Greetings from Hemlock, New York
.
.
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
.
.
Hemlock County Fairgrounds
Figure 8
Lifetime Track #2,129
THE EVENT Today’s undertaking was just one of more than 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. I’ll try my best to respond. Thanks! ON THE WAY TO THE RACES How long would this trip be? When I departed the sunny seaside resort of San Clemente I didn’t have a firm idea on how long this trip was going to be. I think I do now. This is going to be a 56-day trackchasing trip. Last year I had my first “mega” trackchasing trip of 42 days. That adventure yielded 36 tracks. To my knowledge none of my fellow competitors has ever taken a trip longer than 20 days and most have never taken one longer than 7-10 days. Who will feed me? Of course I would never want to be gone from Trackchasing’s First Mother for 56 days. Who would do my laundry? Who would make my food? OK, already, I’m kidding! What a generous offer. I have told Carol over the years that if, for just one year, she would leave on Memorial Day with me for a trackchasing effort and return on Labor Day that her “obligation” for trackchasing involvement would be completed. This simple three month or so offer has been summarily rejected by TFM. I have offered this option up several times. I think she would come out ahead on that offer (from her point of view)! We had a grand plan. Our “plan” for this trip was to have Carol come out and spend several days with me on three separate occasions during these 56 days. This would work well for both of us. For the first seven days of the trip I would trackchase solo. Then for days 8-17, a timeframe of nine days, Carol would join in on the fun. We wouldn’t just go racing during her time on the road. We would also visit our relatives in Illinois as well….and see stuff. Then during a 14-day period, days 18-31, I would be back to being an independent by myself trackchaser. On day #30 Carol and I would meet up in Washington D.C. She would be part of the fun during days 32-38, a seven day adventure for her. Then she would head home to recharge her batteries. I would stay out on the trackchasing trail from days 39-47. Finally Carol would magically reappear in St. Louis to finish out days 48 through 56 on this miraculous trip. This sojourn was meticulously planned so that most of the long driving days would occur when Carol wasn’t with me. Together we would have lots of family entertainment. Our activities, among other things would include another week in Branson, Missouri (following our trip this spring) for their country shindigs. Even the craftiest plans…. However as I have come to find out even the craftiest of plans doesn’t always work out the way I might expect. For a few days before I left on this trip Carol wasn’t feeling well. She was having a persistent hacking cough and flu like symptoms. Just a day or two after I left the diagnosis on her malady was in. She had pneumonia! Her treatment, which was hoped to eradicate the illness, would be three weeks of antibiotics and rest. I sincerely offered to abort my trip and return home to assist my young bride. However, she told me there really wasn’t much I could do. I think she was likely correct. O.K. now what? What DID this mean? Carol would not be accompanying me on days 8–17 of the trip. That was a bummer. However, there was nothing that could fix that at this point. Clothes, laundry detergent, quarters. When I left the house after having dinner up in Los Angeles with Carol and J.J., I wasn’t expecting a 56-day trip. I had enough clothes for nine or ten days without washing. However, I also had enough detergent and quarters to keep my 9-10 clothing rotation going for as many as 56 days. Weather update. Today is day #16 of this trip. I haven’t had any rainouts. One track I visited wasn’t racing….my error. Another had no countable cars much to my chagrin. I’ve been lucky with the weather. On the rainy days I’ve been visiting tracks that will hold their shows under the most damp and adverse conditions. On the dry days I’ve been at tracks that would only race when there was no excess moisture. Rental car update. During the first three days of the trip I rented two cars and drove them approximately 1,300 miles. Then I picked up a car in Minneapolis. It was a very upscale Toyota Avalon. My plan was to keep that car for 14 days. So far I’ve had it 11 days and driven the car 4,200 miles. With Carol not coming on her part one of the trip suddenly it became a good idea to extend the rental of my Toyota Avalon from 14 days to 27 days. How far will I drive it in those 27 days? I’m guessing I might drive it 12,000 miles…maybe more. When I extended my rental contract I was working with a fellow who sounded as if HE was working in India. I asked him whether or not the amount of miles I would be driving would be a problem with the car’s maintenance, oil changes etc. He told me I had “unlimited miles” and could drive the car as far as I wanted. I sensed he didn’t