Greetings from Magnolia, Mississippi
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Pike County Speedway Dirt oval Lifetime Track #549 Reprinted with permission from my Monday, March 25, 2002, Trackchaser Report. THE CLASSIC TRACKCHASER REPORT Editor’s note: This is a CLASSIC Trackchaser Report. What the heck does “Classic” mean? It’s simply a Trackchaser Report that comes from my trackchasing archives. Typically these will be stories from tracks I visited five years or ten years or more ago. For whatever reason (usually not enough time) it didn’t get posted to my website when I first made the track visit. Often a classic TR will not have a video and/or photo album attached. I didn’t begin producing my YouTube videos until 2009 (YouTube channel: RANLAY). I didn’t begin writing a complete Trackchaser Report until I had seen about 425 tracks. Photo albums were sort of hit or miss during the early years of my trackchasing. Additionally, if you see a website link know that link worked when the TR was originally written. Will it work now? Your guess is as good as mine! Nevertheless, this CLASSIC Trackchaser Report has finally bubbled to the surface and is now available for everyone to see at www.randylewis.org. I hope you enjoy it. I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with my racing buddy Carl Crawford indoors at Syracuse, New York). I hail from the sleepy little village by the sea, San Clemente, California. I am a “trackchaser”. I trackchase. Have you ever in your life heard of “trackchasing”? I didn’t think so. Well, you made it this far. You might as well pour yourself a cold one and take your Trackchasing 101 class. When you finish you’ll have your trackchasing diploma and can then teach your friends about the hobby. Let’s get started. Trackchasing is a three-pronged hobby. I’m a racing fan. I love to travel. I love to analyze opportunities to get the most out of everything while saving time and money. Let’s do this by the numbers. I live in southern California. That’s probably the most inconvenient location in the country for seeing tracks in the U.S. Most of the racetracks in the U.S. are located well over 1,000 miles from where I live. My average trip covers 5,000 miles and more. I take 35-40 of those trips each season. In any given year I will travel well over 200,000 miles, rent more than 50 cars, and stay in more than 150 hotel rooms. I get the chance to meet people from all over the world. With trackchasing trips to 85 countries and counting just getting the chance to experience so many unique cultures, spend time in the homes of my friends and meet so many people is a huge reward for being in this hobby. I am indebted to several of these folks for their help and friendship. Once you begin researching my trip itineraries from my website, yes you will want to do that, you will be surprised. One day I’ll be in Tucson, the next in maybe Tuscaloosa and the following day in Syracuse. I do that kind of thing all the time. Figuring out the logistics of a trip like that is as much fun for me as watching a figure 8 race. Now you know a little bit about my trackchasing addiction. When you receive one of my Trackchaser Reports or find one on my website at www.randylewis.org you’ll get three pieces of entertainment. First, my Trackchaser Report will be an in-depth essay on how the trip went from A-Z. Yes, I’ll cover the racing aspect of things. But you will also hear about what it took to pull off the trip, the special stops that made the trip fun and the obstacles that needed to be overcome. Secondly, you’ll get a YouTube video of the racing action I saw. These are normally short 3-6 minutes highlights of the racing. My YouTube channel is named, “RANLAY”. I have nearly 2,000 subscribers to my channel. Currently, I have posted more than 1,300 videos and my channel has more than 1.2 million views! Finally, I’ll share a captioned photo album using a photo-sharing program called SmugMug. Normally, there will be anywhere from 50-200 photos from each trip I take. Sometimes more! My website is linked to hundreds of thousands of photos from all of the trips I have taken. There you have it. That’s trackchasing…the way I do it. Do others trackchase? Absolutely. Do they share their experiences? Sorry. They don’t. If you want to see the true “essence” of trackchasing you’ve come to the right place. A common question I get about my hobby is, “Why?”. I’m a curious fellow. I’m an adventuresome fellow. My hobby is about seeing and experiencing the things that most folks walk right past. Below is a link to a special video. It shows a small town in Missouri that I visited on one of my trips. In this video, I’ll share with you exactly what I mean. This video might just make your day. Trackchasing….this is exactly why I do it Today’s adventure was one more of the 2,000 trips that have taken me up, down and around the proverbial 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. