Greetings from Marysville, California
From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
Twins Cities Speedway aka
Marysville Raceway Park
Lifetime Track #224
THE EVENT From the little city by the sea to ‘Gold Rush’ territory. I woke up this morning at home in the “little city by the sea” San Clemente, California. I went to sleep in Red Bluff, California. Tonight I would racechase in Marysville, California. This is how the day turned out. Marysville is a town of about 12,000 residents located in Yuba County. This is 1850s “Gold Rush” territory. At that time Marysville was one of the largest cities in California. Marysville was home to a significant Chinese American community in the 1860s, but it violently drove all its Chinese American residents out of town in February 1886. The Chinese American population has not recovered since. It gets warm here in the summer. Average high temps for July at 95 degrees. Famous people from Marysville are limited to, among others, Joe Rose Miami Dolphins football player from the 1980s. Not my first visit to Marysville. I last went to the now named Marysville Raceway Park back in 1993. Of course that was more than 30 years ago when the track was named Twin Cities Speedway. Not only was that visit more than 30 years ago it was almost TWO THOUSAND tracks ago! What happened the first time? Forgive me if I have no specific memory of that long ago track visit. My records tell me I showed up for a sprint car event on Thursday, July 1, 1993. Brent Kaeding in #69 was the feature winter. I didn’t see any tracks immediately before or after my visit to Marysville. What did that mean? I discovered a Thursday night race at a new track just 500 miles or so from my home and went for it. Was the master plan to see winged sprint cars? Fast forward 31 years. I was going back to Marysville for some more sprint car racing. Was this some latent desire to see sprint cars or to return to a track I had already visited? Was I just a race fan? No, not really. This was my true motive. If point of fact until a day before I was scheduled to fly to Northern California for some other weekend trackchasing business Marysville was not on the agenda. My original plan called for me to fly up to Sacramento on Saturday morning. I would trackchase on both Saturday and Sunday afternoon and scoot back to San Clemente on Sunday night. However, I began to wonder. What if my early Saturday morning flight was delayed? I might miss Saturday afternoon’s racing. Maybe it would be better to fly up to NorCal on Friday. Then I got to thinking some more. Sometimes all this thinkin’ just makes my brain tired….but I get over it. If I was going to fly up on Friday would anybody be racing in the greater Sacto (Sacramento) area on Friday night? Bingo! The California Civil War winged sprint car series was racing on Friday night. Perfect. Marysville was just 40 miles north of Sacramento. Then from Marysville it was just another 100 miles or so up to Red Bluff, California site of my weekend trackchasing plan. It’s funny how one unrelated thing leads to another. That’s how these trips sometimes come about. Aztecville would have to wait. I really had my heart set on trackchasing in Carlsbad, New Mexico. If I could knock off the Roadrunner Speedway in Carlsbad I could say I’ve seen every active New Mexico track. I’ve also see a few more that have bitten the dust since my last visit. However the rain forecast for their Saturday race day has been bad for several days. On Friday morning the chance of rain for Saturday in Carlsbad was 80%. There was no way I was going all the way to New Mexico with that high of a rain probability. Randy Lewis Racing Research Department….help! I asked the Randy Lewis Racing research department to find me something else. I preferred to stay in the far west. The RLR group came up with a perfect plan. They soon booked me for not one but two new tracks in Northern California. That’s not easy to do considering I’ve already seen 135 tracks in the Golden state. Will the madness never end? Up until this weekend I had seen 14 different new tracks. Eight of them I had never heard of until the start of the season! That is what is so amazing about my trackchasing hobby. Tracks are popping up right and left just like a whack a mole game. I think I have about 600-700 more tracks to see. However, using the above ratio, that means there are another 350 tracks that will “popup” as I try to see the next 700. Then while I’m trying to see those 350 popup tracks ANOTHER 150 tracks will show their entry gates. Is 3,000 tracks really out of the question? Let’s get this party started. I was soon out the door of my modest ocean front cottage at a very reasonable 7:30 a.m. I caught a short one hour flight from Los Angeles to Sacramento at 10:30 a.m. I arrived into the brand-new Southwest Airlines terminal in Sacramento at about noon. It would have taken me eight hours to drive from San Clemente to Red Bluff, California site of the weekend’s racing. That was just a little further than I wanted to drive. As it was I would still have to drive one hour from San Clemente to the LAX airport. Once in Sacramento I would need to drive another two hours north to Red Bluff. By flying for one hour I was saving five hours of driving time. That’s about my breakeven point for flying vs. driving. Strategery. It seems like I’ve had a lot of trips lately where I landed in the airport and had to wait for 2 to 4 hours before I could pick up my rental car. I do that in order to save an extra day’s rental expense when I’m only going to have the car for a couple of hours into the extra day. I had forgotten the significance of Friday for the working man/woman. Tonight I grabbed my normal National Car Rental Hyundai Sonata. I quickly headed to Marysville a trip of only 40 miles. The Marysville Raceway Park website told me that hot laps would begin at six with racing at 6:30. That seemed like a mighty early starting time for a Friday night race. Folks have to get the #$%^$ together after working for the man all day. Friday night traffic can be a hassle too. THE RACING Marysville Raceway Park – Marysville, California Was the Marysville track trying to trick me or was this just an oversight? What they didn’t tell me on the web site was that there would also be time trials for the sprint cars. I don’t like time trials. I don’t know anybody that does except the fastest drivers. Nevertheless they ran them off rather quickly. The actual racing program began at 7 p.m. That wasn’t bad at all. Most California tracks are located at county fairgrounds. Those fairgrounds have curfews. That made starting at 7 