Greetings from Victorville, California
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From the travels and adventures of the “World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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Wheel 2 Wheel Raceway
Dirt oval
Track #985
GREETINGS FROM VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA AND THE READERS RESPOND Louis S of Philadelphia writes,“You are amazing and an inspiration to all of us Randy. You’re the only person I know who would travel to an event with an expected attendance of 194,000 people without a ticket, purchase a seat that is in a great location at a discount and then try to sell it at a profit so you can upgrade. I enjoyed the pictures especially those at the Texas Motor Speedway. It’s hard to fathom 194,000 people in one place.” Louis thanks for the kinds words. The more people at the event the better the chance to score a good buy on tickets. I mentioned in the last report that I was certain that my readers could negotiate as well as and probably better than I can. Just this last week I learned from one of my Illinois readers about an excellent ticket buying experience that I wanted to share with you. Most of you know the Chicago White Sox won the World Series this year. It seems that just a few days before the Sox qualified for the World Series, they made a special ticket offer to their fans. The offer would guarantee World Series tickets for this year, if the buyer purchased season tickets for next year. Full season tickets would include 81 regular season home games. It turns out that our faithful Trackchaser Report reader took the White Sox up on this ticket offer. He got his World Series tickets and enjoyed the first game of the series. He then sold his four World Series seats to the second game for the tidy sum of $3,600 ($900 per seat!). This covered half of his $7,200 fee for four seats to 81 games in 2006. That’s a good deal! Way to go, P.B. A BIT OF MY TRACKCHASING PAST In trackchasing, there are many records for an individual trackchaser to shoot for. You can see the most figure 8 tracks, go to the most tracks in a lifetime, lead an individual state in tracks seen, see the most tracks in an individual season and many many more. I maintain that seeing the most tracks in a lifetime is the pinnacle of trackchasing success followed by the most tracks seen in one season record. However, many trackchasers cannot or do not want to try for these records so we have virtually an unlimited number of categories where someone can rank at or near the top in something. I hold a few records in trackchasing. The one I hold in highest esteem is pretty unusual. Until I came up with this category, I am pretty sure no one had ever even considered this a trackchasing achievement. Actually, I don’t even know the exact number of tracks I have but I know I rank #1 in this special corner of trackchasing. Which corner of trackchasing am I referring too? I’m talking about the category of “Most new tracks seen while being married” ranking. Nearly all of our leading trackchasers are single, divorced or married later in life and don’t have children. After reading about my travel schedule this may not surprise the reader. Most trackchasers have seen either a majority or a significant number of their racetracks while being single. What is the significance of this demographic? Trackchasers who met this criterion didn’t have to “ask permission.” They didn’t have family responsibilities. They could pretty much pick up and go whenever they wanted too. It’s nice to have that flexibility. I’ve seen 985 new tracks to date. Carol and I were married in 1972. My best guess is that I had been to just 18 tracks before we were married. I actually saw most of those tracks with Carol while we were dating. That means I have been to 967 tracks after exchanging wedding vows. I doubt very much whether any other trackchaser can come within 200 or even 300 tracks of that total. Of course, I have Carol to thank for this level of trackchasing achievement and her high level of cooperation. I have not always had the family freedom to roam the countryside in search of new tracks like I do now. For a 14 year period from age 31 (kids ages 2, 4, 6) to age 45 (kids age 16, 18, 20) I only saw 156 new tracks. That’s about 11 new tracks per year. I routinely visit more than 100 tracks per year now. Heck, I’ve already seen more tracks in 2005 than I saw during the entire period of 1981-1994. I sometimes wonder what types of overall trackchasing records I could have established if I had devoted as much time to trackchasing then as I do now. To be sure, family is 100 times more important than trackchasing and if I had it to do all over again I would do it exactly the same. I normally traveled on business 1-2 nights per week during almost my entire 30-year business career. I always tried to schedule my business trips so they would not interfere with any of the kid’s soccer games, school plays, and little league games, etc. I NEVER missed a game if I was home and with a little advance planning rarely missed a family activity due to business travel. On one occasion I had a business meeting conflict with one of the most important childhood activities a father can be involved in. I’m talking about the “Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.” This is the activity where father and son carve a racecar from a block of wood and race against other father/son combos in the Cub Scout pack. To be honest I can’t recall if the race was with son J.J. or Jim. I do recall that I had come up with a way to “shave” the plastic wheels, which made us lightning quick. I know it’s hard to believe I might try to get an advantage on the other fathers! On the preliminary night of the event we blew all of our competition away. The finals would be held a couple of weeks later and conflicted with a business meeting I had somewhere back east. I didn’t want to miss that Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. I wanted to be there to collect that trophy with my son. I