













DAY 1 – CAROL AND RANDY’S
TODAY’S HEADLINES
The trackchasing season is winding down, but I’m looking to my resources sprinkled across
Would you like to get an airline sponsorship deal like Carol and I have? …………..details in “The Trip”.
Carol is injured.…………..details in “The People”.
Is Carol really a dumb blonde?.…………..details in “Carol’s Comments”.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I would like to wish a happy birthday to long-time and loyal Trackchaser Report reader, Mike Skonicki (September 17). I would also like to thank Mike for his controversial political gifts he bestowed on Carol and me during my visit with him last week in
Click on this link or paste it in your browser to take you to today’s Trackchaser Report via my website at www.ranlayracing.com
http://www.ranlayracing.com/sep14162007.htm
GREETINGS FROM
WE WOKE UP IN
PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS
The Objective
It’s the middle of September. The trackchasing season is rapidly winding down. Most tracks in the
However, there is a reason those folks might decide to sit the next few months out. Why would that be? There aren’t many races going on! Once kids go back to school and the nighttime temperatures begin to fall, tracks start shutting down for the winter.
We have one fellow who usually makes an announcement about this time that he is going to dramatically curtail his trackchasing schedule. He makes it sound as if he practicing some form of discipline or restraint. He never mentions that it’s not really his choice, but the lack of racing that will force him to cut back.
I am affected by the same phenomenon. Given the fact that I have seen hundreds of tracks more than most other chasers, my options aren’t too great either during the October-February period. This just creates more of a challenge for the staffers at RANLAY Racing to come up with those elusive tracks that will be racing during the next few months.
I would like to give a shout out to the several “independent contractors” who provide me with race dates in their local areas. You now who you are. In some cases, I couldn’t list your name for fear of recrimination from your neighbors. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t do it without you guys and really appreciate your help. Thank you!
I do have several more tracks planned for the balance of 2007. I’m in active negotiations for one and maybe two NEW foreign country track visits. Feelers are also being put out regarding ice-racing events. I have a great network of supporters in the Northeast and
As I told Paul Weisel at the beginning of the year, I’m going to try to see as many tracks as I possibly can. If I don’t go trackchasing, it won’t be because of some form of restraint on my part. It will be because I can’t find a place to go trackchasing.
The Trip
We first attracted our trackchasing airlines sponsorship from SkyWest Airlines (including Delta Connection and United Express) about one year ago. Actually, we took our first flight with this support on September 29, 2006 (Desert Thunder Raceway, Price,
I write about a number of subjects, most of which relate to trackchasing, in the Trackchaser Report. Since most of my readers are NOT trackchasers, I hope you can take some of my ideas and reapply them to your favorite hobbies. Trying to be efficient and cost-effective are not ideas that are unique to trackchasing. Those topics can be applied to just about everything you do in your life. I hope you see some reapplication opportunities for the things I mention with the things that YOU do.
Did you know that you could gain airline sponsorships just as I have? Here are a couple of ways you might get the same results.
This is the way I did it. When son J.J. was undergoing a serious life threatening illness, I wanted to perk up his spirits. He had always wanted to get his pilot’s license. I plunked down $10,000 for his pilot’s training and VFR license. This was more than ten years ago. It wasn’t until recently that J.J. decided to pursue an airline career that started with his training back in the mid-90s. I never expected my “investment” to pay off as it has.
Maybe you don’t have a child with an interest in flying. Don’t worry. Just drive out to your local airport and ask the airlines for a part-time job application. You might just be able to work a few hours a week and be eligible for employee flight benefits. Then you can begin to mount a challenge in the trackchasing wars. I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor.
The People
I’ve told you in the past that Carol is a real trooper. She does all the work at our house and I just provide the funding. I know I’ve said this in the past, but just in case you missed this particular point, I will repeat it. I am willing to do chores and the like at home, I’m just not permitted too.
Apparently, I am more cut out for a managerial or supervisory position. Although I have tried to do chores, my work has never passed Carol’s muster. She almost always redoes whatever I have done to meet her satisfaction (she disputes this, but she is wrong). We’ve come to an agreement that it’s best if I “just stay on the sidelines” while she does ALL the work in our household including preparing the meals, washing, cleaning, paying the bills, home maintenance and the like. Please do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am NOT bragging about this, I am only providing a description about what goes on in our house.
Without chores or any homebound responsibilities I am free to trackchase (or travel, or golf, or whatever) to my heart’s content. However, I am always looking for ways to get Carol away from a hot stove or a dirty window. This often takes the form of trackchasing but not always.
Carol will be accompanying me on this weekend’s trip. I figured she might as well come along for two reasons. First, she just had surgery on her foot yesterday. What good would she be around the house with a bad foot? She had the full special “shoe” fitted so that she can hobble around. I figured I could use her disability to let us board the plane first on our trip. I will do my best to walk slowly through airports, etc this weekend so that she can keep up.
