Southern Iowa Speedway – Oskaloosa, Iowa (almost)
New River All-American Speedway – Jacksonville, North Carolina – Lifetime track #2,872
I’m going to guess that once in a while, in your mind at least, you try to think whether or not you could, or would like to be taking a trip like I frequently take. I ask you just one thing as you read this particular Trackchaser Report. Would you or could you make this type of trip? Would you want to?
The plan was to leave Thursday night and be back in Southern California on Sunday morning. In the interim, I would cover quite a bit of ground. As a trackchaser, I commonly cover quite a bit of ground.
The trip actually began on Thursday morning. I left our modest seaside cottage in San Clemente, California headed for the city of Anaheim. Anaheim is home to Angels Stadium. The baseball Angels had a game on Thursday afternoon. However, my first stop was not going to be at Angel Stadium.
My plan was to meet Carol and our son J.J. who were both driving separately up to a shopping center in Anaheim. Yes, the Lewis family would be driving three cars to one shopping center about three miles from Angels Stadium. That doesn’t sound very ecologically efficient, does it? Our plan was to go to the game this afternoon. Why go to a shopping center rather than the stadium? The Angels’ recent price increase for their parking made us alter our normal strategy just to bit.
Angels Stadium is one of the very best places to watch a major league baseball game. The parking is super easy., The fans are as laid-back as any you’re going to see in the major leagues. Plus, the Angels have two of the three very best players in the major leagues those fellows being Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.
Over the off-season, the Angels increased their very reasonable parking rate of $10 per car to twenty dollars. Actually, $20 to park at a major league baseball game is still not that bad. I’m hoping the Angels take the extra 10 bucks per car all season and reinvest it in a long-term contract for the hitting and pitching superstar Shohei Ohtani.
Growing up in the Midwest. I think Carol and I still know the value of a dollar. Neither of us came from wealthy backgrounds. Today we would leave two cars in the shopping center parking lot and drive over to Angels Stadium in my car. This would save the Lewis clan 40 bucks After tax. Always thinking, right?
Had we saved up all year to buy our Angels’ baseball tickets like my grandfather did for our once-a-year trip to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play when I was a kid? Well, not exactly. The tickets were four dollars apiece plus fees. I paid about $19 for our three tickets and $20 to park.
J.J. treated us to some fish tacos, chicken fingers, fries, and drinks. His bill for refreshments was just a little bit more than the cost of three tickets and parking!
The attraction for this Wednesday’s matinee game was the fact that Shohei Ohtani was pitching. Coming into the game, during his last 12 pitching starts, Mr. Ohtani has not allowed more than two runs in a single game. As a matter of fact, he had not allowed a home run in nearly 80 innings. For the entire 2023 season no batter who had faced Shojei in their third time around in the lineup had a single hit! Nobody. That’s right, Ohtani had pitched against 38 players this season for the third time through the batting order, and not a single batter had gotten a hit.
The Angels jumped out to an early 5-0 start. Then somewhat inexplicably Ohtani had a bad inning pitching. He hit a couple of guys and walked a couple more. In one inning he allowed five runs. Nevertheless, the Angels would prevail 8 to 7 with Ohtani getting the pitching win. In six innings, he struck out eight and allowed only three hits. As a batter, Shojei had a single, double, and triple. He came within 5 feet of hitting a home run. If he had done that he would have been the first starting pitcher in the history of major league baseball to start a game as a pitcher and hit for the cycle. The guy is pretty amazing.
We had a fun family time at the game. But wait! You didn’t tune in today to get the play-by-play of a baseball game. I’m suspecting you came by to hear what crazy plan I had cooked up to travel our nation’s skyways and highways in the pursuit of seeing a racetrack and creating my own adventures unique to someone my age and temperament. If you did you came to the right place!
I headed to LAX to begin the official part of my trackchasing trip. You should know that I consider any activity from the time I leave my house until the time I return to my house as part of the trackchasing trip which is why I included my discussion about our day at Angels Stadium.
Tonight, I would be hopping on a flight that left Los Angeles at 8 a.m. and arrived at Chicago’s Midway airport at 2 a.m. central time. This wasn’t exactly a red-eye flight but it was close.
