Greetings from Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cœur-d’Issoudun, Quebec, Canada
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Issoudun Ice Track
Lifetime Track #2,059
No rest for the weary. Impending blizzard? It’s always been expensive up here. The road and driving conditions surprised me. I always marvel at this. Should I? The one major fault with the new 2015 Hyundai Sonata. Crossing back into the United States was handled while I was still in Canada! I had done everything right. However, the system was not going to reward me. Our ‘Anniversary week” is coming up. I needed every bit of my cold weather winter gear. Stay calm and keep it simple. Read or watch….it’s your choice. This was a new iPhone experience. I didn’t know I would have to climb a snow mountain. In 2,058 previous track visits I had never seen this before! Rubbin’ in racin’. THE EVENT No rest for the weary. I woke up this morning in Drummondville, Quebec, Canada…for the second straight night. I went to sleep in my very own bed in our modest seaside cottage fronting the Pacific Ocean. Granted I didn’t hit that Tempurpedic mattress until 6 a.m. Monday morning Drummondville time. This is how the day turned out. Today’s racing was not scheduled to begin until 12 noon. The track was located in Notre-Dame-du-Sacre-Coeur-d’Issoudun, Quebec (we’ll call the place “Issoudun” for short). This little burg was just a bit more than an hour from my hotel. Impending blizzard? While I was in the hotel elevator I ran into two kids carrying hockey sticks. I struck up a conversation with them. They were going home to Massachusetts earlier than planned because of the impending “blizzard”. They would miss their hockey game because of a little snow? Is this any kind of an example, canceling the hockey match, for our nation’s young people? As you can see from the weather map snow was moving eastward to my location. Highly recommended. I returned to the Restaurant Blanche for the second consecutive morning for breakfast. Yesterday I had an outstanding omelet there. Today, I chose the pancakes just to try something new. Bad choice. The omelet was better. At least I had some real maple syrup even if it did come with an extra charge. It’s always been expensive up here. Prices are high in Canada despite the 20% discount (currency exchange) for U.S. visitors. I paid nearly $20 Canadian for breakfast with tip and nearly $15 Canadian for a late lunch at St. Hubert restaurant. St. Hubert is sort of Canada’s equivalent to KFC. I charge things whenever and wherever I can. I had Canadian cash. Carol always slips me a plastic envelope of foreign currency regardless of which country I might visit. She’s my foreign currency V.P. After the races…… The road and driving conditions surprised me. I was surprised at two things with today’s road conditions. They didn’t seem to salt the roads at all. There were also well over 25 cars stranded along the interstate highway in ditches. Many of the accidents were so fresh the drivers were still in their cars as I passed. No one could have been hurt in these slides although a few cars did get together so car insurance agents will be busy on Monday morning. I always marvel at this. Should I? There is something I find most amazing about today’s snow “blizzard”. It might see obvious but I can’t help but marvel at the situation. At 4 p.m. the wind was howling. the temperature was near zero and it was beginning to snow. It wasn’t a very nice day to be outside or to be driving a car. On the other hand in San Clemente it was 1 p.m. the sun was shining and folks were on the golf course wearing shorts! I am shocked that not every single person from New York, Boston, Philly and Detroit has not packed up and moved to sunny Southern California. Wait! Most of them have. That’s why when I go to an Angels game there are so many fans wearing Yankee, Red Sox and Tigers hats when their team comes to town. What do I have to say to those people? First congratulations. You got out of these hell hole weather places and made it to SoCal. Secondly, I say lose your Yankee or Phillie hat. You’re in Angels and Dodgers’ country now. These are probably the same people who say that when an immigrant comes to the U.S. they need to learn the local language! Just lucky I guess. Traffic was slow back to the Montreal Trudeau airport. At one point traffic came to a stop on the eastbound interstate (interprovincial?) highway. Luckily I was just 75 yards short of an exit. I took that exit and a few side roads guided by my Garmin GPS unit. About three miles down the road I re-entered I-20 and was on my merry way. I suspect that drivers who were stopped just PAST the exit had a much longer delay. The one major fault with the new 2015 Hyundai Sonata. I paid $1.124 CAD for nearly 50 liters of petrol. It was the only stop for gas during the entire trip. My favorite full-sized car to rent is the Hyundai Sonata. This car gets great gas mileage and almost always comes with complimentary satellite radio. The 2014 model had a gas gauge that wouldn’t come off a full reading for 50-60 miles. The new 2015 car is much much different. It begins to move off of “full” in less than 10 miles! It’s nearly impossible to fill up at