Sun National Bank Center

‘The California Penalty’………….more in “The Details”.

Have you ever slept overnight in a chapel….more than once?………….more in “The Details”.

Who goes to the movies at the airport?………….more in “The Details”.

Hanging out with nuns…..…“The Details”.

If people do this stuff in public what do they do in private? …..…“The Details”.

141 miles = 3 states…………more in “Race Review”.

Who needs Match.com?…….details in “Race Review”.

Carbon monoxide no extra charge……….details in “Race Review”.

The California penalty.

I woke up this morning at home in San Clemente, California.  In order to get to Trenton, New Jersey in time for Friday night’s racing I would have to layover in Houston, Texas on Thursday.  I have a most unusual place to stay when I’m in the Bayou city.  This is how the beginning of this exciting trip went.

Folks, when I trackchase on the east coast it’s virtually impossible for me to leave California in the morning and get to an east coast based race by that evening.  What does that mean?  It simply means that if I want to begin a trackchasing trip at a track in the east then I most likely will have to leave the day or night before.  In trackchasing this is commonly called the “California penalty”.  The “Dreaded East Coast Trackchasers” love their advantage.  I simply do what I need to do to make things happen.

A slight mix-up but the weather cleared up any confusion.

What did THAT mean?  It meant I would leave my home at 4:11 a.m. (3:53 a.m. wakeup call) on Thursday morning bound for Houston, Texas.  I had learned of a race in Corpus Christi, Texas racing tonight, Thursday.  At one point I thought this might be a new track for me.  However I had the dirt track, South Texas Speedway, confused with the asphalt track in Corpus called the “CC Speedway”.  I had been to the South Texas Speedway in November 2007 (track #1,290).  Granted it was only 600-700 tracks ago so I have no excuse for forgetting my previous visit.

Nevertheless, the South Texas Speedway was hosting one of my favorite sanctioning groups the United States Touring Modified Series (USMTS).  However, the racing situation didn’t look quite as attractive as a racechaser compared to being a trackchasing.  Corpus Christi would have been a four-hour drive each way.  That would be tough considering I had to catch a 6 a.m. flight the next morning.  The weather wasn’t good either.  With a projected high temperature for the day of 43 degrees with a 40% chance of rain I passed.

Have you ever slept overnight in a chapel….more than once?

I did arrive into the George Bush (41) International Airport (Houston) at noon on Thursday.  I would not be departing for Chicago and then Baltimore until 6 a.m. tomorrow, Friday.  The question was “should I get a hotel for tonight, Thursday”?  I concluded I should not.  Why?  I didn’t want to invest any more money into the racing show in Trenton than I already had.

I have had a previous overnight ‘sleeping experience’ at IAH.

I was familiar with the Houston Intercontinental Airport sleeping arrangements.  I am a frequent consultant with the sleepinginairports.net website.  The best place I have found for overnight slumber at IAH is in the chapel near gate C29.

What did I do from 12 noon until it was time to “go to chapel” at about 11 p.m.?  I did “paperwork”.  O.K., there was no paper involved and I wasn’t sure I even had a pen on me.  Nevertheless, I can keep myself busy with all manner of household financial planning, friend management and trackchasing household chores for hours.  That’s what I did until about 9 p.m.

Who goes to the movies at the airport?

At 9 o’clock it was “movie time”.  I frequently rent movies from Apple’s iTunes (a J.J. idea).  Movies can be rented from anywhere from $5-10 or so per use.  However, every week folks have a choice of one movie that can be rented for just 99 cents.  From time to time I’ll pick one of those movies and either download it to my phone or MacBook Pro.  Once the movie is downloaded I have thirty days to watch it.  However, once I begin viewing the movie I must finish it within 24 hours.  My selection tonight was “The Kings of Summer”.  This wasn’t a show we would have likely seen in a movie theatre but tonight I gave it four stars (out of 5).

From the movie theatre to the hotel.

From my private “movie theatre” I went over my private “hotel”.  That would be the chapel at IAH.  I had slept overnight there before so I knew the drill.  Carol is a practicing Catholic and thinks sleeping in the chapel borders on blasphemy.  However, I ran into a woman on a plane once who thought the idea was quite acceptable.  She told me, “God put the chapel there to help people”.  I could not have said it any better.

The chapel has lots of pluses for overnight sleep.  First, it is quiet.  There are none of those annoying announcements that play on a loop throughout the night.  An added benefit is that I can laydown on the padded pews.  The footrest makes a perfect place to use my security cable to prevent anything from being stolen while I’m in church!

You shouldn’t believe everything you read.