There are very few flights that land at 2 o’clock in the morning anywhere. When I fly internationally or coast to coast a red-eye flight will have me landing somewhere between 5 and 8 a.m. This was a weird flight.
The plan when I landed was to find a place to sleep in the Midway airport until later in the morning. I have slept overnight more than 100 times in airports. Some airports have better sleeping arrangements than others. Midway is NOT a good place to sleep overnight. Why? Because all of their chairs have armrests. Yes, they are “armchairs”. I can’t lay down over three or four chairs when they have armrests.
The best I could do was to sleep on a flat table elevated over the floor by a couple of feet. Want to try to replicate my sleeping experience? Tonight, when it’s time to go to bed don’t go to your bedroom. Go to your kitchen. Then climb up on the kitchen table and sleep overnight there! Now you will know what my sleeping experience was like.
At that point, I would get my rental car. That’s exactly what I did. The plan was off to a good although unusual start. Some parts of the trip would not only be unusual they would be exactly what I did NOT plan for. You won’t want to miss the story behind those glitches.
There are essentially two kinds of tracks that I can visit after having seen racing at nearly 3,000 different locations. The first is the weekly racing track. These folks race once a week or maybe every other week from roughly May through September. Most of these tracks hold their races on a Saturday night in the U.S. I only have about 10 or 15 of those remaining to see.
By the way, racing at these weekly tracks almost always takes place at night. However, outside of the English-speaking countries, U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand racing does not happen weekly. Almost all racing outside of these countries is done on a road course (very little oval or figure 8 racing) and during the day. I’ve seen racing at almost 500 tracks outside the United States.
The second general racetrack classification for me in the U.S. is what I would call the “one-off” track. This is frequently a non-permanent track that holds its show once a year. It might be a road course or maybe a county fair that has their once-a-year special event.
This weekend’s trip was an example of one of these “one-off” tracks. At the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa, Iowa they were having the “Redneck Rally”. They do this for one weekend in the spring and one in the fall, and once during their county fair. They race on a road course…sort of. It was this “sort of” idea that became problematic for me.
I first went to the Southern Iowa Speedway all the way back in the 1970s. The track was one of my famous “Tracks of 71”. Prior to 1980 I never recorded the exact day or year when I first visited a racetrack. As a matter of fact, through the end of the 1979 season, I visited 71 of these tracks. The Southern Iowa Speedway was one of those.
I have tried to make an educated guess as to what order I saw these 71 tracks. My very best guestimate is that the Southern Iowa Speedway was my 29th-lifetime track to see. I would have seen the track in about 1970. My visit to Oskaloosa might have been even just a little bit earlier than that. I can’t say for sure.
Even today they race on Wednesday nights in Oskaloosa, Iowa. I first started going to Oskaloosa with my stepfather. It was a three-hour drive from our home near Peoria, Illinois over to Oskaloosa. After the late-model stock car racing, we would typically get home at about 3 a.m. and go to work just a few hours later. Those were the days.
In the hobby of trackchasing, we count racing on three different track configurations. Those would be ovals, road courses, and figure 8 tracks. In addition to seeing racing at Oskaloosa several times on their oval in 2015, I ventured to Oskaloosa to see racing on a temporary Figure 8 track. Now I would be closing the gap with the Redneck Rally race and seeing racing on their version of a “road course”. Of course, in trackchasing terms, a road course is any track where the driver has to turn right and left.
For this trip on Friday night, I would be seeing racing at one of those non-permanent almost once-a-year race facilities. Then on Saturday night, the plan was to go somewhere in the southeast to see racing at a track that races every week.
Here is the interesting part of this particular strategy. If I don’t see that once-a-year show at a county fairgrounds I can see racing on their ONE and only date when they race next year. If I don’t see racing at a weekly scheduled track, I can try to visit that track for the very first time on one of their TWENTY racing dates that they might have next year. Trackchasing strategy comes into play when I try to decide between these two options. Do I remove ONE race date from next year’s opportunities or TWENTY dates from next year’s potential choices? It’s always better to go with the once-a-year type track. There’s a huge difference between these choices. I have always tried to knock out that once-a-year track. They might not have that program in the future.