The second reason is that she is in a battle with a woman from
Editor’s note: Carol advised me not to write the above paragraph. She said, “They read these reports don’t they? That just puts a little spark under their butt, doesn’t it.” A little spark never hurt anybody.
Nevertheless, I maintain that Carol is a real trooper. No, she won’t be able to get any household chores done this weekend, but we expect to have a fun time “on the road”.
STATE RANKINGS
This was my eighth lifetime track to see in the Potato state. This increases my lead over second place chaser Allan Brown who has seen six tracks here. This is Trackchasing’s First Mother’s fifth
Some folks might ask why I would continue to trackchase in
RACE REVIEW
NOISE PARK RACEWAY,
We pulled into
The track’s website told us the racing would begin at 7 p.m. We were not aware of any interesting tourist attractions in the area, so we decided to take in a movie. “Dusty” our reliable portable GPS unit gave us the movie locations. My cell phone told me about show times. We picked The Brave One starring Jody Foster. I predict her performance will yield an Oscar nomination. I fully supported her vigilante problem-solving approach. Carol did not.
With the track being on the far west of town by about eight miles and the movie theatre being on the far east of town, we arrived late to the track at about 7:15 p.m. I never like to be late for the start. Before I’ve ever seen the program, I am anticipating a fine night of racing that will begin on time. I do not feel the same about leaving a program before it is fully completed. By that time, I have seen what the show has to offer and more often than not have decided it is not worthy of my time.
The trackchasing forum has had some rather strong comments about the quality of racing we trackchasers see in today’s “racing” world. One chaser has even gone so far as to call most non-oval racing as “crap”. Of course, that word can mean one thing to one person and something else to another. I hope my use of that word in this Trackchaser Report is not offensive to anyone.
I have begun to classify tracks into two categories, permanent and temporary. Permanent tracks would be your traditional ovals and road courses. Temporary tracks would be most figure 8, and many small time ovals and road courses at county fairs and such.
I don’t know if I would use the word “crap” to describe racing shows or not. Maybe if I was in a bad mood, which doesn’t happen very often, I would. I would say that good racing to me means high speeds, close racing with a good deal of passing for position. Of course, high speeds would be relative. At Daytona, you’re talking 200 M.P.H. At the quarter mile dirt oval that defines the
I would say that most temporary tracks do not meet my standards for good racing. I would say that most permanent tracks do but certainly not for every race. I’m not a big one for saying racing at permanent tracks was better in the past than it is today. I think people just remember it that way.
Tonight’s racing on the 3/8-mile dirt oval was for the most part “crap” if that’s a word in your vocabulary. The track is permanent proving that permanent tracks can provide a poor show. Nevertheless, the people we encountered were above average on the nice side, so that will temper my comments about their program.
With a scheduled starting time of 7 p.m., did they already have four heat races completed by the time we arrived at 7:15 p.m.? No, they did not. Actually, they did not run their first countable race until 8:33 p.m.! This forced me to enforce a curfew of 10 p.m. on the
From looking at the previous results on the internet, I knew the car counts would be small. The track did not disappoint in this expectation. The modifieds had a massive car count of fifteen, much more than most of the previous racing nights this season. However, the pure stocks (5), hornets (3), mini-stocks (1) and super stocks (3) more than met my pre-race car count expectations.
It was 82 degrees at 7:15 when we arrived. The predicted low for the night was 43 degrees! That’s how they do it in the rural far west. They say it’s good sleeping weather. It was 58 degrees when we left NPR at 10:01 p.m. We stayed that extra minute beyond plan so we could watch the completion of the heart-stopping five car pure stock feature.
The track is located out in the boonies in what we SoCalers call the “high desert”. We were greeted by an elderly ticket taker at the edge of the track property. He leaned in the window and said, “Anybody in here more than 63?” No, political correctness is not a virtue of far west rural people. I should know as my in-laws came from this environment. And no, we did not get a senior discount and won’t for a number of years at NPR.
There was a series of 10 row high wooden and aluminum grandstands. We sat directly in front of a speaker, so we could hear the announcer very well. The announcer appeared to be a jack-of-all-trades. He ran the driver’s meeting, held the pill jar, cajoled the racers to the track and called the races.
I met him during the hour and more delay while we were at the track and they weren’t racing. I told him my trackchaser story. He seemed to be “non-plussed”. He mentioned that “Bill” their flagman had been to many tracks as well, but “maybe not as many as you have”. This was a clear signal to me that he “wasn’t tracking” but I encounter that a lot. We later learned that “Bill” had been to 138 tracks.
Tonight was Carol’s 340th lifetime track. She said, “Maybe you should just give the track my name and track total. It sounds so much more believable.” Yes, Carol is a logical woman.
At intermission, much to my surprise, the announcer went into a long speech centered on my press release. He even mentioned the full names and residential locations of all top five worldwide trackchasers that I provide to every track on nearly each of my visits. The announcement was so long that after the announcer mentioned my email address, we heard an elderly woman behind us say, “enough already”.