I must admit there is a sign that says you’re not supposed to sleep in the chapel.  However, whether there was a sign posted or not I don’t suspect you were supposed to sleep in the Methodist church I grew up in as a boy either.  Who needs to post such a sign.  Don’t people know better?

Hanging out with nuns.

I was delighted to wake up at 2:30 a.m. when “nature called”.  My delight did not come from that activity but from the fact that another person had joined me in the small chapel for a bit of slumber.  It was a nun no less!  I figured if she was allowed to sleep in the chapel so was I.

I was a bit disappointed in my own personal performance while inside the chapel though.  At precisely 4:00 a.m. my phone began to ring incessantly.  Roused from an almost sound sleep I fumbled with my phone thinking it was my 5:15 a.m. wakeup call.  In reality, it was American Airlines calling me two hours before “wheels up” to remind me it was two hours before “wheels up”.  I hate it when one person in a public place causes a “ruckus” bothering other people.  Today I was that person doing the bothering.  Who was I bothering?  A nun no less!  That probably was blasphemy.  A few minutes later we both began to stir about.  The nun, a friendly one, agreed this was a good place to spend the evening if you’re going to spend the evening in the airport.  Maybe she is a reader of www.sleepinginairports.net.

FRIDAY.

If only….

I will tell you just one thing.  I truly wish those “Dreaded East Coast Trackchasers” had to go through what I go through to get the trackchasing job done.  They have it so easy it makes me want to throw up.  Nevertheless, I digress.

I would first fly from Houston to Chicago this morning.  Then with, just a 30-minute layover in O’Hare, I would fly onto Baltimore.  Once in Baltimore I would rent a car and drive it to Trenton.  It all seemed like a simple plan.

If all went well I would stay overnight after the races in Albany, New York before motoring up to Montreal for the rest of the trackchasing weekend.  Folks, the funny thing about a plan like this is I think it’s perfectly normal.  Why?  Because I do it all the time.

LATER IN THE TRIP.

On Sunday night I would overnight in New Hampshire before flying home from Boston to Los Angeles.  Then at about 5 a.m. TUESDAY morning (east coast time) I would come bouncing back into our modest seaside cottage just like virtually no one else from San Clemente would be doing.

If people do this stuff in public what do they do in private?

One of things I enjoy doing the most is simply watching people.  What do I conclude from that?  People are so different.  People think about things differently, they act differently.  People are so different from each other!

Today I was sitting in the Baltimore airport clearing up some work before I hopped into my rental car for the drive up to Trenton.  Across from me were what appeared to be a married couple in their 60s.  They were discussing lunch.  They soon agreed the wife would go off to get the food from a nearby restaurant.  There’s nothing all that unusual about that.

However, here is what I did find most unusual.  The man fumbled into his back pocket and pulled out a well-worn billfold.  To begin with that was unusual.  I gave up billfolds some 30 years ago.  I carry a money clip with a few bills and a few credit cards.  No two-inch wide billfold for me.

However, what I found MOST unusual was the man pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and gave it to his wife to go buy lunch.  Wasn’t she entitled to carry her own money?  I can’t imagine doing that if I were traveling with Carol.  First, we would pay by credit card.  Carol has a full complement of credit cards.  Secondly, if we were paying by cash, Carol HAS HER OWN MONEY!  Should a 60ish year old wife need to have her husband give her twenty dollars?  Come on folks.  Can we move into the 21^st century and stay there?

Helpless in Hoboken?

P.S. on the above paragraph.  The wife soon came back with only a bottle of water.  She needed her husband’s money to buy herself a bottle of water?  She didn’t give her husband any change from his twenty.  Then she asked her husband to open the bottle of water for her.  Maybe it wasn’t the husband’s fault at keeping control of his wife by holding all the money.  Maybe his wife was a spoiled brat or one of those women that needs 100% maintenance.  Yes, it’s fun to people-watch.

Sun National Bank Center – Trenton, New Jersey

141 miles = 3 states.

They sure have a lot of bridges “Back East”.  Moving from state to state in the east is about like moving from county to county in SoCal.  Once I landed I left Maryland, then moved through Delaware before arriving in New Jersey.  It was just a 141-mile drive from Baltimore to Trenton and I covered three states.

Tonight’s racing would be indoors at the Sun National Bank Center.  The Sun National arena seats 8,500 and was built in 1999.  Frankly it looked a lot older than that to me.  The place is home to the Trenton Titans of the ECHL, the New Jersey Rascals of the Professional Lacrosse League and the Philadelphia Passion of the Lingerie Football League.  The Lingerie Football League!

Who needs Match.com?

