Hallam and Rich’s parents, Bev and Mike. Now today I had gone to one of my three most favorite NASCAR tracks, the Martinsville Speedway. I had seen what was arguably the best racing that I have ever seen in my life. How did all this “settle” with me? I thought this was a super fantastic trip. With that said, you need to realize that I have never ever had a single bad trip. But I will say that a super fantastic trip is so much better than just a good trip. I was most pleased. After the racing, I had a Marriott hotel waiting for me near the Charlotte airport. This weekend I have stayed in Hiltons for two nights and now a Marriott for one night. You might think that I have a large hotel budget. I do not. All of these properties are luxury and expensive hotels. I never paid more than about $80 plus tax for any of them. I simply don’t have time to pay retail. MONDAY Today is November 1. What is the significance of November 1? The date actually carries two levels of priority for me. First and foremost it is my younger sister Becky’s birthday. I wish her the happiest of birthdays! Secondly, November 1 is the day after Halloween. When November 1 falls on a Monday that’s sort of a “quadruple witching” situation. Most moms and dads want to be home on Halloween eve so they can take their little rug rats and goblins out on the streets to terrorize the neighbors. That meant that all of those business travelers that might have left on Sunday night to be in a position to work on Monday morning were now delaying their flights from Halloween eve to this Monday, November 1. I would be trying to fly standby on this busy Monday from Charlotte to Los Angeles. American Airlines dominates the Charlotte airport. Their flights were jampacked. I know! Jampacked. Jampacked is normally reserved for Christmas and Thanksgiving and the six weeks over spring break. Jampacked is also November 1 on a Monday following Halloween. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen flights fuller to all locations from Charlotte to everywhere in the country than what I saw today. I didn’t know if I would ever get home. After looking at flights from Charlotte that might get me back to Los Angeles either on a nonstop basis or a connecting basis, I decided the first flight of the day from Charlotte to Los Angeles would be my #1 option. If that didn’t work then a flight from Charlotte to Salt Lake City and then onto Los Angeles would be my backup plan. I went to bed about midnight with all kinds of flight combinations singing and dancing in my head. My wake-up call came at 4:45 a.m. Eastern time. Folks that’s 1:45 a.m. Pacific time where I would finish my day if I made it back to California. Lots of people don’t go to bed until 1:45 a.m. I was getting UP at that time. No, you probably don’t want to be a Trackchaser. I will wrap up what has become a long but loving and entertaining tale with the idea that I made that American Airlines flight from Charlotte. I landed back in Los Angeles at about 10 a.m. Pacific. I not only made that flight but I got an aisle seat with an open seat next to me. That was nearly nirvana. In today’s world, I don’t typically sleep on airplanes. I slept today. I hope you enjoyed getting to “meet” in the virtual world with all of the folks who crossed paths with me this weekend. Of course, there were Rich and Emily and Bev and Mike. There was the lady who gave me the fresh batteries. The young girl at Steak ‘n Shake went out of her way to help me. I couldn’t forget the man in the Chase Elliott shirt who provided, as a gift, my ticket to the NASCAR race. There were lots more folks that helped in one way or another that I didn’t get time to mention. I hope you can understand and appreciate the idea that someone of any age can make one of these trips. They can have the time of their life and do it on an economical basis. I know it’s easy to say “Randy can do that but I could never do that”. You could do that! You just need to do it the way Randy does it, speaking in the third person. Occasionally I will even speak in the fourth person by saying something like Dale Jr. says he thinks Randy is the best trackchaser going. That’s speaking in the fourth person. I have never attempted to speak in the fifth person… yet. So that’s it. We’ll see you some down somewhere down the long and dusty trackchasing trail. If I don’t recognize you, please get my attention and say hi. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,756 tracks. North Carolina The Tar Heel State This evening I saw racing at my 62nd-lifetime track in the Tar Heel, yes, the Tar Heel State. I hold the #3 trackchasing ranking in North Carolina. North Carolina ranks #14, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. Here’s a link to my all-time North Carolina state trackchasing list. I have made 43 separate trips to North Carolina seeing these tracks. North Carolina state track list 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 U.S. Highway 15-501, a straight-shot that separates UNC and Duke by just 10 miles. 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 855 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. Trackchasing in the deep south at one of the more unusual tracks I’ve seen. Didn’t get a chance to go to Martinsville for the big dust-up? Here’s your second chance! 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 little bit of everything…friends, racing and seeing the local landscape Just a plain 100% fun trip to Martinsville 
North Carolina sayings: Tobacco Road:
