Greetings from Tomah, Wisconsin
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Tomah-Sparta Speedway Asphalt oval Lifetime Track #2,611 THE EVENT I AM A TRACKCHASER. My name is Randy Lewis (above with my buddy Amine who took me all over Tunisia during my trackchasing trip to Africa). 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 Friday, June 5, 2020. Can you possibly imagine how many trips I’ve taken in order to see racing at 2,610 tracks in 85 countries? Trust me, it’s been a lot of trips. Some of been more significant than others. This trip is one of the more significant for a couple of reasons. I last trackchased on March 7 at an ice race in Asele, Sweden. I returned back to the United States on March 10, 2020. When I landed in the international terminal at LAX I overheard a woman talking on her cell phone. Her friend was telling her that the flight we were on was the last flight allowed to land in the United States from Europe before significant restrictions went into effect. What was up? It turned out we were just entering a worldwide pandemic. Yes, coronavirus or COVID-19 for short was going to impact the lives of virtually everyone in the entire world. I don’t need to tell anyone who is reading this right now what coronavirus is. However, for the folks reading this 20 years from now, I’ll give a brief background. Coronavirus is a deadly and highly contagious disease. It is transmitted primarily from droplets coming from another human being and contaminating the air. It mainly moves from one person’s respiratory system to another person’s respiratory system. Some people say it’s “just like the flu” in terms of danger. I don’t agree with that assessment whatsoever. The coronavirus has killed more than 110,000 people in the United States in three months. A really bad year of the flu might see 60,000 people perish in an entire year. At our current COVID-19 death rates we will see more than 150,000 people dead from the coronavirus in the first five months. At the beginning of the pandemic everyone was told to stay home. Health agencies said that folks, especially older folks, should only leave home for essential services such as food shopping, going to the drugstore for medications, etc. It seems that most people have been pretty good at heeding the government’s stay at home directives. We were told that if everyone stayed home we might be able to “flatten the curve” so there wouldn’t be a run on the nation’s hospitals. As I say we seem to have done a pretty good job of flattening the curve. For the past three months, I haven’t traveled overnight anywhere. Every night I had to stare out from our deck and watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. O.K., it wasn’t that bad! I do go outside nearly every day for an hour or so to exercise. I also take Carol out to dinner about every other night. For us “out to dinner” during the lockdown simply means using the drive-through lane at one of several fast-food restaurants in town. Then we will take our food to the highest spot in town, with a commanding 180-degree view of the Pacific Ocean and talk about the events of the day. The coronavirus has done a real number on the economy. As you might imagine no one wants to fly, rent a car, stay in a hotel or even venture into a restaurant. Demand for those services and lots of other things are down more than 90%. The economy has never taken a hit like this in the history of…well the economy. Like virtually every other subject in America, the entire coronavirus thing has been politicized. I hate politics. I hate partisan politics. I hate politics. Imagine that you’re on an African safari (above photo from trackchasing trip to Namibia). You’re staying at a luxurious camp where you can go outside anytime and anywhere you want. You can walk long distances to enjoy your vacation and see the wildlife. Then all of a sudden a pride of lions is spotted. The lions kill a couple of your fellow tourists. Everyone runs for the camp resort and stays inside for fear of their life. At first no one would even consider going outside the confines of the resort building because of the danger posed by the lions. Then after a few days no one has seen the lions. Where have the lions gone? Maybe they have left forever. Some people begin to venture outside just to get a little sunshine. Each day more people come outside and they go a little further away from the safety of the resort. Everyone knows the lions are still out there. They just haven’t been seen. People begin to rationalize that the danger isn’t as strong as it was after the lions killed the first tourists. Had the lions moved on to another Safari camp? Or are they just lying in wait until another unsuspecting tourist wandered within their grasp? This safari metaphor is meant to be somewhat like the coronavirus situation. When the coronavirus was first