Greetings from Osgood, Indiana
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Ripley County Fairgrounds
Dirt oval
Lifetime Track #2,128
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 10 pounds of taters don’t fit well in a 5-pound sack. I woke up at a very nice Quality Suites Hotel in Lansing, Michigan. I will go to bed in an Extended Stay America hotel this evening in Columbus, Ohio. This is how my day turned out. I am sometimes guilty of trying to put 10 pounds of taters into a 5-pound tater sack. Often times that type of production is very worthwhile. Sometimes it is not. Busy. Busy. Busy. I had a lot of things I wanted to get done this morning before I left the hotel on my way to Indiana. My morning agenda did not include a number of earth shattering events. There were just a few things that I thought needed to be done. Breakfast is important. I wanted to partake of the hotels “cooked to order” breakfast. It was part of my room rate. I figured the food would get me on down the road. I also wanted to get in a 45-minute aerobic exercise event. The British Open, delayed by bad weather earlier in the tournament was, finishing up around 4 a.m. (European time) on Monday, today. The golf was being televised on ESPN. I didn’t want to miss it. Yesterday I had moved into the eastern time zone for the first time. I didn’t get to bed until 1 a.m. last night. I needed to get some sleep because I’ll be driving more than 500 miles per day for each of the next three days. I also had to deal with an 11 a.m. hotel check out time which the front desk manager graciously extended until 12 noon. Ring! My alarm went off at 8 a.m. That didn’t give me all that much time to get breakfast, exercise and watch much of the golf tournament. I also didn’t really feel like getting up at 8 a.m. Eastern time so I extended my alarm a few times. I finally left for breakfast at about 8:40 a.m. I would need to prioritize. Now I was really under the gun. There simply wouldn’t be time to watch any of the golf. Reluctantly I used my iPhone’s DirecTV app to record the final day of the British Open. I didn’t want to “burn” 10 hours of recording time on my DVR for this event. However I didn’t have much choice. I told you these were not earth-shattering events. However, in the life of a retiree these things fill my daily agenda. 56 not 42. It looks as if this trip is going to be 56 days long. For you readers that think in weeks…that’s eight weeks. I thought last year’s 42-day trip was a long one and now it isn’t. Storage….it’s what’s important in life. On all of my electronic devices it’s important to manage my storage. My digital video recorder (for my TV at home) has already been “souped up”. I think it records about 100 hours of TV broadcasts. I’ll be missing seven NASCAR races while I’m away on this trip. Each race will require 4-7 hours of recording time. In most cases I extend the recording time by three hours to cover myself in case there is a rain delay. Even when there is a rain delay, regardless of the time that takes, I will watch every NASCAR broadcast from the time they sign on until the time they sign off. Most disturbing. Last night I had received some disturbing news regarding my Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Angels baseball team. I went to check their score against the Red Sox on my phone. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The Angels were playing in Anaheim, California at their home field, Angel Stadium. My iPhone app told me the game was delayed. Why in the world would the game be delayed? I thought earthquake. I’m sure if you live in or around virtually any major league baseball city in the country you would simply guess it was a rain delay. However as the song says, “It never rains in Southern California”. After “earthquake” I feared terrorism. Then the thought of an electrical outage crossed my mind. Never in my wildest dreams did I think an Angels’ game was being delayed by rain. In point of fact the game WAS being delayed by precipitation. Carol had mentioned it rained a bit in San Clemente. I didn’t really believe her. She tends to exaggerate weather phenomenon in Southern California. In reality the weather is the same day in and day out, month in and month out and year in and year out. Shocked and dismayed. Possibly the biggest shocker of the major-league baseball season happened last night. The Angels and Red Sox was rained out. It had been 20 years since the last rain out of an Angels’ game in California. Since the Angels moved to Orange County in 1966 (that’s 50 seasons ago!) they have been rained out only 10 times. Let’s try to do the math on this one. In nearly 50 years of playing they’ve been rained out an average of one time every five years. Up