managed to fly from our eastern meeting into Los Angeles. I landed about 5 p.m. and hustled down to Laguna Niguel in rush hour traffic. I barely made the start of our competition at 7 p.m. The cars had been impounded since the preliminaries. For some reason something had happened to our car (sabotage?). It did not run well and we lost the competition. Not only was I disappointed but I had to jump back in my car and drive another 65 miles back to LAX and board a flight that night to San Francisco. I had flown for six hours that day, been at the Cub Scout event for about 30 minutes and I was back on a plane for a Bay area meeting that night. So, you can see that that with this background an early or late flight to go trackchasing is not much of a burden on me. Nevertheless, I wish we had won that pinewood derby competition. Even though my main mission was the “family life”, I always thought that I was doing something special in trackchasing. Maybe I even ranked #1 in trackchasing, I didn’t know. Back in about 1994 (age 45), I read about the trackchasing hobby in a magazine or a racing paper. The story told of people doing exactly what I was doing. The story continued to say that if an individual had the trackchasing interest and wanted to be involved with this trackchasing group, they should simply send in their trackchasing list. I sent my list to the trackchasing organizer. At age 45, I had a meager 242 tracks. Apparently, those in control of trackchasing at that time didn’t think much of my list or my trackchasing total. I never heard back from anyone at all. It would be years later when I would come in contact with Will White while we were both members of a United Kingdom email group. It was at this point that I began comparing my totals with others in trackchasing. It took me 45 years to amass 242 tracks. In the last 11 years, I have seen an additional 743 tracks. I guess that proves that no matter how low your track total is today, you can always make big progress in a short amount of time. Maybe it also means that no matter how underdeveloped you are in whatever interests you, you can always come on strong in the end. Tomorrow will be a big trackchasing day for me. I will pull into a tie for 5thplace in the world of trackchasing. This will be the highest ranking I have ever had in trackchasing. PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS This brings us up to today. Although the trackchasing season is winding down, it’s not over yet. This weekend I will be heading east, but not too far east, with “Trackchasing’s First Mother” aka wife, Carol. We were originally scheduled to go to Spring Mountain Motorsports Park in Pahrump, Nevada today. Unfortunately, they cancelled last week due to the track “not getting the contract back to the sanctioning group in time”. The biggest positive from that cancellation is that it decreased our driving distance from about 700 miles to less than half that total. It’s hard to find last minute new track replacements in the final days of November. This was made even more difficult because I needed a California/Nevada Saturday track because we were locked into an inaugural event in the Palm Springs area for the next day on Sunday. Luckily, trackchaser commissioner, Will White had turned me onto a new track in my home state of California just a few weeks ago. He came up with both the Wheel 2 Wheel Raceway in Victorville, California and the Rialto Raceway in Rialto, California. Both of these tracks race “Speedway sprints”. This class is similar to the modified midgets of NorCal fame. I was shocked to hear about two new tracks operating within a two-hour drive of San Clemente that I had never heard of. This is extremely unusual. RACE TRACK STATS: WHEEL 2 WHEEL RACEWAY, VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA -TRACK #985 – 11/19/05 This California track is my 95th countable track to see in the state. This is my fourth separate trackchasing trip in the Golden state this year. I am in second position in the California state rankings. Gary Jacob continues to lead the state with an untouchable 149 tracks. This is Carol’s 60thtrack of the season. She continues to increase her record setting season total for “Most tracks seen by a woman in a single season.” This is her 51stcareer California new track. RACE TRACK NEWS: WHEEL 2 WHEEL RACEWAY, VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA Back in 1992, I visited the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds to see racing at the then named Victorville Grandstand Arena. It is now known as the Route 66 Raceway. My records indicate that the TQ midget program was the track’s first racing venture of any kind. The Wheel 2 Wheel Raceway is located just beyond turn one of the Route 66 Raceway. W2W Raceway looks to have had its beginnings as a “Speedway bike” racing venue. The track is a dirt oval, 1/8 mile in distance and banked at 7 degrees. Today was the last race of the season at W2W. We arrived a few minutes before the scheduled 3 p.m. start time. The track has wooden grandstands that run the entire length of the front stretch. The grandstands are 10 rows high with a clear view of all the racing action. The pit area is behind the grandstands and beyond turn four of the racetrack. The track also has lights and a small concession stand. Based upon the information I gathered from the track’s website (www.wheel2wheelraceway.com), I expected to see a program of “Speedway sprints” this afternoon. Carol and I were surprised, pleasantly, to see several other classes of motorsport racing on the card today. In addition to speedway sprints, W2W had flat track motorcycles, speedway bikes and flat go-karts racing. I was able to commandeer the last copy of the one page black and white schedule of events from the concession stand. I was really surprised and minorly alarmed to see that 50, yes 50, events were on today’s schedule. The first four events were for the three classes of speedway sprints and the one flat kart class. Events 5-8 were for “flat track bikes” and events 9-16 were for the “speedway bikes.” They repeated this round of racing a second time for events 17-32. The schedule then called for a “Dash for Cash” followed by events 17-40 for speedway bikes, events 41-44 for speedway sprints and go-karts. The speedway bikes came back for events 45-46 and the flat track bikes closed the program with events 47-50. They started on time and were fairly efficient with keeping the program moving. Nevertheless, we had been at the track for nearly three hours before we saw the checkered flag fall on event #20. This meant we had seen the three countable classes race in two events each. This included the restrictor plate speedway sprints (6), intermediate speedway sprints (8) and pro speedway sprints (6). During the first event the restrictor plate speedway sprints brought their six cars onto the track. With the drivers buckled in we couldn’t tell if we were seeing adults or children racing. Adults count in trackchasing; people other than adults (children?) do not. We don’t have a clear definition of what an adult is in our rules, but I won’t go there today. About the time we were asking ourselves if we were seeing a countable race, one of the speedway sprints got loose and did a series of end over end flips. It was surprising to see this from this class of car on this small of a track. The driver was knocked unconscious momentarily. When the medics got to him and were able to have him remove his helmet, we were treated to the sight of a 35-year-old man. The racing was countable and Carol’s woman leading 60thtrack was in the books. I did get a rather critical trackchaser mention from the track announcer. He read a couple of trackchasing notes I had provided and closed with this, “I guess you haven’t been chasing very hard since we’ve been here for five or six years.” Not chasing very hard! You have no idea! We enjoyed the motorcycle racing (not countable in trackchasing). We’ve seen the speedway bikes race at the Orange County Fairgrounds near our home. These are 500 cc single cylinder motorcycles that use methanol for fuel and race without any brakes whatsoever. The rider leans the bike over on its side and sticks his left leg out for balance and as a minor form of brake. These guys can take some wild spills and they did today as well. CAROL’S COMMENTS She thought the sound of the restrictor plate speedway sprints sounded like the motor of the San Clemente Police Department parking lady’s putt putt sound. She loved the #1 plate, green suited flat track motorcycle rider. He was small and looked to be no more than 10-12 years old. In his class, they handicapped him by some 120 yards and he still won. He even raced against adults and beat more than half of them. Carol also thought, “For a little place they ran a very efficient program.” She was disappointed we left before the $60 50/50 drawing. She loved the track’s sound system, which essentially was a big “boom box” but sounded great. When we arrived at the track it was a 73-degree blue-sky day aka “California perfect.” However, the grandstands sit in the shade. Three hours after we arrived, the sun went down, and we both got cold. Her all-time track highlight was a farm machine that “tilled” the track. This loosened up the dirt so the track could absorb the water sprayed on it by the track’s water truck. If you’ve seen the Boone Speedway “farm” their track you know what I mean. I think she simply liked to watch the driver of the farm implement circling the track without his shirt on. LIFETIME TRACKCHASER STANDINGS UPDATE: These worldwide trackchasers are within 100 tracks (plus or minus) of my current trackchaser total. Other notables 2005 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS * Trackchasing “New Tracks in One Season” record ** Trackchasing “New Tracks in One Season” record for women Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis Trackchasing’s #1 trackchaser of the 21stcentury I trackchase for the event not the outcome. Remember, it only costs about 85% more to go first class. CUMULATIVE TRAVEL DISTANCES: RENTAL CAR No rental car for this trip! We’ll be driving the Carol Lewis owned and Rolex sponsored Lexus LS 430. San Clemente, CA – Victorville, CA – 100 miles AIRPLANE No airplane ride on this trip either. This will be my 6thdriving trackchasing trip of the year out of the 27 total trips I have made. TRACK ADMSSION PRICES: Wheel 2 Wheel Raceway – $5 November 20 – Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport, Thermal, California November 26 or 27 – Walt James Stadium, Rosamond, California “TRACKCHASER CHEESE CHALLENGE 2005 PACE OF THE RACE REPORT BROUGHT TO YOU BY FRONTIER AIRLINES” This is a comparison of how many new tracks Ed Esser has seen in 2005 and how many tracks I saw through the same date in 2004 on my way to seeing, at then a record, 127 tracks. In order for Ed to win the “Cheese Challenge”, he must see 128 new tracks. Through November 19 – Ed – 127 tracks Randy – 112 tracks (in 2004) Prize: If Ed sees more than 128 new tracks in 2005, he wins a round-trip domestic airline ticket to anywhere Frontier Airlines flies. If he cannot see at least 128 new tracks then I win 10 pounds of the Wisconsin cheese of my choice. ** Perris Auto Speedway, Perris, California – February 5 ** Great Yarmouth Stadium (oval), Yarmouth, England – March 27 ** Tucson Raceway Park (outer oval), Tucson, Arizona – April 30 ** U.S. 30 Speedway (outer oval), Columbus, Nebraska – May 26 ** Rocky Mountain National Speedway (oval), Commerce City, Colorado – May 28 ** Hawkeye Downs (outer oval), Cedar Rapids, Iowa – June 3 ** 81 Speedway, Wichita, Kansas – July 21 ** Spartan Speedway, Mason (oval), Michigan – August 7 ** Galesburg Speedway (oval), Galesburg, Michigan – August 14 ** Peoria Speedway, Peoria, Illinois – September 5 ** Martinsville Speedway, Martinsville, Virginia – October 23 ** Texas Motor Speedway – 1.5M oval, Fort Worth, Texas – November 6 Editor’s note: Some photos were taken after this track visit. 
UPCOMING TRACKCHASING PLANS
Racetracks visited in 2005 (** not the first time to visit this track)