Greetings from Ste Clotilde-de-Horton
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Ste Clotilde-de-Horton Ice Track – Lifetime Track #2,058
Canada! Ice racing! Again and again. These winter trips require the right wardrobe and lots of it. The early bird catches the first plane. Take a look. See the many benefits? I didn’t want to be pennywise pound foolish. To me Tim Horton’s is like the Waffle House. Is the strength of the U.S. dollar a good thing? Would these be your idea of basic? What did Alberta NEXT weekend have to do with Quebec THIS weekend? Trust but verify. I brought along my own Cabela’s store. I didn’t look like I was from around here. Poutine….don’t leave Canada without it. His Parc was not my Park. Is Canada really a foreign country? The ATVs rocked this track’s world today. The car racing was the least entertaining of the day. I may have found one iPhone inconvenience. What was happening to my iPhone? Pretty disappointed in the car racing. THE EVENT Canada! Ice racing! Again and again. I woke up Friday morning at home in San Clemente, California. I went to sleep in Drummondville, Quebec, Canada. Then on Saturday morning I headed out of Drummondville for the ice racing in Ste Clotilde-de-Horton, Quebec. I’ll tell you all about it. I’ll be ice racing in Quebec, Canada for the second consecutive weekend. If all goes well I expect to ice racing in Canada NEXT weekend as well and maybe one more time before the ice melts for the season. The ice racing season lasts for only about two months. That would be January and February of each year. Much of my January was taken up with family activities. That wasn’t a huge loss for my ice racing. Often times it’s not cold enough in some locales for the ice to develop sufficiently to handle ice racing in January anyway. February is probably the best month for ice racing. These winter tips require the right wardrobe and lots of it. The night before I left for Quebec I painstakingly arranged my winter gear. Remember I live in Southern California. We consider a 55° day with a little bit of rain to be the dead of winter. Carol got me a new rolling travel bag for my birthday. It’s designed to meet the Spirit Airlines carry-on requirements for a free bag. That means it’s got to be equal to or less than 16″ x 14″ x 12″. The bag she gave me was acquired at Costco. That’s a good thing. They only sell good stuff and if there’s a problem they’ll take the product back. I’ll use that small bag as well as a duffel bag jammed full of long underwear, scarves, two pairs of gloves, a wool vest, wool socks, hand warmers, toe warmers, and more. It’s just it’s as if I’m going off to battle. I want to have as much ammunition as possible but I want to have the strength to carry it as well! The early bird catches the first plane. I set my alarm for 3:55 a.m. on Friday morning. Everything was packed and ready to go. I was out the door by 4:15 a.m. and at the Subway store near LAX by 5:20 a.m. I grabbed a ham on wheat sandwich. I would eat it on the plane. This would be cheaper than eating on the airplane. More importantly, I was guaranteeing myself a breakfast choice that I wanted to eat rather than being forced to eat from the limited airline breakfast menu. Life is a lot more fun and comfortable when you can control your environment. Size 14s. I was wearing my new size 14 winter boots. I acquired those in Austin, Texas a couple weeks ago at an REI store. I wasn’t in the market for boots. However, when I saw them on the “half price” rack I had to get them. They come with a major benefit. They are slip on boots and in winter climates I love that feature. That’s so much easier than having to put on winter boots that require a good deal of time just to lace up. However these new slip on boots are not that good for walking long distances. That being the case I took the hotel shuttle from my parking garage to the airline terminal this morning. Slip on boots? Just another way to control the environment where I operate. I will be flying nonstop on Air Canada from Los Angeles to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. This was going to be a five hour flight. Luckily about a third of the seats were unsold giving me plenty of room in the exit row. Air Canada has a special feature on their planes. They have two AC adaptors for every three seats. That’s a nice benefit even though my MacBook Pro gets 8-10 hours of battery time. Just checking off the boxes. Since I knew I would make the flight I booked a hotel on Priceline. I got a fantastic deal at the Hotel Universel (spelled correctly) a Best Western Plus establishment in Drummondville, Quebec. The best rate available on line for this place was $99 USD. I got it on Priceline for just $53 per night for two nights. My room was large with two double beds. Each had a Tempurpedic mattress! We have a Tempurpedic mattress on our bed at home. It’s the best mattress, by far, I’ve ever slept on. The room also came with a huge flat-screen TV and fridge. It was quiet, warm and well-located. Overall, I am not generally a fan of Best Western properties. However, I had found that Best Western PLUS hotels are a great place to stay. I would need a rental car. I went with National Car Rental, a long-time sponsor of my trackchasing. I was able to reserve a full-sized car for two days at a total rate of just $56 USD. That’s a fantastic price. I ended up getting a brand new (less than 300 miles on the odometer) Hyundai Sonata. This was an upgraded