The logistics of this trip would be interesting. Interesting logistics are a hallmark of my travel plans. I would pick up my rental car at Chicago’s Midway Airport and drop the car off Saturday morning at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Why do that? I had a much better flight opportunity getting into Midway from Los Angeles to begin the trip. Then I would have more opportunities to get out of Chicago using O’Hare to continue the trip. Just about every aspect of these journeys is based upon getting one advantage or another.
I would drive my Hertz Rental Car five hours from Chicago to Oskaloosa. Then after spending two or three hours at the racetrack, I would have another five-hour drive back to Chicago. I would drive through the night after the races in Iowa. I had an early morning flight leaving from Chicago to somewhere in the southeast leaving sometime on Saturday morning. Somewhere in the southeast? Sometime on Saturday morning? Does that sound like your last vacation plan?
I have a very good weather app. It’s the Apple Weather app on my iPhone. J.J. turned me onto this source. I had a really good weather from Weather Underground but he has convinced me that the Weather app might be better. I didn’t have a single rainout during the 2022 trackchasing season and, knock on wood, I haven’t had one in 2023 either.
For my Saturday night event at a weekly permanent racetrack, I had to find a location where I could fly into from Chicago and then be able to drive to that Saturday night track for their starting time of 7 p.m. Then I would need to drive back after those races in the hopes of being able to catch a nonstop flight back from wherever I started in the southeast to Los Angeles on Sunday. Yes! There are a lot of logistical challenges and logistical puzzles with trackchasing. That’s what makes my hobby one of the most interesting hobbies of any I know.
For the longest time, my plan was to fly from Chicago to Pensacola, Florida to see racing in Blackman, Florida. I went so far as to schedule a rental car in Pensacola to make that trip happen.
Then the weather forecast for Blackman, Florida turned sour. I pivoted. Now the plan was to fly into Atlanta for a race in Winder, Georgia. Just like Blackman, the rain forecast turned against me. I also had a rental car reserved in Atlanta. I had to cancel both car reservations in Pensacola and Atlanta.
Seven or eight of my remaining 12-15 United States weekly tracks were racing on this Saturday night. My next option turned out to be the New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
I could fly from Chicago to Raleigh, North Carolina. From Raleigh, I would only be two hours from Saturday night’s race location. Then after the races, I could drive those two hours back and possibly catch an 8 a.m. flight nonstop from Raleigh to Los Angeles. That would become my new plan! Folks, when I’m on these trips I am faced with non-stop brainteasers.
With all of the above as a preface, I headed out from Chicago to Oskaloosa, Iowa to try to add the first of two more tracks to my world’s best trackchasing track total.
I crossed over the Mississippi River into Muscatine, Iowa with plenty of time to spare. The springtime flooding was very noticeable in and around Muscatine. Just about that time, I was listening to the national news, describing the flooding devastation along the Mississippi River. I was here to see it. This seems to happen just about every springtime here.
During the first year of my sales business career, my territory included Illinois and eastern Iowa. I believe that during that time I was in every Jack and Jill grocery store in all of eastern Iowa making very small sales at each stop…but learning my craft.
Tonight, racing was expected to begin at 7 p.m. I pulled into a Walmart parking lot in Oskaloosa at about 4 p.m. After having attempted to sleep overnight in the Chicago Midway Airport last night I was still looking for a little bit more shuteye. I leaned back in the driver’s seat of the Hertz Rental Car Racing Toyota Camry and slept for two hours.
When I awoke, I noticed rain on my windshield. Oh my. I checked my weather app. It said it was drizzling in Oskaloosa. It wasn’t exactly drizzling, but there was some wetness in the air. It was now very cloudy, windy, and getting much cooler than I expected.
Southern Iowa Speedway also known as the Mahaska County Fairgrounds was only a mile or so from where I was parked at Walmart. It was easy to get over to the track. Honestly, I didn’t exactly remember things from my first visit in the very early 1970s.
Admission was a simple $10 bill. There was a decent-sized crowd in the covered grandstand. It was nice that the grandstand was covered just in case it did rain. My weather app was now calling for a 40% chance of .05” of an inch of precipitation. So, not a big deal.
The temperature had dropped to 60°. I was told the winds were blowing at 13 miles an hour with gusts of 23 mph. Of course, the wind blew directly into the faces of the fans in the stands. This probably made for a windchill of about 50°. That was much worse than I had expected it to be and quite chilly for a fellow from sunny Southern California.