detected and then deaths from the virus were reported no one would venture outside of their home. Now three months later with no vaccine or cure in sight has the danger decreased? I am not a doctor. If I had to guess I would say the danger is about the same as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. The wisest choice might just be to stay home. However the government is beginning to allow businesses to “open up”. From a health standpoint that might not be a good idea. From an economy standpoint It’s a very good idea. With the above as background, I decided to make my first trackchasing trip in three months. People were being advised not to make non-essential airplane trips. There was nothing absolutely essential about my wanting to attend the racing event at the Tomah-Sparta Speedway in Tomah, Wisconsin. I was just getting a little tired of staying at the resort. I figured I could socially distance myself reasonably well. Therefore coming down with a case of Covid-19 seemed somewhat remote. Secretly, despite being in the age range that the government had warned people about I figured if I did come down with the COVID-19 I would survive it. If you’re reading this a few months from now you’ll know whether I was right or wrong. Prior to the onset of the pandemic, I had traveled virtually every week since I retired in 2002. I love travel. I never get tired of travel. A lot of people, knowing my pension for travel, had asked me how I was doing with the stay in place coronavirus directive. Honestly, I didn’t have a problem with it at all. I looked at it like this. I always traveled to see what was happening on the other side of the mountain. Now during the pandemic there was nothing happening on the other side of the mountain. I was happy to stay up until midnight each evening and sleep in until nearly 8 o’clock in the morning every day. However, as soon as a few race facilities begin to open up “on the other side of the mountain” staying at home didn’t seem quite as attractive. I figured if I was as careful as I could be I might as well try to get myself back into the hustle and bustle of airports, rental cars and hotels. I was surprised at how many things had changed in the short three months that I have been off the road. Change is constant. Change is typically gradual. If you don’t think about change for a while it sneaks up on you. During the “break” I acquired an Apple iPad. I already had an Apple iPhone and an Apple MacBook computer. To be perfectly honest I didn’t really think I needed an iPad. My iPhone has a 6-inch screen. My laptop has a 13-inch screen. Did I really need another device with a 10-inch screen? However, Carol needed an iPad replacement. We were also coming up on Mother’s Day. iPads were on sale at Best Buy. I figured I might as well throw an extra one in my basket for me. I try to travel as light as I possibly can on these trips. You might be amazed at how little I carry on what might be a 7-10 day trip, often to foreign countries. I travel light. I figured I could take the iPad on the road with me replacing my laptop. I would save a little weight. I would also effectively lose a keyboard. Keyboards are not as important to me as they once were. In today’s world, I use a program called Evernote to dictate much of what I used to type. This morning I left the house at 3 a.m. How early is 3 a.m. in my world? Well during the pandemic I’ve been getting up at about 7:30 a.m. each morning. That meant I was leaving the house 4 1/2 early hours earlier than I normally get up. What time would you be leaving the house if you left 4 1/2 hours earlier than your normal wake-up call? Today I would be traveling in the Randy Lewis Racing EECU Credit Union sponsored Tesla Model X. My Tesla Model X has something called, “autopilot”. What’s that? My Tesla autopilot system allows me to use several self-driving features. When I initiate autopilot my car will stay in its own lane drive at the speed control I set on an adaptive basis. That means if I snuck up at 70 mph behind someone driving 55 mph my car will slow and maintain a constant distance until the slowpoke gets out of the way or changes lanes. I can also tap the turn signal in autopilot. If the coast is clear my car will change lanes all by itself. I do need to rest my hand lightly on the steering wheel. The car really does everything I have described really well. If I am on surface streets the car will also slow and stop for stop signs and stoplights. Pretty soon I’ll be riding in the backseat? By the way, the folks who practice “electric car political bias” get freaked out when they see a YouTube video of a driver sleeping in a Tesla as it motors down the freeway. Sorry to report to all of these conspiracy theorists that this is not possible….unless the sleeping driver has duct-taped his or her hand to the steering wheel! If the driver