model with heated seats and a backup camera. The National rep even sprayed some de-icer on my windshield wiper blades to keep the snow and ice from sticking to them. I’ve never seen that done before! Of course the car had satellite radio but not channel 90 the NASCAR channel. One of my favorite news channels is the Wharton School of Management business channel, number 111. They’ve got a broad range of business related topics and many fewer commercials than other talk/news channels on satellite radio. Take a look. See the many benefits? Take a look at everything I’ve mentioned above. Do you see a pattern there? My life is all about buying good things cheap. I really try to avoid the temptation to buy cheap things cheap. Canada here I come….again. I landed in Montreal at 4 p.m. Clearing customs took all of about 15 seconds. There was nobody waiting in line. The border agent asked me only a question or two and I was allowed to pass. I hope to be flying out of Montreal on Sunday night on a 6:30 p.m. flight. I’ll need to be back at the airport by 5 p.m. or maybe just a little bit later in order to clear customs. That being the case I would have to wait until about 5:15 p.m. today to pick up my car. Rental car companies operate on “24 hour days”. By waiting an hour or so when I arrived today to pick up my car I could make sure they didn’t charge me for an extra day of rental expense. The rental car pick up area at the Montreal Trudeau International Airport is a very short walk from the terminal. That’s so much more convenient and time saving than having to hop on a rental car shuttle bus. I didn’t want to be pennywise pound foolish. For this trip I did buy a data plan for my iPhone. I paid $30 for 300 MB of data. It’s good for 30 days. I plan to be back in Canada next weekend with Carol. I’ll try to save as much of my data plan as I can for emergencies. In the meantime I’ll be using my Garman GPS unit for directional aid. I didn’t really NEED this data plan. I could have made the trip without it. However, it’s a good cheap insurance policy. To me Tim Horton’s is like the Waffle House. I’m a big fan of Tim Horton’s. I stopped there for a quick supper. Tonight I would order the spicy Thai chicken soup, “brown” bread and a maple iced donut. This was all drowned down with a large bottle of Diet Pepsi. Currently a dollar of Canadian currency will cost me about $.80 USD. That means everything I buy in Canada comes with a 20% discount. The price of my entire dinner was only $6.20 Canadian. That meant I was eating dinner for about five U.S. dollars. I will say the approximate 15% in taxes added to most bills is a bummer. However, that does pay for Canada’s “free” health care. Is the strength of the U.S. dollar a good thing? Was I happy that I had saved a dollar because of the strong U.S. dollar? Not really. The strength of the U.S. dollar is killing Procter & Gamble’s profits. They make more than half of their profit from sales outside the U.S. When they bring that money back into the U.S. the conversion into U.S. dollars is killing them. That’s driving the stock price down. I’m losing thousands of dollars based upon that situation while I gained a dollar at Tim Hortons! Don’t feel to sorry for Procter & Gamble. They did make about 15 billion (that’s billion with “B”!) before tax this year. Then as good corporate citizens they contributed more than $3 billion to the federal treasury in the form of corporate taxes. When I arrived at the Hotel Universel in Drummondville I noticed how cold it was getting. At about 11 p.m. it was six below zero. When I order my hotels from Priceline I pay at the time my offer is accepted. I can’t renege on the deal. The sale is final. That means I can’t make a Priceline reservation until I know for sure I’m coming. It also means when I check in I don’t have to show a credit card for payment. Tonight’s reception person was extremely efficient. She didn’t ask me for any identification or credit card of any type. I simply told her my name. She gave me my room key and directed me to room 303. The entire process took 12 seconds. I don’t think I’ve had a faster check in in my life. SATURDAY Would these be your idea of basic? In a way today’s trackchasing effort was rather basic. That’s if you consider getting from Los Angeles to Montreal yesterday and all of the things that went with that simply a basic winter vacation. I’m joined by Will White and Ed Esser on “trackchasing double” night. I have former trackchaser commissioner Will White to thank for today’s ice racing visit to Quebec. Will has always been a good researcher of racing dates. When he shared this date with the trackchasing group I picked up on it. Thank you Will. When people help you out it’s important to thank them. Each year I think I’m going to run out of available ice tracks to see. Then nearly every year a few bright eyed and bushy tailed ice racing promoters find a new lake or frozen ice and snow covered piece of land where they can have a race. Good on them. What did Alberta NEXT weekend have to do with Quebec THIS weekend? What was the real reason I was coming back to Quebec this weekend? There was just one reason. There would not be racing in Alberta next weekend! That’s right. Because they would not be racing in Alberta NEXT weekend I would be coming to Quebec this weekend. Permit me to elaborate. When the promoters up in Alberta could not guarantee me a trackchasing countable start for their event I crossed Alberta off my travel