Greetings from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Lake Shirley Ice Circuit – Lifetime Track #2,061
Luckily, the border crossing was open. Did you know this about U.S./Canada border crossings? Tim Horton’s and the movie of the day. What could ‘Fandango’ tell us? What’s for delivery? Tomorrow comes the challenge. San Clemente has its plusses and minuses. Can you answer the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of this question? There was one final problem to solve. Our restaurant had an herb garden! Thanks Hamish. Manitoba “3 and 5”. I had work to do out in the cold. A little history on the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Ice racing can be like a buffet. Last minute name change for today’s ice racing venue. THE EVENT Saturday Luckily, the border crossing was open. We woke up this morning at home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The plan called for us to return to the downtown Holiday Inn & Suites in Winnipeg following today’s ice races. Then, on President’s Day, we would fight the crowds looking for a standby seat and a way home to the sleepy little village by the sea, San Clemente. This is how the day turned out. We had driven up to Winnipeg from Northern Minnesota last night. That was a five-hour drive. Crossing the border was easy. However, we were lucky on one point. My Waze GPS app would have us moving into Manitoba at the Tolstoi border crossing. A few miles south of the border, while we were still in Minnesota, we came across a sign. It told us the border crossing was open from 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Luckily, we would be crossing at 9 p.m.! Did you know this about U.S./Canada border crossings? The majority of U.S./Canada border crossings are NOT open 24 hours a day. This got me to wondering. Would my Waze GPS system recommend a border crossing that might be closed during the hours I planned to cross? I don’t know the answer to that question. Here’s a great link showing all of the U.S./Canada border crossings and their hours of operation. U.S./Canada border crossing locations and hours of operation Sunday Chilly! The wind chill temperature was about 11° below zero this morning. We obviously noticed that as we hopped in our car that it been parked in a covered yet outdoor garage. The city streets were not nearly as clear of snow as they had been in Minneapolis. Maybe Manitoba had gotten more snow? Alternatively, I was told that Manitoba both “sands and salts” their roads. The U.S. is more into salting winter roads, which creates more snow melting, but also creates more damage to cars and streets from the salting process. After the races……….. Tim Horton’s and the movie of the day. I couldn’t bring Carol to Canada without having her stop at Tim Horton’s. I did have one Canadian friend tell me that Tim Horton’s is not a real favorite of local people. Nevertheless, I enjoy it and they’re easy to find. Just a few years ago Tim Horton’s didn’t accept credit cards. That was a bummer. I try to use credit cards on every purchase I make. Today we had coffee and hot chocolate near a simulated fireplace, the first I’ve ever seen in a Tim Hortons. We (I) couldn’t resist getting a box of Timbits either. What could ‘Fandango’ tell us? It was now just 4 p.m. What did 4 p.m. mean? It was time for us to stop and catch a movie in downtown Winnipeg. We did just that. I used my “Fandango” iPhone app to find out what was playing where. At the last minute we changed our movie selection to “50 Shades of Gray”. It was kind of a strange movie with an even stranger ending. I can’t say I would highly recommend it. What’s for delivery? Soon we were back at our Winnipeg central headquarters, the Holiday Inn and Suites hotel on Colony Street. We assessed our dinner options. Again I used Yelp! to find restaurants that might deliver to the hotel. I had asked the desk clerk and he had no idea who might deliver dinner to his hotel. That was strange. We settled on the Spicy Noodle House on Osborne Street. It wasn’t long before they were knocking on our hotel room door with some shrimp fried rice and pork filled steamed dumplings. We relaxed in our room and consumed another Yelp! recommended meal. However, we both felt very uncomfortable eating our Chinese meal with a fork and not chopsticks. Tomorrow comes the challenge. Tomorrow may be challenging with regard to air travel. It’s Presidents’ Day in the U.S. and the last day of a three day winter weekend that included Valentine’s Day. Lots of people would be traveling. We would not have any trouble getting back from Winnipeg to Minneapolis. However flying from Minneapolis to Los Angeles may be more difficult. We will see. Monday San Clemente has its plusses and minuses. We were up early, about 3 a.m. San Clemente time to begin our journey home. I have mentioned this many times. On the one hand San Clemente might be the very best place in the entire world to live based upon it’s climate. The license plate frame we see most often around town reads, “World’s Best Climate”. However, for the trackchasing hobby San Clemente is probably one of the worst locations in the continental U.S. Needing to trackchase from a remote corner of the United States just adds to the challenge and accomplishment. We were able to use our “Global Entry” capability to skip filling out forms and eliminate the wait time of getting back into the U.S. at the Winnipeg airport. However, Carol has a devil of a time getting her little fingers to work in the fingerprint scanner! Flight time from Winnipeg to Minneapolis was a scant 53 minutes. It would have taken seven hours to drive this route. Once at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport we understood the importance to so many people of a three-day weekend over Valentine’s Day. I soon discovered we were never going to get on a Minneapolis to Los Angeles flight today. They were packed. However, I popped open my “Flight Track” app to see what kind of service was offered into San Diego. Then I checked availability on that flight. We could make it! I quickly used the “tethering” capabilities of my MacBook Pro. I made a quick reservation on the Minneapolis to San Diego flight. Then we began a “cross-airport” walk at a high rate of speed. Can you answer the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of this question? Carol and I are both 66 years old. Take a look at the technologies used above to make life easier, more productive and enjoyable and also cost effective noted above. Who does this? Do you know ANYBODY who used tech like we do? Do you know any 66 year old senior citizens who run up and down and all around like we do? Maybe it’s this lifestyle that makes us feel like 36 year olds! We made the flight to San Diego. When we arrived we were greeted with blue skies and temps near 80 degrees. No this is not ice racing country. There was one final problem to solve. We had just one problem. Our car was parked at the Los Angeles International Airport not at the San Diego airport where we had arrived. The distance between those two airports is about 125 miles. How would we get our car??? No problem. I simply used my iPhone as what else…a phone. I called the National Car Rental Company one of my long-time trackchasing sponsors. Could they give me a one-way rental to Los Angeles I asked? Of course they could. How much would the normal customer pay? $125 USD. How much would the World’s #1 Trackchaser pay? Just $7.50 USD. Soon Carol and I were off toward home. However, we had to battle strong traffic from all of the folks returning to the greater Los Angeles area from their 3-day driving vacation weekends. We could not afford to waste any time. A fella by the name of John Paulson was coming to visit us at 5 p.m. I hired John for a sales job at our company all the way back in about 1975. We had not seen each other in more than 25 years. John had called me recently to see if we could catch up. We pulled into the driveway about 4:44 p.m. It wasn’t much longer until John showed up. He and I spent a good three hours talking about old times. Then we adjourned to the “RANLAY Events Center” for an indoor game of “HORSE”. We had a great time together. Tuesday Just one more 130-mile drive. Our trackchasing trip had begun on Friday. However, it was now Tuesday and I had a 130-mile drive up to LAX and back ahead of me. I had to return our one-way rented rental car and pick up the Carol Lewis owned and MFunds sponsored Lexus RX 350. Yes, our car had been parked with my long-time trackchasing airport parking sponsors….LAX World Parking. Thank goodness for those guys. I arrived back home at 3 p.m. after rewarding myself with a stop at In N Out Burgers. It was great to be back home. However, Friday will come soon enough. I expect to be back out on the trackchasing trail for possibly the last time in 2015. ONE CANNOT LIVE WELL OR SLEEP WELL IF ONE HAS NOT DINED WELL Osborne Village Cafe – Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Let’s get back to breakfast! When I travel I like to eat good food at unique places. I don’t mind going out of my way to find those locations. My go to app is Yelp! I love getting user reviews for ethnic restaurants located near wherever I happen to be. I figure if enough people take the time to write a review they must feel strongly, good or bad, about their culinary experience. Carol and I needed a breakfast location for this morning. Hello Yelp? We soon found ourselves heading to the Osborne Village Café. The restaurant is part of the Osborne Village Motor Hotel. This restaurant came with a 4.5 star rating by six Yelp! reviewers. I normally like to try a place with more reviews. However, many restaurants located outside the more metropolitan areas of the U.S. don’t have a large number of reviews. Once inside the restaurant we found a booth and placed our order. I went with the pulled pork omelet with fried potatoes and “Multi” aka wheat or brown toast. Carol was more of a Sausage and eggs gal. Our restaurant had an herb garden! The restaurant had something I had never seen previously. They were growing their own herbs such as dill, broccoli and the like. The chef took some time to explain that these miniature gardens took 6-8 days to grow before they could be used in the restaurant’s menu. This was definitely a unique feature of the restaurant that we would certainly revisit again. THE RACE Lake Shirley Ice Circuit – Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Thanks Hamish. It was now 11:30 a.m. and time to head out to today’s ice racing adventure. I’ve got a good racing buddy, Hamish Donaldson up in Manitoba. He keeps me informed about ice racing in the province. Hamish is the past ice race director for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. The WSCC has been sanctioning motor racing of all types in Manitoba since 1952. The WSCC is the longest standing motorsport club in Canada. Masoned Road ice racing – 2014 Manitoba “3 and 5”. Today I would be seeing my third ice racing track in Manitoba and my fifth overall track in the province. Back in 2010 I saw their racing at the St. Malo Provincial Park Ice Track. Then just last year in 2014 I caught their WSCC ice racing at the Mazenod Road Pond Ice Track. The good thing about this ice racing club is that they race at different locations all season long. That’s great for a trackchaser. The Winnipeg area gets enough cold weather to race into the first couple of weeks in March. We found the racing location without much trouble. There was no admission charge although I did have to sign a pit release form. That’s standard practice at most racing venues that offer some form of insurance. It was a cold day on the lake. Today’s ambient temperature was a few degrees warmer than yesterday’s in Minnesota. However it felt much colder. Why is that? The wind! Winds were blowing at 15-20 M.P.H. This produced a wind chill factor of 15° below zero or so. Nevertheless I thought we were lucky. Yesterday’s wind chill in Winnipeg showed up on my weather app as 41° below zero! A nice feature of today’s racing was that spectators could watch from their cars. When the wind chill temps are far below zero that