takes his hand off the steering wheel for as little as 20-30 seconds the car gives a warning. If the driver’s hand is not placed back on the steering wheel then autopilot is automatically turned off. Are we good on that? Another change in the post-pandemic airplane flying world is that I would be brown-bagging it today. Airline passenger traffic is down more than 90%. That means that most restaurants and shops located in the airports are closed. I couldn’t chance getting on a three-hour plane ride without anything to eat or drink. Carol set me up with a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a robust order of Chinese potstickers and more. I estimate that I have flown on more than 7,000 airplane flights and stayed in more than 5,000 hotel rooms. Today I was about to do something on an airplane that I have never ever done in my life. I would be wearing a face mask. I wasn’t wearing a face mask to protect me. I was very wearing a mask to protect others. Some people think it’s a violation of their constitutional rights if they are required to wear a facemask. I could not disagree more. Where were the people who came up with that brilliant constitutional evaluation when 7-Eleven stores and lots of other retail outlets put up signs that said, “no shoes, no shirts, no service?” Was the requirement that someone actually had to wear a shirt or pair of shoes inside a store a violation of their constitutional rights? Please give me a break. Put on a face mask when required and when it’s a good idea to protect your neighbor. Don’t be obnoxious. I think some people could rightfully question why I would want to head out on this trackchasing trip. We were still in the pandemic. Deaths were still being reported. We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have a cure. I think anyone who thinks that actually has a pretty good point. Has the coronavirus become any less dangerous from when it was discovered in February to now? I don’t know. Maybe not. However, as I pointed out above, I think people have gotten used to the coronavirus scare. I’m reading more and more sources that say this is a respiratory transmitted disease. I’m thinking if I can do the proper types of social distancing and wear a mask where appropriate the risk is decreased a good deal. The graphs for coronavirus deaths in the United States have peaked and are declining. That’s a good sign. Nevertheless, I can’t guarantee that what I am doing is perfectly safe. Some of my friends tell me they are going to quarantine until we get a vaccine. That could be a very long time. The weird thing about all of this is very difficult to assess numerically the risk. I do know this. People quarantine because they don’t want to die. They don’t want their family members to die. That makes all the sense in the world to me. When I arrived at LAX I was a little bit surprised at how crowded the terminal was. It was then that I realized that Delta Airlines, which operates flights from terminals two and three at the airport, had closed down the larger terminal three activity. That meant that all of their five flights were taking off this morning from the smaller terminal 2. This made things look pretty busy. Everyone on today’s flight was required to wear a face mask. I had an entire row of seats to myself. Passengers were served a small bottle of water, a small bag of chips and a cookie all placed in a Ziploc plastic bag. The flight went fast while I watched AppleTV movies on my iPad. When I landed at today’s destination, Minneapolis, I was really surprised. Minneapolis has always been one of my favorite airports. Today at 12 noon it looks like a veritable ghost town. There just wasn’t anybody in the airport. I would say the Minneapolis is easily within the top five airports that I have visited most often while trackchasing. Today I used the executive aisle section at National Car Rental to pick out a Ford focus. A Ford wasn’t my first choice but they didn’t have any Chrysler 300s or Toyota Camrys or Nissan Altimas available. I took a moment to chat with a National Car Rental agent as I was checking out. He told me a month ago they did 128 rentals in a single day. Today they were going to do 380 Rentals. He told me those numbers were down from approximately 2,000 rentals per day they were doing at this time last year. The travel industry has been decimated by the coronavirus. The weather forecast for this part of the Midwest this weekend was perfect. At this point, I was happy that I had bypassed a trip to Alaska for today with their rainy forecast. I had a simple three-hour drive over to Tomah, Wisconsin and all afternoon to do it. I spent some of the time in a Wisconsin rest area getting in a power walk and speaking with our son J.J. about a few different financial planning ideas. He’s really on top of his game in this area. I learn a lot from him and I