schedule for next weekend. When that happened some of the tracks in the U.S. that I might’ve seen this weekend would now be moved to the phantom Alberta weekend. That opened up Quebec for THIS weekend. Make sense? Ask Carol. There’s a lot of “thinking” that goes on in this game. A brand new old town. Today’s small Quebec town of Ste Clotilde-de-Horton was incorporated as recently as 1997. Three smaller towns made one overall small town! Ste Clotilde-de-Horton was only 90 miles northeast of Montreal. It was just 20 miles northeast of where I was staying in Drummondville, Quebec. Trust but verify. I trust Will White’s ability to do trackchasing research. Nevertheless, I could not travel all the way to a remote section of Quebec, Canada based upon his say so alone. No offense to Will. That being the case I contacted the Ste Clotilde-de-Horton municipality offices for confirmation of this weekend’s ice racing. As you know they don’t speak much English up in French speaking Quebec. Nevertheless I was able to get someone in the municipality office to speak with me in my native tongue. The gentleman confirmed there would be an ice race on Saturday, February 7, 2015. He told me it would be a big event. The promoter was estimating 2,000 people would be on hand. After visiting today I don’t think they had that many people but they might’ve had closer to 600-800 people. Nevertheless, it was a good-sized ice racing promotion. I was also told the event would begin at “9 a.m. and run all day”. My informant was reading the information from a press release of some sort. I didn’t figure I needed to be at the 9 a.m. “opening” especially when traveling in the east coast time zone. It’s the wind baby. I slept in until about 8 a.m. Eastern time. That was 5 a.m. on the clock back in San Clemente. The high temperature for the day was to be about 5° but with very little wind. Five degrees with no wind is much different than 5° with a strong wind. It’s the wind baby. I hoped to have enough winter clothing to handle whatever mother nature would throw my way today. After reading the next paragraph do you think I was prepared? I brought along my own Cabela’s store. I would go with two pair of socks. The first was a thin ankle-high pair of black golf socks. I applied some commercial toe warmers to that pair of socks. Then a heavier all wool pair of socks was layered on. To cover my lower extremities I had a pair of underwear, a pair of long johns covered by blue jeans and two leg gators that ran from my ankles to just below my knees. For my upper torso I wore a long johns underwear top, a black long sleeve heavy T-shirt that was given to me as a promotional item at a race track in Ocala, Florida. The next layer was a heavy wool sleeveless zippered jacket. I also placed a commercially purchased heat pack on the stomach of my long underwear top. For my head I had a Continental tire heavy duty head scarf that was given to me at a race track in Moscow, Russia. I had a neck gator and two stocking caps. My army field jacket comes with a hood. I purchased that field jacket in Germany on a day when it began to get quite coolish and I hadn’t brought a jacket along. It’s not very thick or insulated but with three layers underneath works quite well. I also brought along a pretty good pair of winter insulated gloves that were supplemented by two commercially acquired hand warmers. Today the hand warmers would become extremely valuable. All of this gear was anchored to the ground with two size 14 boots recently acquired from the REI store in Austin, Texas. These are slip on boots. After today I would say they have now passed the test as standing up against the cold. Additionally, they are extremely convenient to get on and off. Anybody in the market for two higher topped lace up boots that are “only” size 12 or 13? I’m always pushing to try different things. Wearing most of this gear I headed out for breakfast. I could’ve gone to Tim Hortons. I would’ve enjoyed that very much. The availability of Tim Hortons is similar to that of Subway or McDonald’s or possibly the Waffle House in the south. They’re everywhere in Canada. However I have been to Tim Hortons about a million times. I hope to go there another million times. That being the case I am all about trying things that are new and different. I stopped in a restaurant that simply said “restaurant” on the outside of the building. What attracted me? The number of cars in the parking lot! If I owned a restaurant I would always make sure there were a lot of cars in my parking lot whether or not there were any customers in my eatery or not. I didn’t look like I was from around here. I was in French speaking Quebec. I don’t know how this can be the case but “I didn’t look like I was from around here”. I get that a lot. I don’t know where people expect me to be from. No matter where I go people just don’t think I’m from around there! Most of the Quebec restaurants I have visited have female servers. These folks could not be more cooperative and friendly. I don’t know if it’s because I’m an old man to them or because I speak English or both. They need to know I act like a 35-year old! Even though they didn’t speak much English they went out of their way to help me. I’m very appreciative of that. I’m very appreciative of anyone who tries to help me. This type of behavior makes me want to help others in similar situations all that much more. Today I ordered a ham and cheese omelet. It came with fried potatoes