is always a good idea. For the second consecutive day Carol did not need to get out of the car in order to see all of the racing that she liked. I had work to do out in the cold. However, as a working racing journalist, I had to get out among them to get photographs and video clips from the local participants. I was dressed for the weather but the wind still made it quite cold. I was pleased to hear that the locals thought it was cold as well! As I departed the comfort of the National Car Rental Racing Hyundai Sonata Carol wished me well. A little history on the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. It didn’t take long for Hamish to find me. I guess I was easy to spot as I rarely look “As if I’m from around here” no matter where I’m at! I had met Hamish at the St. Malo track a few years ago. St. Malo is south of Winnipeg. On our drive up from Minnesota last night into Manitoba we had passed the St. Malo Provincial Park where ice racing was held back in 2010. Hamish told me he first started watching ice racing back in 1969 when one of the hot ice racing cars was the Chevrolet Corvair. He told me that they had been ice racing here in Manitoba for a long time prior to him coming on the scene in 1969. I was also talking to some of the race directors who were parked high above the racing action. They explained that today’s racing included two classes. One class was for studded tire cars and the other was for rubber to ice cars. Hamish had mentioned that each class would have six races for the day. The races would last for 12 minutes plus one lap. I was told today’s ice racing road course layout was about 900 meters long. That’s a little more than a half-mile long. To me it looked even longer. The race course was laid out on a frozen body of water which doubles as a waterski pond in the summer. The lake itself was extremely long and very narrow. A road course configuration is defined by a track that requires the drivers to turn both left and right in order to negotiate the track. Today’s course was close to being oval albeit a “paperclip” one. The right-hand turns very mild but still existed. There were about five studded tires car cars racing in their class. Then some 14 -15 cars made up the non-studded tire class. Hamish introduced me to Al the club’s current ice racing director. Al told me that there is been a dispute over what type of studded tires could be used. Commercial studded racing tires are very expensive. The competitors can make their own studded tires but they tear up the track so badly that they really can’t be used. This dilemma has created the small car count in the studded ice racing class. There were few trackchasing amenities at the water ski park today. About the only one I saw that might qualify as an amenity was one porta-potty. There was no PA system or concession stand. Al told us that the entry fee per car was $140 Canadian, much of which went to cover insurance. He said that insurance is much more expensive in the city of Winnipeg compared to being outside of the city. He also mentioned that there were at least 24 inches of ice covering today’s lake. He said they’ve had a good 20 inches of ice for at least a couple of months. Everyone we talked to at the Winnipeg Sports Car Club was most welcoming and friendly. They enjoyed meeting Carol and welcomed her to their ice racing activities as well. I probably stood outside in the wind for a good 45 minutes. It was difficult getting great photographs and video because the sun was facing the spectator side of the track. I recognized some of the cars from previous Manitoba ice racing visits. For some reason I think I lost several of the photos I took today. For the life of me I can’t figure out where they went. Credit this omission to user error. Ice racing can be like a buffet. After we had met and talked with all of the people and seen several of the races it was time to head on down the road. Sometimes ice racing is like a buffet. There’s a lot there but you really can’t sample it all. Last minute name change for today’s ice racing venue. By the way I was all set to label today’s ice track as the “Murdock Road – Water Ski Pond Ice Track”. Then, after returning home, Hamish sent me an email. Apparently the ski pond has recently been renamed “Lake Shirley” for the politician who had worked to get the location annexed into Winnipeg. Therefore for now and ever more today’s ice racing location will be known as “Lake Shirley Ice Circuit”. The Lake Shirley Ice Circuit was my 69th different ice track and my 2,061st lifetime track. Manitoba The Keystone Province This afternoon I saw my 5th lifetime track in the Keystone Province, yes the Keystone Province. 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 Manitoba sayings: No matter where I roam Manitoba will still be my home. QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Minneapolis, MN (MSP) – 1,535 miles RENTAL CAR #1 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport – trip begins Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport – trip ends – 27 miles RENTAL CAR #2 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport – trip begins Akeley, MN Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport – trip ends – 498 miles AIRPLANE Winnipeg, Manitoba (YWG) – Minneapolis, MN (MSP) – 395 miles Minneapolis, MN (MSP) – San Diego, CA (SAN) – 1,532 miles RENTAL CAR #3 San Diego International Airport – trip begins Los Angeles International Airport – trip ends – 126 miles Total air miles – 3,462 (3 flights) Total rental car miles – 653 (3 cars) Total miles traveled on this trip – 4,115 miles TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: 11th Crow Wing Lake Ice Oval – No charge Lake Shirley Ice Circuit – No charge Total racetrack admissions for the trip – Nada 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 Manitoba looked like on this February weekend: . A February weekend in Manitoba 
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What’s with the red nose? Are the evils of alcohol becoming a problem in your life? Does Carol know about this?