think he learns something from me as well. It’s one thing to work for your money but it’s entirely different thing to be smart enough to know how to manage your money. Tonight I would be seeing racing at the last permanent race facility in Wisconsin that I hadn’t seen up to this point. That leaves me with zero permanent track opportunities for the future in the Badger State. Wisconsin joins more than half of the other states in the country as being a state where I have no tracks that race on a weekly basis left to see. This entire situation is going to dramatically decrease the number of tracks I can visit for the first time in the future. If you notice that I am doing less trackchasing from this point forward please don’t think it’s me slowing down. It’s simply that I’ve seen almost all of the tracks in the United States that there are to see. The Tomah-Sparta Speedway would be the 94th different racetrack where I’ve seen racing in Wisconsin. As noted I have now seen racing at every permanent oval as well as a large amount of ice racing tracks and county fair tracks. Here’s a link to my complete list of Wisconsin tracks that I’ve seen over the years. Randy’s all-time Wisconsin track list Tonight was going to be a special treat people-wise at the Tomah-Sparta Speedway. A Facebook friend of mine, Matt Record, who is originally from Illinois but now lives in Wisconsin was coming over to meet me. He’s been following my trackchasing efforts for a couple of decades. We’ve been corresponding via Facebook over the past couple years. It would be fun to meet Matt and enjoy the races with him. Racing has only been opened up to spectator attendance because of the stay at home directive from the coronavirus at our nation’s small tracks for the last week or two. Tonight when I pulled into the speedway I was surprised to see such a large crowd. The Tomah-Sparta Speedway, formally known as the Excalibur Speedway, is a quarter-mile country asphalt track. The general admission price for spectators was a more than reasonable $10 U.S. Senior citizens could watch the races for even less, eight dollars. The ticket sign didn’t specify an age that fans needed to qualify for the reduced admission. Please don’t get me started on why the United States has a tradition of offering lower prices to senior citizens. I don’t buy the logic. I don’t agree with the logic. Here’s my thinking. Most senior citizens are retired. Some other seniors in this age bracket are just working to give themselves something to do. Maybe they add to their beer money fund but most senior citizens have decided not to work for real money. If someone says they have enough funds to not work why should we give those people a discount? Why don’t we give youngsters Joe and Mary Smith with three kids who are struggling to make ends meet while both work a family discount? I think folks in that demographic, need and deserve a discount more than these fat cat oldsters. Tonight’s track had a unique grandstand situation. Most folks sat on boards or metal “boards” that were attached to 2-foot high poles that were placed in the ground. Some of these seats definitely looked “used”. The track had a couple of excellent announcers that could be heard well over a decent sounding PA system. Having informative and entertaining announcers is one of the most important ingredients for success in the short track auto racing business in my opinion. Quite a few tracks don’t get the idea on the subject of track announcers. Tonight, the announcers gave me a robust trackchaser “mention”. That was nice of them. They seemed suitably impressed that I have been so busy over the past many years pursuing my hobby of trackchasing. One of them even said that he wouldn’t mind trying to do the same thing. I think he would like it. Meeting up with Matt Record was easy. For the next three hours, Matt and I sat together and talked racing as well as life in the Midwest. We even touched on a few financial topics. Matt grew up in northern Illinois where his home tracks centered around places like Grundy County and Santa Fe. If you’re a race fan from the Midwest those names will ring a bell. I was happy to hear that Matt’s employment in the packaging industry has not been affected by the coronavirus. His overtime had been decreased a little bit but he still had a job. That was good news. Matt is always on the lookout for new track opportunities for me in the greater Wisconsin and Illinois area. He’s already given me information on three new tracks that I wasn’t aware of that are expected to race in 2020. I thank Matt and everyone else in all corners of the world who take time out of their busy schedule to give me new track information. Those folks don’t know how much they are appreciated. Tonight’s racing action featured six or seven classes of low dollar stock cars and bandoleros. The car counts were