and baked beans. The entree was also served with “brown” toast. I ordered an orange juice on the side. Everything was absolutely delicious. I may even go there tomorrow morning unless I can find another better alternative. After the races………. Poutine….don’t leave Canada without it. It was a short drive back to Drummondville after the races. I was planning to go to Tim Horton’s again but a huge sign advertising poutine at the La Belle Province diner diverted my attention. No one should ever come to Canada without trying to poutine… at least once a day. Today’s poutine was very good. On the off chance that you don’t know what poutine is permit me to explain. It’s a simple concoction of French fries, with brown gravy poured over top and then white cheese similar to mozzarella melted in the brown gravy. It’s D-licious. I was back in my hotel room by 4 p.m. I considered going to a Montréal Canadians hockey game tonight. They were playing at home against the New Jersey Devils. However, that would’ve been a 150-mile round-trip drive to get to the game and back to my hotel. I didn’t need to be doing that tonight. I decided to take a nap since it always requires extra energy to operate on a three hour time zone difference and be out in the cold for as long as I was today. I woke at 7 p.m. in plenty of time for the Pac-12.com broadcast of the UCLA – California basketball game. I would watch that game on my beautiful Retina screen of my Apple MacBook Pro. Again thanks to West Moody for his generosity in this area. Want to know who won? Google it. Dinner would consist of a bottle of Diet Pepsi and a large supply of almonds that Carol provides for each one of these trips. It had been a good day. Tomorrow I will catch another Quebec ice race. I hope to make a 6:30 p.m. flight back to Los Angeles. If all goes well I’ll get back home at midnight local time, which is 3 a.m. Quebec time. Don’t worry it’s what I do. ONE CANNOT LIVE WELL OR SLEEP WELL IF ONE HAS NOT DINED WELL La Belle Province – Drummondville, Quebec It’s a diner. They serve poutine. Any questions? THE RACE Ste Clotilde-de-Horton Ice Track – Ste Clotilde-de-Horton, Quebec, Canada His Parc was not my Park. Soon I was off to the races as they say. It was easy to find the race location as the man from the municipality told me to simply go to 1 Park Street. Of course when he told me that my idea of “Park” and his idea of “Parc” were not the same. No wonder that address didn’t work in my Garmin GPS unit. Nevertheless I found the place in good order. Is Canada really a foreign country? Who says so? I have never considered Canada a foreign country. I know people who do. Being in Canada is just about the same as being in Minnesota or Montana. There is one exception. That’s Quebec! These folks are heavy into French. They speak very little English. Going to Quebec IS like visiting a foreign country. The man was right when he said things would start at 9 a.m. I arrived at 11 a.m. It looked to me like pretty much everybody that was going to come today had already shown up. General admission was $15 Canadian. A very friendly ticket taker first took her time to think how she was going to say “15 dollars” in English. Once that task was completed I forked over the money as her reward for passing my English speaking test. She pinned a nice little tag on my jacket, just as if I were getting a ski resort lift ticket, and I entered the ice racing area. I don’t really know what racing I missed. I do know that I was out in the 5° temperatures for 3 1/2 hours straight. I think I saw just about every racer on the grounds compete. Today’s racing would take place on a snow and ice covered track of about 8/10 of a mile. Was it exactly that distance? Who knows I’m only guessing. The track’s configuration was laid out as a road course. The simple definition of a road course is that drivers much must turn both left and right to complete a lap. Today’s track had lights. Why would they have lights on a temporary ice track? Because they were racing on what turns out to be the city’s soccer field come summer! Parts of the parking lot and spectator viewing area had a surface of glare ice. It was slicker than snot. I chose a viewing location over by the paddock area. I could also see a much smaller track that looked to be an oval in the distance. I was surmising that the racers on that track might be children competing with ATVs and the like. It was somewhat difficult to get a good idea of how many racers were on hand today. Several of them were parked amongst trees on the property. The ATVs rocked this track’s world today. I would come to find out that the majority of the racing competition today would be ATVs. I did see one race with five UTVs, which are also known as side-by-side racing machines. I would also guess a good 20 or more “junk car” racers were on hand to race. Early on in the day I watched five side-by-side’s race. That made the track countable by trackchasing standards. Then I watched a large number of UTVs race for I’m guessing 10 or more events. Their racing easily lasted for two hours. The car racing was the least entertaining of the day. Finally after being at the ice racing track for nearly 3 hours it was time for some car racing. To be honest the care were the least entertaining of anything I’d seen all day. They ran 8-10 cars in each race. They were dramatically slower than the UTVs or ATVs. I know I tell you this from time to time. Nevertheless you must take a look at my video