really “get” my point. Nevertheless I had an official representative’s assurance that I could drive the car to Hawaii and back without having a problem. I don’t like to see these tracks on my “to do” calendar. I have never liked the idea of knowing that a midweek track, racing on Monday through Thursday, had a scheduled event and I wasn’t going to knock it off the list. You would think that sooner or later I wouldn’t have any midweek dates left with that approach. On this particular week my Tuesday night track was in Indiana. My Thursday night track was in Illinois. I didn’t have any geographically well located tracks to see on Wednesday. However, I don’t go out on the trackchasing trail to sit in a hotel room somewhere. Wasn’t there anywhere I could trackchase on Wednesday? Wait. Here’s a place I could visit. In point of fact there was. There was a Wednesday night event….. in New York state. However I had long ago given up on that option as simply being too far away to drive. I considered flying but when I looked at the cost of doing that it just didn’t seem worthwhile just to attend a county fair figure 8 show. I had done some research and found a few alternative things that might occupy my time. Two local Indiana minor league teams were playing on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon. I enjoy going to baseball games. That might bridge the gap between my Tuesday and Thursday racing choices. Then I got to thinking. I’m prone to doing that. Carol wasn’t going to be with me on this part of the trip. Therefore I wouldn’t have to subject her to a long drive. I had somebody else’s car so I wasn’t worried about wearing out my own. Google Maps to the rescue. Then I got to working with Google Maps. I found that Hemlock, New York was only about a nine hour drive from last night’s racing in LaGrange, Indiana. Then if I went to Hemlock I would have a 12-hour drive back to Illinois for my race there on Thursday night. Now I was getting excited. I could not miss this once a year opportunity in Hemlock, New York. The little town is out towards Rochester, New York. My round-trip driving time would be some 21 hours. My only real “incremental” expense would be fuel. How much do YOU pay for fuel? When someone asks you how much you pay for your gasoline you probably express the cost as a certain price per gallon. I’m a little different. I know that I pay about $.35 per pound for gasoline. The next time someone asks you how much you paid for your gas you might want to consider these alternative comparisons. I pay about $6 an hour for petrol. This trip would take about 21 hours. You can do the math. It pays to know people and I know a lot of people. Over the past few months I had developed a contact at the Hemlock County Fair. I contacted my friend to confirm they would be racing rain or shine. I was told that only one of their events have ever been canceled in their long history of the fair. That was when lightning became a problem over a three-hour timeframe. I was also told that because I was coming from such a faraway place I would be offered a complementary admission. That was nice of him to do that. How could I turn down a gift from a new friend? I was timing the bad weather. Last night heavy rains hit the greater Cincinnati area just after the completion of the TQ midget feature in nearby Indiana. Overnight those rains would be moving out toward New York. When I left Columbus, Ohio this morning the weather was beautiful. However using my Weather Underground weather app I confirmed that this morning the “Cincinnati storm” was hammering Hemlock, New York. That wasn’t going to be a problem. By noon or so the rain forecast for Hemlock would come down to 20%. By race time it was going to be zero percent. I just missed getting rained out in Indiana last night. Now I was again going to beat the rain in New York. I was lucky duck as the entire Lewis family used to say when our kids were little. You have to be committed to this hobby. I thought about tonight’s trip for a moment. I realized I was driving 21 hours out of my way to see a racing event that will probably last 10 minutes. I was O.K. with that. I was driving someone else’s car and only paying six dollars an hour for gas. It’s what I do. This is one of the many reasons my fellow competitors lag behind as far as they do. I soon arrived in the small burg of Hemlock, New York. The Hemlock County Fair bills itself as the “Little World’s Fair”. They’ve been having this fair since 1857! In 2,000 the Hemlock County Fairgrounds was placed on The National Register of Historic Places. That seemed pretty impressive and historic to me. THE RACING Hemlock County Fairgrounds – Hemlock, New York It was time to get to the fair. My fair contact tonight, Jim Wingate, was going to be the organizer for the demolition derby. I called him to say I was getting near to the fair. He told me when I arrived to stop across the street at the 7-Eleven store. He would send someone out to pick me up. Folks, can we stop