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! FOREWORD Monday, March 25, 2002. Greetings from Magnolia, Mississippi, Today’s trip started off with the implementation of my non-weekend rental car strategy (detailed in the rental car section). The trip today would be a 300-mile one-way drive from Memphis to Magnolia. When I’m on these types of trips I like to stop and tour college campuses. Today I had the chance to stop at the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Mississippi. It was only about 25 miles off the freeway and I had time for the extra 50 miles. Oxford is the home of the “Ole Miss” Rebels. You may remember the UCLA Bruins in the first round of the NCAA tournament ousted Ole Miss. You certainly would if you were a UCLA fan! As is my custom I bought an Ole Miss basketball long-sleeved t-shirt. My supply of college t-shirts is growing rapidly. Redbrick buildings dominate the Ole Miss campus. Spring is about ready to spring and I saw lots of students enjoying the 70-degree plus weather. They also had a very professional looking baseball stadium similar to what you might see with a minor league park. The rental car I got in exchange is from National. It’s a Chrysler PT Cruiser. I’ve never been inside one until today. I was a little skeptical about this car but wanted to try it. Surprisingly, to me, it rode very well and was fun to drive although a little underpowered with a four-cylinder engine. I thought I was driving a legends car. Unfortunately, my initial skepticism around this car makes news in the travel section and not the rental car section of this report. Since the race ended early I planned to drive as many miles as I could toward Memphis before stopping for the night. As a matter of fact, I had just popped a movie into my Dell computer’s DVD drive (Town and Country starring Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn among others) and was planning on sitting back for a leisurely drive up the darkened interstate. Just when the opening credits were ending the car’s front end starting violently shaking. This was a problem! I was out in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi Bayou country. I pulled the car over and checked all of the tires and they looked fine. I decided to try to dive on. Not a good plan. The vibrations were bad but an exit was approaching just a mile down the road. I made it to the exit for Bogue Chitto, Mississippi. I had to ask the lady in the convenience store. When she said, “Bogue Chitto” in Mississippian I had to ask her to write it down. I don’t think she liked that! I called National on the cell phone and they offered two choices: 1) wait “several hours” until they could dispatch a flatbed truck or 2) drive the car to the nearest airport for a replacement. The nearest airport was 60 miles north at Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital. I didn’t want to drive the car. I didn’t want to wait several hours either since it was now past 10 p.m. I decided to drive and much to my amazement the car began to work pretty well. Things were going so good that when I was just about two miles from the Jackson airport I thought I might just forget about exchanging it and keep on driving. Right at that moment, the front end started acting up again. I decided to pit at the airport and exchanged the car for an Oldsmobile Alero that performed without further incident. I consider myself a pretty good planner. Rarely do I do anything without having considered the alternatives and available options. Some would say I do this almost to a fault. Others to a full fault! I take a lot of time and effort to plan these racing trips. Why I ask you, do so many things seem to go wrong? This trip is a point in fact. Consider the following: Friday: Interstate crash causes me to be 1 ½ hours late to a show presented in 35-degree temps Saturday: A track I call on Friday and get a positive confirmation for Saturday night’s racing cancels with no rain at all during the last two days. I later called the track and found out they canceled the show about one hour after I called on Friday because of a “wet approach lane” which prevented them from getting their equipment in to prepare the track. Sunday: A 2 p.m. show doesn’t start until after 4 p.m. and they have only run a few heat races by 6 p.m. Monday: My rental car breaks down in the middle of Mississippi nowhere. This is the nature of trackchasing. I won’t let it deter me, as Pike County Speedway was my 549th different track. I’m only 15 tracks behind 10thplace Pappy Hough and 9 tracks behind active chaser and 11th place Norm