The name of tonight’s race was called the “Redneck Rally “. Tonight, there was a huge field of junk cars nearly 100 in total. What did a car count like that mean? They have a good promoter.
The races were broken down into classes for front-wheel drive cars, rear-wheel drive cars, trucks, and side-by-sides. Tonight’s show would offer heat races starting with about a dozen cars in each race. They would be qualifying for starting spots in tomorrow night’s feature races on day 2 of the racing program.
I had called the promoter, Chris, in advance of my attendance. I just wanted to make sure that what I was seeing tonight was going to be counted in my trackchasing totals. When I asked Chris if they were racing on the road course, he told me they were. In Chris’s world what they were doing tonight actually WAS a road course. However, Chris does not live in my world.
Today’s “road course” was constructed primarily as a winding more than 1/2 mile in distance dirt track. The racing configuration was located almost exclusively in the infield of a half-mile oval. They race every Wednesday night on the bigger, oval track.
The first team of four cylinders went off with me videoing the result. Then I noticed something far away from the grandstands at the back side of tonight’s track. I doubt this was noticeable by very many spectators. For me what I saw was very bad news. Very bad news, for me, indeed. Yes, the track required the drivers to turn both left and right. That is a requirement for being a road course configuration by trackchasing rules.
However, on the backstretch, there was a huge obstacle that the drivers approached from the left side and circled completely around it in a right-hand turn before continuing on. It was this circular motion that essentially ruined my entire evening.
This one little “carousel” as the announcer called it had the track “crossing over itself”. The classic definition of a figure 8 track (above) in trackchasing parlance is a course where the drivers must turn left and right AND the track crosses over itself at grade level. What did this mean? I was not seeing racing on a road course configuration tonight, but a figure 8 reconfiguration.
The actual rule from trackchasing describes a figure 8 track as:
Figure-8 (any shaped track with an at-grade intersection)
Maybe I could count tonight’s track as a “figure 8” track? No! I had already seen racing on a figure 8 track at the Mahaska County Fair in 2015. Both that F8 track in 2015 and tonight’s “road course” track were temporary tracks. What is the significance of a track being temporary? Lots in the world of trackchasing!
In order for me to count a SECOND Figure 8 track, that track I saw in 2015 would have to be “active” this year. It’s not. They have no figure 8 racing scheduled in Oskaloosa in 2023. Here’s what the trackchasing rule says about this subject:
“All temporary tracks of the same type are only separately countable if they physically exist and are active at the same time.
Are you getting the impression that the rules of trackchasing are more complex and arcane that the federal IRS tax regulations? There was absolutely NO WAY that a fan of racing would look at tonight’s racetrack and call what I was seeing a figure 8 race. Not in one thousand one million years!
Trackchasing rules are unusual, to say the least. However, they are what they are. If you’re going to play a game, you need to play by the rules. I played golf seriously for 20 years. Where I played we were sticklers for playing by the rules of golf. We did not play “hit and giggle” golf. We always said that if you don’t play by the rules of golf…you are not playing golf. The same holds true for trackchasing no matter how stupid the rules are.
Do I think the vast majority of trackchasers would have counted tonight’s configuration as a road course? I do. If someone counted tonight’s track as a road course, were they being dishonest? That’s certainly possible. Quite a few Trackchasers don’t really understand the rules to the nth degree as I do. Other Trackchasers have been known to “look the other way” when it’s a benefit to them.
As the World’s #1 Trackchaser, I could never risk losing my credibility by “looking the other way”. It soon became obvious to me during that first videotaped lap that I was not going to be able to count the racing I was seeing in Oskaloosa, Iowa as a new track.
Folks, I had flown from Los Angeles to Chicago and slept overnight at the Chicago Midway airport. I had driven five hours in a rental car from Chicago to Oskaloosa, Iowa. When I left the grandstand tonight, I would drive another five hours back to Chicago. That’s quite a commitment to trackchasing, isn’t it?