I would have to look that one up!  The Lingerie Football League is a 7 on 7 women’s TACKLE football league.  Who needs Match.com when you can hunt for chicks at a women’s tackle football game?  If only I lived in Trenton I could become a season ticket holder.

I came here for the racing.

Tonight’s auto racing would take place on the concrete floor of the arena.  The east has had a number of winter events like this in arenas all over the area in the past.  Normally, I wouldn’t travel this far for just one race during the winter.  However, I discovered I could trackchase for two more days in Canada and add three more tracks following tonight’s racing.  I will never turn down a three-day/four-track opportunity in the winter.

One of the pluses about the Trenton event is that they wouldn’t get rained out.  However, if a bad snowstorm came about I could see them cancelling because of bad roads.  There was no snow but it was cold.

I paid ten bucks to park.  That told me this wasn’t a NASCAR event.  Parking on the grounds of our most popular NASCAR races is always free.  As luck would have it the ticket window was on the opposite side of the relatively large building from where I parked.  This only reminded me what a tough climate I was visiting as I walked a long way in a cold winter wind.

I wasn’t sure how crowded this event would be.  From the looks of the parking lot it seemed as if there was a very big crowd.  I wanted to get a good seat so I bought the best the ticket window sellers had to offer.  That set me back a good $34 U.S.  It would be rare to have any scalpers at a race like this and there weren’t any.  When I got inside the building it almost looked as if there was nobody inside.

I suspected other trackchasers were in the building.  However, when I looked around I didn’t see anyone I knew.  When I examined the photos from tonight’s show I didn’t see anyone either.  All I knew is that I had one of the best seats in the house.  It was going to be a fun show.

TQ Midgets

Slingshots

Midgets and slingshots.

There would be two classes racing tonight.  The main class was the TQ (three-quarter) midgets.  The undercard would be the a class called “slingshots”.  I suspect that if you are not a racing fan the names of these racing divisions are somewhat foreign to you.

The oval track was flat.  The surface was concrete.  However, I believe they used “Coke syrup” in the turns to give the cars more grip.  Whenever the least bit of oil was dropped by any of the racers the race was yellow flagged.  Then workers came out with what looked like paper towels to clean things up.

Carbon monoxide no extra charge.

This was an extremely noisy event.  However, I always carry earplugs so that wasn’t much of a problem.  Another issue with indoor racing are the fumes from the racer’s exhausts.  I would classify this as a major inconvenience at this race.  The ladies sitting near me (apparently none of them rough and tough Philadelphia Passion players) used their sweaters and jackets as a make shift gas mask.  From time to time they would open the doors to the arena to get some fresh air in the place.  At that point folks no longer had to worry about getting black lung disease but pneumonia.  It’s always something.

I will tell you this.  Despite the hassle to get here and the somewhat less than comfortable surroundings I very much enjoyed the racing.  They did have a lot of yellow flags but they got back to racing quickly.  I strongly suggest you watch the YouTube video to see what TQ midgets look like on such a tiny flat indoor track.  The racing was fun.

I’m not being sexist.

They did have one accident involving a woman driver.  I don’t want to sound sexist but…..woman drivers make up well under 1% of the drivers I will see in any one season.  However, it seems as if they are involved in much more than 1% of racing accidents and injuries.  I’m just sayin.

Following the races I had a 203-mile drive up to my hotel in Albany, New York.  This would position me well for my ice racing adventure into Quebec for the rest of the weekend.  I had a minor altercation with the hotel desk clerk over senior discount rates.  I probably would have reported him but once I got going the next day I was in Canada and my phone doesn’t work (economically) up there.

STATE COMPARISONS

New Jersey

The Garden State

This evening I saw my 13th lifetime track in the Garden state, yes the Garden state.  This was my first time to be trackchasing in NJ since 2011.

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

New Jersey sayings:  You Want A ##$%##! Slogan? I Got Yer ##$%##! Slogan Right Here

QUICK FACTS

AIRPLANE

Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Houston, TX (IAH) – 1,382 miles

Houston, TX (IAH) – Chicago, IL (ORD) – 942 miles

Chicago, IL (ORD) – Baltimore, MD (BWI) – 600 miles

RENTAL CAR #1

Baltimore-Washington International Airport – trip begins

Trenton, New Jersey

TRACK ADMISSION PRICES:

Sun National Bank Center – $34 (plus $10 parking)

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 375 tracks of my lifetime total.  Don’t blame me.

1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 1,930

Total Trackchasing Countries

There are no trackchasers currently within 10 countries of my lifetime total.

1.  Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 68

Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results

1.  Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 4.96

That’s all folks!  Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report