p.m. a good idea. Two classes – good idea. There were just two classes racing tonight. I liked that idea. The 360 California Civil War winged sprint cars were the featured attraction. The other class was a four cylinder winged sprint car group. They brought just seven cars to the party. The government is wanting me to work for them. When I arrived in the parking lot I had an important phone call to make. A few weeks ago I had received a summons for jury duty. In California they make you call in every day for a week see if you are going to be needed. I’ve gone through this process a few times. I’ve never been selected for a jury. I’m not sure I would be a good juror. I don’t have a lot of patience for stupid people. Most people who require a jury to just their future are stupid people. I don’t like stupid. I wouldn’t mind being on a jury if I had some free time. However, as you might have noticed I never have any free time! I called tonight. Luckily they don’t need me on Monday. Why is that lucky? I already had a golf outing set for Monday. Hey Uncle Sam….I’m a busy guy. I hope they don’t need me next Friday either. I am planning to fly out on my next trackchasing trip Thursday evening. I’ll keep you posted about that. Tonight’s Raceway. Marysville Raceway Park is a well-maintained older little quarter mile dirt bullring. That’s really my favorite type of track. The facility offers a huge grandstand that was mostly filled tonight. I’m not a big fan of winged sprint cars. Why? They don’t pass. When there is no passing there is no drama. I want drama when I go to the track. However, if I have to see winged sprinters, I prefer to see them on a quarter-mile banked track. The California Civil War sprint car group brought some 27 racers to Marysville. That’s a good sized field nowadays. They would run three heat races, a dash, and a B main. The evening finale, the A main would offer 22 cars in a 30-lap race. Don’t even get me started. Tonight’s admission price for “regular” adults was $17. I am an adult but I didn’t have to pay the regular price. Ticket prices for seniors was just $13, a four-dollar savings from what ‘youngsters’ were paying. Heck I could buy two double cheeseburgers and a large Diet Coke at McDonalds for just about four bucks. Can we get something straight just between us? I don’t work for a living. Why? Because I saved my money and invested it well. I retired at age 53. Many of my fellow trackchasers still work for the man well past my retirement age. I’ve been retired for thirteen years…..and loved every minute of it. The earlier you retire the more time you’ll have to enjoy retirement. That figures don’t it? I don’t have a lot of money but I have enough that I don’t have to work for money. Why are 99% of the people who do work working? Because they need the money! How many people aged 25-55 are retired? Not very many. Why? Because they need the money! Stick with me for just a few more seconds. Let’s try to figure this out. A lot more seniors are retired (because they don’t need the money) than folks who are younger than the ‘senior’ age. Why are track promoters, and lots of other businesses, giving a discount to the people who is many cases have retired because they don’t need to work for money? Why are the younger people forced to pay higher prices when they are working….because they need the money? Are senior citizens so cranky they will break down the doors of the promoter if they are not given a discount? Are young people so happy they have a job and a few bucks in their pocket they are willing to pay higher prices? When you come up with an answer leave it at the bottom of this post. Groceries. The main concession stand offered traditional racetrack food. What is traditional racetrack food? Hamburgers, hot dogs, nachos, popcorn soft drinks make up typical offerings at local racetracks. However there was a kettle corn concession right behind my grandstand seating position. The wind blew the scent of fresh cooked kettle corn past me all night. I thought I was working in a candy factory! I’m trying to eat a little bit less especially of racing food. It took all of my willpower not to buy at least a small bag of kettle corn. A little long for my tastes. Tonight’s show lasted only three hours. That’s fairly short for a full permanent oval track race program. Nevertheless, I found the heat racing rather tedious. I prefer an entertainment program to last two hours. That’s the case for college basketball games, movies and theatrical productions in most cases. Those are some of my most favorite entertainment venues. Maybe I like them because the program is guaranteed to last only two hours or so. Excellent feature racing. O.K., the seven-car four-cylinder feature event wasn’t much. They had a two spin and your out rule. The 20-lap feature was checkered after about 10 laps with only two cars on the track. There were also a couple of flips with the big sprinters that slowed the program a bit. I will say the A feature was very competitive and entertaining. With 22 cars starting on such a small track there was a good deal of lapped traffic being passed by the leaders. That’s always fun. The top 2-3 cars diced their way through the field for most of the last half of the race. AFTER THE RACES It was time to get up and go. I had a seat in the top row of a nearly full grandstand. When the checkered flag flew on the last race of the night I was still one of the first people getting to their car in a crowded parking lot. That allowed me to beat most of the traffic out of the track. I had a one and a half hour drive up to my hotel in Red Bluff, California. Today I had a full day of traveling, listening to NCAA college basketball tournament games and watching races. Tomorrow morning UCLA plays the University of Alabama at Birmingham at 9 a.m. I’ll be watching. After tomorrow’s game I’ll be heading out for the afternoon’s UTV racing. I’m looking forward to that. California California The Golden state This evening I made a re-visit to a Golden state track, yes a Golden state track. I’ve seen 135 lifetime California tracks. 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 California sayings: I’ll have my In N Out burger ‘animal style’. QUICK FACTS AIRPLANE Los Angeles, CA (LAX) – Sacramento, CA (SMF) – 373 miles RENTAL CAR #1 Sacramento International Airport – trip begins Marysville, CA TRACK ADMISSION PRICES: Marysville Raceway Park – $13 senior rate ($4 savings off of regular adult admission – oh my!) 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 Marysville Raceway Park…the full-length movie
. . The Marysville Raceway Park….the movie trailer