skinny in some divisions with the modifieds bringing only five entries and the factory stocks six. However, the bandoleros and the six cylinders had fields of 15-18 cars. Don’t miss my video. It’s available behind the video tab of this post. Long ago I decided that hot laps and time trials with some of the least enjoyable aspects of a race program for a spectator. That’s why I do my best to avoid being in the stands for that. After having seen something like one million races I’m also beginning to feel the same way about heat races. This is especially true when there are only four and five cars in the heat race and the outcome doesn’t have much impact on their placement in the feature events. The race program started pretty much on time at 7:30 p.m. The entire affair was wrapped up by about 10:30 p.m. That’s the way a local show should be run. Somewhat surprisingly a five-car feature race can be entertaining when the first three cars are racing under a blanket for the lead. That’s what happened tonight. I was surprised the cars were able to stay off of each other as well as they did on this asphalt oval. They were very few yellow flag delays all evening. I was pleasantly rewarded when I saddled up to the bar and was able to order a can of Coors Light beer for just three bucks. Then I was a little shocked and dismayed when later in the program I ordered a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew and the price was $2.75. However, it was my choice to purchase it. The Tomah-Sparta Speedway is not a charitable organization. They are in business to provide a product and entertainment and then to make a profit at the end of the night. When the last checkered flag flew for the night it was time to say good night to my buddy Matt. I think Matt is about 35 years old plus or minus. It’s always nice when a person like myself, who is old enough to be Matt’s father, can spend three hours with someone of the younger generation just talking about our common interests. I love talking to people and enjoyed Matt‘s company a lot tonight. I felt a little empathy toward Matt as he headed home. His cell phone was nearly out of battery. That meant his GPS might not operate on the back roads of Wisconsin. I was glad to hear the next day that he made it home safely. When I left the Tomah-Sparta Speedway my firm plan was to drive three hours back toward Minneapolis. I planned to sleep in my car and try to be at the airport at 5:30 a.m. while I stood by for a flight that was departing at 7 a.m. for Dallas on Saturday morning. There were some problems with that plan. The main one turned out to be the fact that I might not be able to get on the airplane due to the seat limitations currently being imposed by the coronavirus. Last night I got about four hours of sleep before departing the house at 3 a.m. I wasn’t looking all that forward to sleeping for maybe three hours in the car on my first night out on the road. That’s when I came up with a new plan that saves some of that hassle. I pride myself on always having a plan. Nevertheless, I am always looking for a better plan. When I find that new better plan the original plan quickly gets put to the side. At that point, I’m all about executing the new plan. That’s exactly the opposite of how my mother operated. Once she had a plan it wasn’t changing come hell or high water. While I was driving back to Minneapolis I did some research on a couple of tracks that don’t race all that often but I that hadn’t seen in the past. One of those tracks was the What Cheer Raceway in What Cheer, Iowa. They race figure eights. All the way back in 2002 I had seen racing on What Cheer’s figure 8 track. Iowa has some of the best F8 racing of anywhere in the country. Sometime later What Cheer added oval track racing to their program. As long-time readers know trackchasers can count racing on oval, road course and figure 8 configurations. Did you also know that the state of Iowa has more permanent figure 8 tracks than any other state in the country? They also have the best big car figure 8 racing, along with Michigan and Nebraska, of anybody in our country. Some of these Iowa F8 tracks also have something called “cruiser” racing. The cool thing about cruiser racing is they do it on an oval track. This allows me, at many of these locations, to count a track visit to see racing on the figure 8 track and also on an oval track. Cruiser racing is much newer than figure 8 racing. That means I may have seen racing sometime in the past on the figure 8 configuration. Then I would have to come back for a second visit at the same location to see racing on the oval configuration. I’ve done that a few times. I knew that What Cheer only raced three or four times each season. What were the chances, they would be racing on Saturday, June 6, 2020? I had nothing to lose. I checked their schedule. The schedule said