and think about how this went down for a moment? That’s right. Folks, let’s think about this for a moment. I frequently get the V.I.P. treatment when I visit my tracks. That was going to be the case again tonight. It was easy to find the 7-11 store. I gave him Jim a call. In about two minutes he appeared in a golf cart. How many trackchasers have ever had the fair board send a golf cart off property to pick them up? Then when the golf cart arrived be whisked off to the V.I.P. area? Answer: You’re kidding right? Zero! Jim Wingate. Jim had the firm handshake of a man that you might find from any one of America’s small towns. We had been corresponding via email for a few months and speaking on the phone for the past few days. Jim told me to follow his golf cart as we passed through several security checks and into the most primo parking space at the fair. The fairgrounds. I was immediately impressed with the old county fair grandstand. You don’t see a lot of those anymore. I was told the grandstand dated back to the early 1900s. With the fair beginning in 1857 that is easy to understand. There was a large crowd on hand that filled the covered grandstand as well as a series of bleachers on the sunny side of the track. I would say more often than not the county fair events I see are sold out. That was the case tonight. The driver’s meeting. I was just in time for the driver’s meeting. All of the cars were lined up in a series of rows representing the heat races each car would compete in. I’m guessing there were a good 50 cars on hand. This was a very good turnout. People are competitive. It doesn’t matter whether they are trackchasing, demo derbying or playing tiddlywinks. If people enter a contest they want to do well. Often times “doing well” translates into beating the other guy. The cars, vans and trucks competing tonight were typical “beater” vehicles. They were all decked out in pretty paint jobs for tonight’s demolition derby. The demo derby would race tonight and another night later in the week. The promotion team was most satisfied with the car count on this Wednesday night. Some pretty good purses. I learned the drivers had paid a $35 entry fee if they had paid in advance. Entries accepted on the day of the event were charged $50. Each demo heat paid $350 to win. The feature paid $1,000 to win. From what I can tell each event was winner take all. Folks, those are pretty strong purses for a driver who shows up in a $200 car. What about the figure 8 race? As my good fortune would have it the figure 8 race was the first event of the night. There would be only one figure 8 event. It hosted seven racers. They started on time at 7 p.m. I had a great position to film the activities just a few feet off the racing surface. As a matter fact I was getting pelted with moist clay just as if I were standing outside of turn one at Ascot Park. My iPhone case even took a direct hit from a moist mud ball! The figure 8 racetrack had three large tractor tire markers rather than the normal two. This created a “double” figure 8 track. I’ve seen a few of those. For trackchasing purposes it doesn’t matter if it’s a single or double figure 8 configuration. The track only counts once. Don’t miss the video to see what the figure 8 racing looked like. After the figure 8 race was finished I took an opportunity to walk the fair. Jim told me this is one of the largest fairs in New York getting 38,000 people over the entire length of the fair. I stopped to inspect the farm animal barns. I like to do that. I don’t get to stand that close to cows very often! I examined the fair food choices as well as some of the commercial buildings and crafts displays. The American county fair is a great tradition for our country. I’ve been to more than 300 of them. I still enjoy “walking the fair” each time I do it. Just a little bit of demo derby watching. I returned to watch some of the demolition derby action. I wasn’t planning to stay for all of the DD activity although I enjoy demo derby event. I had a 786-mile one-way drive over to tomorrow night’s venue in Taylorville, Illinois still to enjoy. I love to share the story of trackchasing. However before I left the track Jim Wingate wanted to take a few minutes to interview me about my trackchasing hobby. I was happy to do that. Tonight another thousand people most likely would be exposed to the endeavors of trackchasing for the first time. I have had literally hundreds of “at the track” interviews. The interviewing styles of track announcers are all a little bit different. Once in a while the track announcer will simply say “This is Randy Lewis, World’s #1 Trackchaser and he’s going to tell you a little bit about trackchasing”. Then I am handed the microphone and will begin to speak in front of hundreds or thousands of people. I’m always a little surprised with this technique. Usually I have only met the track announcer for the very first time seconds or minutes ago. That was pretty much the case tonight. What if? What if I were a