In point of fact, I was not trackchasing tonight. I was racechasing. What was I getting for my efforts in an attempt to trackchase tonight? Absolutely nothing! I was disappointed, but I have been disappointed in trackchasing in the past. Luckily, I have been positively surprised, much more often than I have been negatively surprised. I stayed for several more races, including the side-by-side race. I was secretly hoping the side-by-sides might race on some form of countable configuration different than the cars. They didn’t.
My lack of production this evening in Oskaloosa was going to make the drive back to Chicago an extra-long one. I wasn’t looking forward to that. I live by the adage that I get a chance to choose my reaction to whatever circumstances I encounter. I was going to have to put on a happy face on this evening, even though I didn’t feel like a happy face.
I used my SiriusXM radio app to listen to the Angels blow another game in the late innings this time to the Milwaukee Brewers. I listened to one of my podcasts that features a retired FBI agent, interviewing other retired FBI agents on their major case investigations. It was fun to hear one more time how notorious mobster Whitey Bolger got caught trying to live a normal life in Santa Monica, California as a fugitive. He was successful in doing that for 16 years but ultimately ended up getting killed in prison.
The best I could do if I kept driving was to pull into Chicago’s O’Hare airport at about 2 a.m. I needed to be returning my rental car by about 6:30 a.m. in order to make an 8 a.m. plane from Chicago to Raleigh, North Carolina. There would be no time for a hotel.
For the second consecutive night, I would sleep overnight in something other than a traditional bed. Last night I slept at the airport. Tonight, I slept in my rental car.
I had a choice between sleeping in a highway rest area or at a Love’s truck stop. I chose Love’s. There was a very prominent sign that said “one-hour parking only”. Violators would be towed. I figure that in today’s tight labor market they wouldn’t have enough staff to enforce that rule. I figured if they attempted to tow my car while I was sleeping I would notice and be able to defend my position. They didn’t tow my car. The temperature did get down to 43° limiting my sleep to about three hours.
SATURDAY
When I woke up at 4 a.m. I still had a one-hour drive to get myself over to O’Hare. By the way, I chose the “no tolls” GPS option for my entire drive from and back to Chicago. This part of the country is one of the most toll-heavy road systems anywhere. Hertz was willing to charge me $14,95/day for unlimited tolls. I declined that option.
On the one day that I had my rental car, I was going to drive the roughly 600 miles. Last weekend I had my rental car for two days and drove 1,004 miles.
As the World’s #1 Trackchaser (2,871 tracks in 86 countries) I am now in a position where I have very few permanent tracks remaining to see. The tracks that CAN fit my trackchasing agenda are located far from each other. The racing situations at many of these places are what I would call “fragile”. Fragile in this case means that what is described as a road course might in reality be a figure 8 configuration and might end up not helping me in the least. With all of that, I said goodbye to Oskaloosa and begin focusing on tonight’s racing destination of Jacksonville, North Carolina. Maybe, under the right circumstances, I will return to Oskaloosa to see another version of their “Redneck Rally”. I never say never.
After sleeping in my rental car last night catching an 8 a.m. flight from Chicago to Raleigh, North Carolina wasn’t the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done. I did sleep a little bit on the airplane.
When I landed, I took the rental car bus over to Hertz. I had a full-sized car waiting for me that I had reserved with autoslash.com. They are my new “go-to” rental automobile travel agent.
I ended up selecting a Honda CRV SUV model. I don’t want to offend anyone who owns one of these. But this has to be just about the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever tried to get into and drive.
Different family members have given me restaurant gift cards for Christmas. One of those was from the Waffle House. It is true that I am in the midst of a 28-day Nutrisystem eating program. However, I haven’t been able to eat my Nutrisystem foods very much on the road because there are no microwave ovens in a rental car!
That being the case I headed over to Waffle House for kind of a combination breakfast/lunch. I went with the All-American breakfast. This is touted to be about 1,000 calories or maybe just a little bit more.
My selections for my All-American breakfast included three pieces of crisp bacon, two scrambled eggs, a nice-sized order of grits, and two pieces of buttered toast, as well as a waffle. I downed all of this with three servings of Diet Coke served in a “to-go” Styrofoam cup with cherry flavoring. I ate the meal as if I had just been released from prison.
It would take me two hours to drive over from Raleigh to tonight’s racetrack, the New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I had just enough time to try to add one more Trackchasing Tourist Attraction to my résumé and possibly get a little sleep as well.