a gas station to get the gas gauge to show truly full. I have to “top off” for 2-3 minutes to achieve that. If I don’t the rental car company will charge me for returning the car with a less than full tank. There is one positive to all of this. The rental car company can’t fill the tank either!! Often when I pick up a new Sonata I will see the gas gauge shows just a tick below full. I’ll point this out and get a credit for as much as a quarter of a tank. I just have to be vigilant both when I pick up the car and when I return it. Crossing back into the United States was handled while I was still in Canada! The Montreal airport has it’s own U.S. border control. That way I could use my “Global Entry” capabilities to bypass the lines of travelers waiting to clear customs. This wasn’t much of an advantage. There were few people trying to leave Montreal tonight. I like it better when there’s a two-hour wait and I skip that line to clear U.S. border control, using Global Entry, in 30 seconds! I had done everything right. However, the system was not going to reward me. I had done everything right. There were a lot of hoops to jump through but I was on time for my 6:30 p.m. flight departure from Montreal to Los Angeles. However, the flight was not quite ready. Somehow the pilots were stranded in Ottawa. We were going to be delayed. The flight was scheduled for six hours. It’s always longer flying from east to west. At first the plane’s departure was moved back 30 minutes. Then they kept delaying it more and more. I feared as the evening continued they might cancel the flight all together. What would I have done then? I likely would have slept overnight in the Montreal airport. That would have required a new plan for Monday morning. Finally, the pilots showed up and we all boarded the plane. Of course, we had to wait in line to get our airplane “de-iced” in this frigid climate. We finally flew into the air at 10 p.m. three and one-half hours behind schedule. I had the good sense to ask for a “seat with more legroom”. The gate agent helped me out a great deal. Good on Air Canada. She gave me a row of three seats where I was the only passenger. I would use that to sleep some three hours on the flight back. Remember one of my primary adages, “If you don’t ask you don’t get”. As it was we landed as about 1:30 a.m. local time. I pulled into the driveway just before 3 a.m. San Clemente time. At precisely 3 a.m. I was getting a welcome home kiss from Carol. Of course 3 a.m. in California is 6 a.m. in the Eastern Time Zone. I had spent the past day in the Eastern Time Zone. I have a question. How many trackchasers have gotten home at 6 a.m. the NEXT day from having seen a daytime race the day BEFORE? Is “California penalty” one word or two? Our ‘Anniversary week” is coming up. Nevertheless, I’ll be doing the same thing next weekend. The ice racing season doesn’t last for long. Next week is also “anniversary week”. Carol and I will be celebrating our 43rd wedding anniversary. I like to say “I’ve been married 40 years and that’s not bad out of forty-three”. Of course Carol grimaces whenever I share this (to me) humorous remark. She’ll be coming along to do her part in maintaining our “Couples #1 ranking” on the ice next week. THE RACE Issoudun Ice Track – Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cœur-d’Issoudun, Quebec, Canada I needed every bit of my cold weather winter gear. I was tempted to bypass some of the 20 or winter apparel items I used yesterday. I’m glad I didn’t. Even though the temperatures were about the same (today it was -16 degrees Centigrade) the wind was much stronger today. With a wind of 15-20 M.P.H. I’m guessing the wind chill was about 15 degrees BELOW zero on the Fahrenheit scale. That’s cold if you plan to stand outdoors for any amount of time. The drive up to the small town of Issoudun was uneventful. I arrived about 45 minutes before race time. Admission was $10 Canadian. There was a huge parking lot that filled up very fast after I arrived. The guy parked next to me, driving a Lincoln Town Car, need both bare hands to raise his driver’s side window. Are you ready for a Lexus yet? Today’s ice racing would be around a 1/5-mile or so oval track. The promoters were racing today and also two weeks from now. That seemed like a good idea because it takes a good deal of effort build up a track like this. Ice racing but not on a lake. This was not ice racing on a frozen lake. This was ice (and hard packed snow) on land. Of course with the snow they get up here there was no land in view. Stay calm and keep it simple. By the way I categorize the tracks I see by the type of racing surface the cars race on. If it’s an aluminum track I say I saw racing on an aluminum track. If it’s an asphalt track then I saw racing on an asphalt track…..wait for it….if I see racing on a ice and/or snow packed track I will tell you that I saw racing on an ice and/or snow packed track. It does seem rather basic doesn’t it. Would you believe some trackchasers don’t follow this simple formula? Read or watch….it’s your choice. I will always try to provide you photos and video from the tracks I visit. I know some of you are more than satisfied just to read about the trip. Others