closet KKK member or an Islamic radical? I have always wondered what would be the reaction if I begin spouting that type of rhetoric to the small-town county fair crowd. Alas I was neither a KKK extremist or Islamic radical. I am a Methodist. I am only a simple trackchaser going from one place to the next search of seeing racing at a new place. I told the crowd exactly that. I didn’t take a lot of time to speak. However I did educate the crowd a bit about the hobby of trackchasing. You will likely hear how all that went on the YouTube video I produced. Thanks Jim. Then I bade farewell to Jim Wingate. He thanked me for coming and told me “I wish I had a hat or something to give you”. I told him he “was good” and headed on down the long and dusty trackchasing trail. AFTER THE RACES Break out your grandma’s map of the U.S. Check out the details of this trip. Last night I trackchased in Osgood, Indiana. Tomorrow I would trackchase in Taylorville, Illinois. If you are near a map you might want to check out those two locations and then fit in a drive out to Hemlock, New York so that you can imagine the fun I had. When trackchasing historians review my track list in the next century they’re going to scratch their collective heads. They will try to figure out how I got from point A to point B to see my tracks. They will note I was using old technology such as automobiles and airplanes. They will see I was actually driving the cars myself. Hopefully they’ll have some audio from me telling them how much fun it was to complete each of these trips. From New York I hopped in my trusty National Car Rental Racing Toyota Avalon and began to beat feet for my boyhood state of Illinois. I had 786 miles to drive and about 24 hours to do it. That was PLENTY of time. Drive. Nap. Repeat. I’ve been feeling a little bit under the weather for the past day or so. Yesterday I stopped about every hour for a 15 minute nap. Those naps kept me going. Tonight I will use my satellite radio to tune into the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball game. After a hot streak they have returned to first place in their division. They have won 16 of there past 19 games. My objective was to drive until about midnight. Then I would grab a spot at an interstate rest area and catch some sleep. Initially I thought I might sleep for an hour, drive a little bit, sleep for an hour etc. However after getting to a rest area at about 1 a.m. I decided to sleep until 6:15 a.m. local time in the Mentor, Ohio rest area. Congratulations! I was most surprised to see the rest area had been awarded an “Excellence in snow & ice control” award for 2013. I would love to have attended that awards banquet. The weather looks good for the next 2 to 3 days of my trackchasing. I haven’t had any rain during the first 16 days of my trip. I’m very thankful for that. Good night. New York The Empire state This evening I saw my 72nd lifetime track in the Empire state, yes the Empire state. Since just about every top ranked trackchaser lives in New York or in a state bordering New York my state ranking here is low. Nevertheless, I enjoy the scenery and racing in “upstate” New York. I also love visiting Manhattan. If I couldn’t live in Southern California or Northern California I would live in Manhattan. 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 York sayings: I love New York QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Chicago, IL (ORD) – 1,745 miles RENTAL CAR #1 O’Hare International Airport – trip begins London, KY Indianapolis International Airport – trip ends – 766 miles RENTAL CAR #2 Indianapolis International Airport – trip begins Bedford, KY Indianapolis International Airport – trip ends – 603 miles RENTAL CAR #3 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport – trip begins Aitken, MN Morten, Manitoba, Canada LaGrange, IN Manchester, IA Oskaloosa, IA Bowling Green, IN Buncombe, IL Ionia, MI Osgood, IN Hemlock, NY TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Laurel County Fairgrounds – $10 (not a trackchasing expense) Trimble County Recreational Facility – $10 Aitken County Fairgrounds (oval) – complimentary admission Aitken County Fairgrounds (RC) – $8 ALH Motor Speedway – complimentary admission LaGrange County Fairgrounds – $10 Delaware County Fairgrounds – $10 Mahaska County Fairgrounds – $5 Sandstone – $15 (include pits) HBR Raceway – $10 (included pits) Ionia Free Fair – $13 Ripley County Fairgrounds – complimentary admission Hemlock County Fairgrounds – complimentary admission 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 450 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 10 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 one-minute “Video Lite” production from the figure 8 racing at the Hemlock County Fairgrounds. . Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. Double click on a photo to begin the slide show or watch the photos at your own pace. Hover over a photo to read the caption. Hemlock County Fairgrounds – Photo Album 