they WERE racing on June 6! I couldn’t believe my eyes. They also had an earlier event scheduled for May 9 but I believe that was canceled with the coronavirus. I checked out their Facebook page. There were a couple of posts from nearly a month ago saying the June 6 event was canceled. Bummer. However, in a reversal of fortune, there were a couple of posts in the last day or two on Facebook saying the June 6 race date was back on the schedule. Outstanding! The post didn’t say anything about cruiser racing but I just sort of assumed the cruisers would be part of the figure 8 program. That was a minorly risky assumption but one I was willing to make. As soon as I got that information I immediately pull off at an interstate state rest area. I replaced my GPS driving destination from Minneapolis to What Cheer, Iowa. The new route would take me through La Crosse, Wisconsin after a one hour drive. With that news, I made the executive decision to pick up a hotel in La Crosse rather than sleep overnight in my car. The new plan was already an improvement! While in the rest area I did a little searching on my iPhone with the Kayak.com site. I found the Quality Inn, which was highly rated for its hotel class, was available for just $54 for the night. I figured I would call the hotel and see if I could beat that price. The hotel was offering a higher rate of $64 per night. I told the clerk that I could book the room for just $54 with a travel agent. Then they would have to pay the travel agent fee on top of that. The clerk was not impressed. He told me they didn’t “price match”. This didn’t make any sense to me. If Priceline, where I ended up booking the room, took a 20% commission the hotel was going to net about $44. If they had price matched they would’ve gotten $54 from me. It’s amazing how some people don’t know how to run their business real well. And nearly 1 a.m. I pulled into the Quality Inn in La Crosse, Wisconsin. My check-in was fast. I had a decent but small room with all of the amenities that I needed. My first day back on the trackchasing trail following the coronavirus interlude has been a good one. I hope everyone reading this is well as their family and friends is not affected by this pandemic. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the problems that Minneapolis has had during the past week in addition to the coronavirus affecting everyone in the country and the world. I will say that I am a 100% supporter of the police. If I need help the police are pretty much the first people I’m going to call. However, any good thing when it is no longer a good thing becomes a bad thing. Sometimes a policeman will abuse his or her power. Anytime anyone abuses their power that’s not a good thing. The Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd for no good reason should be sent away and sent away for a very very long time. Police do not have an easy job. I don’t envy them. I never once in my lifetime have had a desire to be a policeman. However, being a detective might be fun! I will tell you that I have absolutely no sympathy or empathy for the Minneapolis police officer who did what he did. I’m sorry that a person like George Floyd or anyone in his position is affected by the actions of a police officer in this fashion. It’s wrong. It’s 100% wrong. I hope they throw the book at this guy and at the other policeman who stood by and did nothing. We have a tremendous racial divide in this country. I don’t think it’s getting any better by virtually any degree. I, like most everyone else, can confirm we have a major problem. I just don’t have any solutions. I don’t know that anyone really does. I don’t know that anyone really has any solutions that can truly work because if they did they probably would’ve been tried a long time ago. Good evening from Tomah, Wisconsin. Randy Lewis – 85 countries – 2,611 tracks. Wisconsin The Badger State This evening I saw racing at my 94th-lifetime track in the Badger State, yes, the Badger State. I hold the #4 trackchasing ranking in Wisconsin. Wisconsin ranks #7, amongst all the states, in tracks seen for me in the U.S. 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 Polite Wisconsinites went ahead and tamed down “For Christ’s Sake” and replaced it with a friendlier version. “For cripes sakes Glenda, where’s my brat and brewski?” Endearing, isn’t it? JUST THE FACTS 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 735 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries My nearest trackchasing competitor, a native of Belgium, has seen racing in more than 30 fewer countries compared to 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 production from the racing action today. Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. A nice night at the races after a three-month layoff due to the coronavirus 
Wisconsin sayings: “For Cripes Sakes!”