might not like to read about everything but enjoy the photos and/or video. That’s why I provide three forms of media for you to enjoy. I want you to have the experience of being there, in whatever way you most enjoy, without having to stand outdoors in a -15 degree weather environment! Follow? At the same time I’m very much into elimination of duplication. I was to eliminate, streamline and mechanize as much as I can for just one purpose…..simplification! That being the case I didn’t bring my Panasonic Lumix still camera on this trip. My iPhone 6 does the job about 98% as well as my still camera and is much easier to transport. Sometimes I don’t think there’s ANY difference in the two. Ten years ago, or maybe even five years ago, who would have thought their phone would be there video camera? This was a new iPhone experience. However there is one thing that happened with my iPhone this weekend that I had never experienced before. The temperatures were so cold my phone automatically shut down! That’s right. It just turned off completely. Yesterday, I had been outdoors for more than two hours before the phone went down. Today I was outside for only about 30 minutes and the phone went blank. Does that tell you something about the effects of wind and wind chill? It should. When that happened I made a brief return to the National Car Rental Racing Hyundai Sonata. In less that five minutes of holding my phone next to the car’s heating vent I was back in business. Warming my body didn’t hurt anything either. I didn’t know I would have to climb a snow mountain. The race organizers had constructed a 12 foot high snow wall around today’s race track. That was both good and bad for the spectator. From a 12-foot elevation the view was great. However, it’s not all that easy to climb up a 12-foot snow wall at a 60-degree incline. However, I made a fool of myself trying and finally made it. There was a good PA system and a very active announcer screaming in French all about today’s racing. However, I don’t understand French. He could have been reciting the Gettysburg Address (he probably wasn’t) and I would not have known. The racing began promptly at 12 noon. Before that I took several minutes to tour the pit area. I’m always telling you that despite having seen more than 2,000 racetracks there is nearly always something new at each and every track I visit. In 2,058 previous track visits I had never seen this before! What was it today? The drivers had huge wooden railroad ties or in some cases logs a foot in diameter as front bumpers for their racers! You won’t want to miss the photos. They’re amazing. I was really happy to see them starting more than 20 cars in each race. They did it just like they did when I grew up watching stock car racing at the Peoria Speedway. How is that? They started the cars three abreast from a standing start. However, I never remember watching races at Peoria in -15 degrees wind chill temperatures. Rubbin’ in racin’. I was able to get several good video clips from todays’ racing. The cars didn’t go very fast. However, they did “push and shove” with the best of them. A couple of cars flipped after using the both the inside and outside snow retaining walls as a “ramp”. It wasn’t until the end of the afternoon that I discovered a “mini-grandstand” on the backstretch. I couldn’t see the starting line from there but this viewing position was a lot easier to reach. It was fun coming to Quebec on a Friday night with a plan to return home on Sunday night AND get two new ice racing tracks. That’s efficient. Maybe one more? I even entertained the idea of stopping by Roxton Pond for their ice races later in the day. However, snowy weather was coming in fast. Quebec The La Belle province This afternoon I saw my 29th lifetime track in the La Belle province, yes the La Belle province. I’ve now been to Quebec on 14 separate occasions to pursue my hobby of trackchasing. I first went there all the back in 1992. This was my 122nd lifetime track to see in Canada. 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 Quebec sayings: Je veux pas péter ta balloune, mais c’est pas mal illégal. I don’t wanna burst your bubble, but it’s pretty illegal. QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Montreal, Canada (YUL) – 2,471 miles RENTAL CAR #1 Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport – trip begins Ste Clotilde-de-Horton Quebec, Canada Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cœur-d’Issoudun, Quebec, Canada Montreal Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport – trip ends – 331 miles AIRPLANE Montreal, Canada (YUL) – Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – 2,471 miles Total air miles – 4,942 (2 flights) Total rental car miles – 331 (1 car) Total miles traveled on this trip – 5,273 miles TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Ste Clotilde-de-Horton Ice Track – $15 Canadian Notre-Dame-du-Sacré-Cœur-d’Issoudun -$10 Canadian Total racetrack admissions for the trip – $25 Canadian 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 what I saw on this cold wintery day in Quebec. A fun day of ice racing and battling winter weather 
1 comment
When it’s cold enough to freeze your phone, that’s chilly, eh?