from today’s racing. The ATV competition with 15-20 competitors was out of this world. I was standing with other fans right next to the racing surface on a 4 foot snow bank. The snow bank separated the racers from the watchers. Some of the ATV racers would race right up against this snow wall sending ice dust and debris into the fan’s faces. You can’t get this close to the action as a Laker’s game….even when they’re losing! I may have found one iPhone inconvenience. I was using my iPhone exclusively to both photograph and film the racing action as many people were today. In order to operate my iPhone I had to take my winter gloves off. There was a time or two when the ATV racers climbed the snow wall. They looked like they might even go over into the crowd. When this happened it sent everyone including me into a panic and retreat. Each time an ATV driver did this the snow shower was dramatic. The ice dust and snow caused a problem for me. On one such occasion with my iPhone in my bare hand the snow and ice came at me in a ferocious manner. The glove I wasn’t wearing quickly filled up with ice dust. No one wants to be wearing a winter glove in 5° temperatures that is filled with ice! I sure didn’t. At that point my hand was so cold and the inside of my glove was so filled with ice and dampness that I couldn’t even get my glove over my hand. I was most concerned. With all of my winter clothing I was fairly comfortable all day. The only part of me that was cold, make that freezing, was my bare hand when I needed to take a photo or video with my iPhone. What was happening to my iPhone? Even though I had been able to count the track officially with the UTV race more than two hours ago I was eagerly awaiting the car racing. However, I ran into a major problem. After one such ATV “ice spray down” my iPhone became totally covered in the wet icy ice dust. I was amazed at how fast the battery was going down on my iPhone. I started with 100%. After less than two hours I was down to 40%. I guessed the cold weather was doing a job on the battery. Shortly after my iPhone was hit with the ice dust it stopped working! I couldn’t believe the battery could go from 40% to nothing that quickly. I couldn’t believe that just a little ice dust, okay a lot of ice dust, on the face of my phone would make it stop working. My only guess could be that the sustained outdoor activity in 5° weather had done it in. Back in my hotel room after the races the Apple website told me this about optimal operating temperatures for my iPhone: “Use iOS devices where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F). Low- or high-temperature conditions might cause the device to change its behavior to regulate its temperature. Using an iOS device in very cold conditions outside of its operating range may temporarily shorten battery life and could cause the device to turn off. Battery life will return to normal when the device is brought back to higher ambient temperatures.” My iPhone had been outdoors in 5-degree Fahrenheit temps for nearly three hours. Most of the time it had been in the front pocket of my blue jeans. The battery life was going down much faster than normal. Then the phone turned itself off. I quickly retreated to my car, which was parked over by the diner. That was a good 100-yard walk on glare ice with patches of snow that I used for traction. Once inside the car I used the heated seats to warm my body. I plugged my phone into the car’s power source. In a few seconds it came back on. The battery still showed 37%. I held the phone up to the car’s heater vents. I only did this for a minute or so. I’m guessing it was the cold that temporarily shut down the operating system and the phone. Nevertheless I was good to go now. I hustled back to my position to watch the car racing. There was one driver with a Ford Crown Victoria. The car had obviously been most recently used as a police car. When I first saw it I thought it “was” a police car. I’m sure the driver bought it at a government surplus auction of some type. The race organizers made everyone moved back from the snow banks when the cars raced on the track. That was probably a good idea. A 3,000-4,000 pound car can put a bigger dent in a snow bank than an ATV. Pretty disappointed in the car racing. As mentioned I was pretty disappointed in the car racing. On the one hand the track was already countable so I certainly couldn’t complain about that. On the other hand a class that is not counted by trackchasing rules, the ATVs, provided the most exciting racing. Don’t miss the video. I would say my winter apparel gear stood up very well. My feet didn’t get cold. I stood on snow and ice for 3 ½ hours. The only thing on me that did get cold was my hand when I used it to film barehanded with my iPhone. For a few moments it was most uncomfortable dealing with ice dust in my winter glove. I would say the hand warmers were indispensable today. Quebec The La Belle province This afternoon I saw my 28th 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 way back in 1992. This was my 121st 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: Y’est-tu fin le chum à Marie? Is Marie’s boyfriend nice? 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 TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Ste Clotilde-de-Horton Ice Track – $15 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…you’ll be glad you did: Photos that make you feel like you were there…..Ste Clotilde-de-Horton 