I chose a visit to Lake County Crabtree Park because it was nearby and it was on a list of things to do in Raleigh. The pictures I saw made the park look like a tranquil place to be. That sounded good after sleeping in my car overnight. Luckily, in many ways, the park was only a five-minute drive from the airport. I looked around just a little bit and took a nap for a bit more than an hour.
I was still recovering from the big disappointment of not being able to count last night’s track in Oskaloosa, Iowa. However, I was now going to experience another disappointment that put in jeopardy the idea of seeing any racing in North Carolina tonight whatsoever and therefore any countable trackchasing events for the entire weekend.
When I went to start my 2023 Honda CRV, with only 15,000 miles on the odometer, the starter only clicked. The car wouldn’t start. I feared a dead battery.
I’ve had my share of troubles with rental cars in the past. When I encounter trouble, I am never so much concerned about the actual trouble itself. What I do get concerned about is the time it’s going to take for someone to come and help me. Will I have enough time after the fix to get on with my plan for the day?
I called Hertz. Then they called AAA. Fortunately for me, the AAA driver showed up in about 45 minutes even though he got lost trying to find me in the park. He used a handheld charger, jumped the battery and I was good to go.
I mentioned I was lucky I was only five minutes from the airport. This meant I could take the car back to the airport and exchange it for something that might have a little bit better reliability. Typically, I think of Hondas as having very good reliability.
I knew it was going to be a challenge to drive my car into the Hertz lot, explain the problem and get them to let me have another car quickly. In my world often it is not CAN something be done but how QUICKLY can it be done. However, I am trained for circumstances like this. I know how to lean on people, so that they aren’t smothered, but they know they are being leaned on. Understood?
As I was going through this procedure, I tried to talk the Hertz rep into letting me have a Tesla electric vehicle as a replacement. I had almost selected a Polestar EV before I picked up the original Honda CRV.
However, the Hertz rep warned me that, obviously to me as a Tesla owner, I couldn’t charge a Polestar at a Tesla supercharger. He did mention that other nearby non-Tesla superchargers were super slow. I never have a lot of time when I’m returning a rental car to sit around and charge it for an hour or more. I suspect my concern is something that is selling a lot of Teslas! Elon Musk was brilliant in developing a nationwide Tesla supercharger system so a Tesla owner can drive their car any place and get them charged quickly.
Now that I was returning the Honda CRV I thought about getting a Tesla Model Y the smaller, but very popular SUV. Hertz didn’t have any but they had some of the smaller Model 3 sedans. I got in one and started to drive off. Then I noticed that it only had a 31% charge. That wasn’t going to work.
I decided to go “old school”. I picked up a Chevy Malibu that had Apple CarPlay, which is pretty much a requirement for me nowadays, and off I went toward Jacksonville, North Carolina.
I have a history with Jacksonville. I was stationed for three months at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina when I was in the Marine Corps. Yes, I am sure that I drank the water! See what I did there?
On weekends when we had military “leave” from Camp Lejeune, I would go with a couple of my buddies from Elkhart, Indiana, over to Jacksonville, North Carolina’s bus station. That was one wild place.
A lot of the Marines were in the Jacksonville bus station for the same reason I was. They wanted to get as far away as they could from Camp Lejeune for the weekend, but needed to be back for work on Monday morning. Some of those guys had floor-length mink coats. That was pretty impressive. I used the Jacksonville bus depot to make visits to Washington, D.C.
Tonight’s trackchasing would take place at the New River All-American Speedway in Jacksonville, North Carolina. Racing was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. Because of my unexpected delay with Hertz and AAA, I couldn’t get there until 7:30 p.m.
Southern asphalt tracks commonly have a “features only” program. Rather than have a short heat race of eight or ten laps, and then a feature race of 30 laps, they simply have the feature race. I actually like that especially when there are a number of classes racing like there were tonight.
Admission was only $10. I thought was more than reasonable given our inflationary times. The first race I would have a chance to see was the 40-lap late model feature. There were only nine cars in the race, but the announcer seemed to think that that was a “good field”.
In order to have a successful short-track racing operation a promoter needs to have fans in the stands and race cars in the pits. It is very expensive to buy, operate and maintain a race car.