until 2015 they had not been rained out in 20 years! Virtually all of the rainouts they have had came during April or September. How could the Angels get rained out in the middle of July when our average rainfall is listed as “trace” for the month. Strange indeed. In addition to all of the above things that I mentioned I was trying to get done this morning I also added a 2-3 hour visit to the Gilmore Auto Museum. I just wasn’t going to be able to do it all. When all was said and done I bagged the visit to the auto Museum and watching golf. I slept in a little later, got breakfast and exercised. Sorry, it was the best I could do! THE RACING Ripley County Fairgrounds – Osgood, Indiana Americana. This evening I pulled into the small town of Osgood, Indiana. Osgood is an itty-bitty town. American has a lot of those places. The population is 1,674 people. The town itself covers just about 1.5 square miles. That’s small. Remember Grover Hartley, the baseball player and umpire? No, I don’t either. Anyway Grover came from Osgood. Direct from the pits. I decided to watch the racing tonight from the pit area. I’ll do that once in a while. Normally pit area viewing of the racing action is not as good as being in the grandstand. However I had not watched any racing from the pit area for a while. I thought I would give it a try. These guys do a good job. Tonight I was in town to see the T.E. Promotions TQ midget race. They call their series the “King of the TQ Midget Racing Series”. I had seen these same guys race about a week ago in Lagrange, Indiana. All of these county fair TQ midget events are held just once a year. I love knocking them off whenever I can. I would later learn that general omission to the grandstand was $10 tonight. Parking at the fair was free, sponsored by the local Lions Club. I was a little surprised to see that admission to the pit area was $25. Nevertheless I hadn’t been close up to the TQ midgets for a while. I pulled $25 in U.S. currency from my money clip. By the way I haven’t used a “billfold” for about 30 years. My tailbone couldn’t stand it. Wait! Just as I laid down my cash on the counter the woman signing me in at the pit check was on the radio with race promoter Terry Eaglin. I had spent some time talking to Terry at his last event. Terry had actually interviewed me over the P.A. at that race. I also presented the championship trophy to the feature winner there. The woman working the pit shack told Terry the “California Trackchaser” was coming through the gate. Terry most graciously responded over the radio “let him in”. Terry Eaglin is one busy guy. Little did I know that Terry was only 100 yards from the pit building running around the grounds on his ATV. He stopped to chat a little bit. Terry was amazed I had seen six tracks since we last met a week ago in Lagrange, Indiana. Terry, don’t worry. It’s what I do. An Indiana classic. The Ripley County Fairgrounds has been there for a long time. They have one of those classic, but diminishing in existence, old county fair covered grandstands. If only those grandstands could talk. Most of the best historic ones were built nearly 100 years ago now. A staple at the American county fair way back in the day was horseracing. Sometimes it was thoroughbred racing. Sometimes it was harness racing or both. That racing typically took place on a half-mile dirt/sand oval. At a lot of these fairgrounds auto racing came in around 1950 or so sometimes earlier. Many of these fairgrounds racing shows hosted the American midget racer or the TQ midget racer like I was saying tonight. My racing career began in earnest after the hay day of county fair open wheeled racing. Please. No more rain. The Midwest has had one of their rainiest spring/summers ever. At last week’s event Terry Eaglin, a lifetime Hoosier, said this was the rainiest year he had ever seen. According to the Indiana state climate office last month (June) was the rainiest month in the history of weather records. I guess Terry Eaglin knows what he’s talking about. The average rainfall was more than nine inches. The June, 2015 broke a record from 1958. Tonight’s track and pit area was a soggy mess in some places. It was just dry enough for the cars to find a few places to pit. TQ midget racing. There were about 20 TQ midgets in the pit area. There are two rival central Indiana based TQ midget organizations. One is called the Midwest TQ Racing League (MTQRL). The other is a combination of the UARA and the Terry Eaglin promoted series. By the way the acronym “TQ” in the TQ midget’s description stands for “three quarter”. That means a TQ midget is generally three quarters the size of a full midget. Yes there are “half” midgets and also “quarter midgets. Youngsters normally race