Wagner. The countdown is on. Starting time for the World of Outlaws sprint car show was 7 p.m. I arrived at about 6:50 p.m. and the parking lot was jammed packed. There was no more room to park on the speedway property and a cop directed me to park along the highway. I ended up having to park about one-quarter mile away just off the side of Route 51. It was extremely dark, heavily wooded and the sound of bullfrogs was overwhelming. They call this the Mississippi Bayou. It took me about 5 minutes to get all of my racing equipment together. Had this been the summer when the “skeeters” abound all they would have found of me would have been skeletal remains. Alas, since it was early spring the mosquitoes didn’t touch me. The next time I give advance notice to any of you trackchasers that I’m planning to see the World of Outlaw sprint cars just slap me! This is the most overpriced, not good racing show you’re going to see. Nevertheless, I drove 600 plus miles roundtrip for this “show”. It is hard to see a race on a Monday night in March but the quality of the program was pushing my limit. General admission was either $35 or $40. I have never seen a WOO program priced this high. The centermost of the grandstand bleachers was the “white” section and the outermost portions of the grandstands were the “blue” sections. White cost $40 and blue cost $35. Within each section, it was open seating. I bought a blue ticket. This was a one-division show. The World of Outlaws had 19 sprint cars. They ran a 10-car heat, a 9-car heat, two 8-car seven-lap dashes and a 35 lap A feature. That was it! They started 25 minutes past the starting time of 7 p.m. and finished at 9:05 p.m. The show would have been shorter if they had not had extensive driver interviews and an intermission. All of the races before the feature ran non-stop. There were a few cautions for spins in the feature but no major crashes. Not much passing all night except for Mark Kinser coming from fifth or sixth for the win. I sat amongst some Texas “oil field” guys. I learned they work 12 hours on and 12 hours off. When they are out on an ocean oil rig they work two weeks on and two weeks off. They said the most dangerous part of the job was getting to and from the job since they’re so tired at the completion of their shift it’s dangerous driving back to the hotel or flying back via helicopter from the ocean oil rigs. This was a nice group of guys. They were amazed that anyone would come all the way from California for a weekend of Southern trackchasing. Rental Car update: As most frequent rental car users know weekend rates are usually lower than weekday rates. Rental car companies define a weekend as running from Thursday at noon through Monday noon. If you pick up a car after the “weekend” rate begins on Thursday at noon but want to return it after the weekend rate ends on Monday they don’t let you have the weekend rate at all. That was the dilemma I faced. The solution was to rent a car from Friday through Monday at noon to get a three-day weekend rate. Since I was near the Memphis airport on Monday I stopped and checked in my weekend car (My Avis Racing Rental Chevy Malibu) and picked up my one-day “weekday rate” car. This saved about $35. Although I have been fairly compensated by Procter & Gamble (some say more than fairly compensated…who am I to disagree?). I still enjoy getting a bargain when I can. Of course, these types of savings must be generated in order to offset the cost of my racing scanner and avoid what could become “Scannergate” at home. Total mileage on all three of my rental cars for the weekend was 1,312 miles. The Pike County Speedway opened in 1992. You might have remembrances about this track. If so, please feel free to share your memories in the comments section below. If you have any photos from back in the day, send them to me at Ranlay@yahoo.com. I’ll try to include them here. 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 Mississippi sayings: “I’m cravin’ some nabs.” No matter the name on the package, these tasty peanut butter crackers are all referred to as “nabs.” The tradition actually started years ago when Nabisco was the dominant brand. Even though the Nabisco version of the crackers has been discontinued since the 1970s – 1980s, the name stuck. Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. In 2002 I have not yet begun producing YouTube videos from my trackchasing adventures. You might want to check out my YouTube channel now though. My channel name is “Ranlay”. I have more than 1,300 videos posted. I did want to share this World of Outlaws sprint car video taken in 2011 from the Pike County Speedway. 
PEOPLE/TRAVEL NEWS
RACING NEWS
New racetracks visited in 2002
That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report