Going all the way back to the financial crisis in 2007/2008 I noticed car counts dropping dramatically. Racers are generally on the lower part of the economic spectrum. Inflation or job security can affect them sooner than others. For the most part, car counts haven’t increased all that much since then.
I know that in the hotbeds of short-track racing like Pennsylvania and Iowa, they still get car counts in the 20s per class and sometimes more. If I had to guess what the average car count is per class at the tracks that I have visited in the last several years I would say that number is much closer to ten. Tonight, they averaged about eight entries in each of the six or seven-car classes that competed. Those are small fields.
The New River All-American Speedway is a very nice facility. Their 1/3-mile asphalt oval has all of the amenities, including a good PA system, strong fencing, and good lighting. They do pit the vehicles and haulers inside the infield. This blocks the view of the backstretch. That’s never good.
They had a small crowd of maybe 300 people in the stands. The duel announcers did a good job of making a five-car lower-level stock car race exciting. That’s not easy to do especially when the only battle on the track is for fourth and fifth place!
I was impressed with the track’s restroom. They had a beautiful floor that reminded me of a checkered racing flag. Because I had stopped at Wendy’s for a large chili I didn’t buy any food or drink until just as I was departing the racetrack. I went for their three-dollar hotdog, which was excellent.
It seems to me that the racetrack in Jacksonville has gone in and out of business a time or two over the past couple of decades. I’ve actually had this track on my radar many times. The problem is it’s located on the North Carolina coast and not that accessible to most major airports. I normally don’t think of flying into and out of Raleigh.
This is the situation for me in today’s trackchasing world. If I go to a track that races either on a weekly or biweekly basis today I have probably had that track on my radar screen for 20 years. For whatever reason, I just haven’t been able to make it work until now.
When the racing was finished, I headed out to the parking lot to find my Hertz Rental Car Racing Chevy Malibu. I wasn’t going to get back to Raleigh until after midnight. Once again, I need to be returning my rental car at about 6:30 in the morning for an 8 a.m. flight.
What did all of this mean? There would be no hotel for me tonight. All of this meant that on Thursday night I slept in an airport and Friday night at a Love’s truck stop and now….Saturday night at a North Carolina highway rest area. Although I’ve probably done that before, I can’t ever remember sleeping three consecutive nights with no real bed. I don’t recommend it, but I don’t do these things because I want to do them this way. Yes, I want to go to trackchasing, but I’d like to stay in a hotel. I don’t want to stay in a hotel if I can’t at least be inside that room for eight hours or more. Does that make sense?
I knew there was a highway rest area about 50 miles from the Raleigh airport. I pulled in there tonight only to see a sign that said there was “no overnight parking”. I almost considered observing that sign’s requirement until I saw about a dozen big rigs. Those truckers were parked for the night. That sealed the deal for me. I would sleep in the car in the rest area.
The weather forecast told me that heavy rain was coming in at about midnight. This rain wouldn’t and didn’t affect the racing. The rain did come in as forecasted and provided a gentle sound on the rooftop of the Hotel Malibu pretty much all night.
SUNDAY
My alarm came at 5 a.m. Eastern time. That meant my waking time was actually beginning at 2 a.m. Pacific time where I would be spending the last part of my day. I had an hour’s drive back to the airport. After getting gas I was returning the car at about a bit past six.
From there I caught a nonstop flight from Raleigh, North Carolina to Los Angeles, California. Folks, the airports are jam-packed with travelers. Given my sleeping situation for the past 72 hours, I was dragging just a bit.
However, I wasn’t dragging enough to not catch a movie on the way home after I landed at LAX. Using my Unlimited Regal Theater movie pass I stopped in Long Beach.
This was one of my most unusual trips for many of the reasons that I have mentioned. It was disappointing to not be able to count the track and Oskaloosa. It was disappointing to have a starting problem with my Hertz Honda CRV. It was expected that the hotel arrangements would be spotty and they were for this trip.
Considering everything I did, only getting credit for one track is a very poor result. Luckily, I don’t have poor results all that often with this hobby. If I did I don’t know if I could do it!
Expecting to trackchase in Florida next weekend. See you there?
Randy Lewis
Have rental car or truck stop…will sleep