the quarter midgets. We’ll keep the show moving. I was able to sit in for the drivers meeting. Rain was expected by about 9 p.m. Terry told the group that the program was to be run expeditiously. For the most part it was. I couldn’t hear much of what the grandstand track announcer was saying. There were no speakers in the pit area. I thought I heard him saying there was a group of “trucks” racing tonight but I didn’t see any. Maybe I heard him wrong. The support group to the TQ midgets was a group of four-cylinder powered somewhat late model looking like low dollar stock cars. A support class like this is used as a filler so the TQ midgets can run their heat races, trophy dashes and feature events with a little time for preparation in between while the stock cars are on the track. The weather didn’t look too bad. I had a glance at my weather radar earlier in the night. Things didn’t look too bad. There was a small “green patch” west of the track. However, it didn’t look very severe. I didn’t think the “weather” would reach the track to effect tonight’s racing. A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet. One of things I like to do when I make visits like this is to strike up conversations with the locals. I did that tonight with the track’s safety personnel. “Michael” was in charge of the fire truck and first aid. He was using his phone to track the approaching weather. As the night had progressed the incoming storms heading headed our way looked worse and worse. What I saw on this fellow’s phone did not look good. There were all kinds of yellow and red colors on the radar picture. The red coloring is the most severe rain you can get. He told me the storm was approaching the area at 32 m.p.h., about three times faster than normal. He was obviously familiar with the local geography. Michael told me this rain was going to be at the track in only a few minutes. He relayed this information to promoter Terry. There wasn’t much time to get things done but if they hustled they might make it. Old school. In no time the feature event was being lined up and pushed off. TQ midgets, loyal to their long time heritage, do not have starters. That means a push vehicle must push each racer off one by one. There wasn’t a whole lot of passing in this feature event. That’s probably because the track wasn’t all that wide. It was a little rough from the wet conditions. It did not help that the faster starters started up front. Nevertheless there was a good deal of jostling throughout the pack. Something wrong? Although I couldn’t hear the announcer there appeared to be some problem with the lineup on restarts. I was standing next to a number of pit members and car owners. As you might imagine some thought they were getting “screwed” by the lineup procedures. Out of control in Indiana. One man was out of control. He was “discussing” the situation with the woman running the lineups in the pit area. He was so animated the police had to be called. It’s amazing how some people can behave so poorly in a public setting. I am happy to report that the rain held off, just barely, so that tonight’s feature race was completed. I had promised Terry an after the races interview but with the impending bad weather that was going to be canceled. Major thanks to Terry Eaglin for the Hoosier hospitality shown to the World’s #1 Trackchaser. AFTER THE RACES Just made it. I headed for the car and began a nine-hour drive to tomorrow night’s race in Hemlock, New York. I was just five minutes out of the track when I encountered rain. This rain, had it come earlier, would have been hard enough to postpone and ultimately cancel the racing tonight. That was a close call. About the worst. I’ve been getting a lot of Extended Stay America hotels from my Priceline bidding procedures. Tonight’s Extended Stay property would be in Columbus, Ohio. It was also one of the most downscale properties within the chain that I’ve stayed at. I hope I don’t have to stay there again anytime soon. Good night. Talk to you tomorrow from New York. Indiana The Hoosier state This evening I saw my 83rd lifetime track in the Hoosier state, yes the Hoosier state. I might finish with about 90 Indiana tracks before the year wraps up. 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 Indiana sayings: Hoosier daddy? 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 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 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 “Video Plus” production from the Ripley County Fairgrounds . Click on the link below to see the one-minute “Video Lite” production from the TQ midget racing at the Ripley 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. TQ midget racing PLUS some beautiful Indiana farm scenes 