Of course, we didn’t know for sure what the motivation of this comment might be. Was she unhappy with having to hear the names and locations of those Eastern-based trackchasers? Was she rebelling against technology when the announcer mentioned my website address? On the other hand, was she simply fed up with a program that was running woefully behind schedule?
In addition to the classes already mentioned there were three classes racing on a small dirt inner oval. These were all caged go-karts, some with wings. These racing machines were all driven by children. That made their racing uncountable by trackchaser rules.
Before we could see our first heat race at 8:33 p.m., did I mention this was more than an hour and a half behind the scheduled start time, we had to “meet the drivers”. This involved having all 27 drivers park their car on the front straight. Then each was introduced to the crowd. I’m guessing most of these folks didn’t have to be anywhere soon.
I did hear one of the pure stock drivers say, when the hornets were being introduced, “I’ve got more money invested in tires than they do in their entire car”. Please! I wanted to yell at him, “I’ve got more invested in my portable GPS unit than your do in your pure stock” but Carol restrained me.
The announcer did try to tell the crowd that they had been waiting on “two track personnel” to arrive. He told us these folks were the scorers. Almost every race we saw tonight had five cars or less. How difficult is it to score five cars?
I had a brief discussion with a man working the concession stand regarding the late start. He told me that with the “large modified car count” it took extra time to get everyone checked in.
Regardless of a late starting time or small car counts, at least the lights were bad. Yep! You couldn’t see much in the turns. One time a car became stalled up in turns one and two and the flagman didn’t see him until the cars had raced past the disabled car at full speed for a lap.
All of the above sounds like we didn’t have a good time, but we did. We didn’t have to be anywhere that quickly. In the end, it was the falling temperatures (58 degrees) and strong tail winds (15-20 M.P.H.) that drove us from our seats. We had seen four main events. All of the above made us feel like we got our money’s worth. The overriding factor was that the people we met were nice.
CAROL’S COMMENTS
In this section of the Trackchaser Report, I will reveal to you certain statements that Carol made during the night that you might find interesting. As an example, Carol told me, “Kristy (our daughter) told me that people that read ‘Carol’s comments’ probably think you’re a nice person but slightly retarded”. Of course, Carol is a college graduate. Her major? Math. She graduated with nearly a straight “A” average. Yes, in some ways, she can be sort of a dumb blond, but she knows an isosceles triangle from an equilateral triangle and she knows how to spell them! And yes, she's MY dumb blond.
When I informed her that tonight’s low temperature was going to be 43 degrees, she asked, “It’s not going to drop to 43 before we see our first countable race is it?” I couldn’t promise anything.
Our movie at the theatre wrapped up tonight at 6:45 p.m. I leaned over at said to Carol, “Would it be O.K. if we just watched this movie and went out to dinner? We can skip the race tonight”. If looks could kill, I wouldn’t be writing this Trackchaser Report to you right now. Yes, I have to be persuasive to get her out on the trackchasing trail, but once she’s out here she becomes as competitive as any East coasted based trackchaser I have ever seen.
“I hope people don’t read your tag line and get mad at you”. She’s always thinking about my welfare. You can’t beat that quality when you’re picking a spouse.
Her final comment was “
RENTAL CAR UPDATE
The National Rental car location in
We drove the Chevy Impala 507 miles. I paid an average price of just $2.77 per gallon. The Chevy gave us 32.9 M.P.G. in fuel mileage at a cost of 8.4 cents per mile. The car cost 12.8 cents per mile to rent, all taxes included.
Thanks for reading about my trackchasing,
Randy Lewis
Jesus loves you, but I’m his favorite.
AIRPLANE
Orange County, CA – Salt Lake City, UT – 588 miles
RENTAL CAR –
Salt
TRACK ADMSSION PRICES:
RANKINGS
LIFETIME TRACKCHASER STANDINGS UPDATE:
There are no trackchasers currently within 100 tracks of my lifetime total.
1. Randy Lewis,
Other notables
These worldwide trackchasers are within 10 tracks (plus or minus) of Carol’s current trackchaser total.
28. Max Allender,
29. Carol Lewis,
30. Tom Schmeh,
2007 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS
1. Randy Lewis,
2. Roland Vanden Eynde,
3. Ed Esser,
4. Mike Knappenberger,
5. Pam Smith, Effort,
6. Paul Weisel,
7. Carol Lewis,
8. Guy Smith, Effort,
9. Gordon Killian, Sinking Springs,
10. Roger Ferrell,
Tracks have been reported by 40 different worldwide trackchasers this season.
LIFETIME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY STANDINGS
2007 (current thru 9/12/07)**
1. Randy Lewis,
2. Gordon Killian, Sinking Springs,
3. Allan Brown,
Some of the data in this report comes from www.trackchaser.net
and my Garmin GPS
The primary purpose of this trip is not trackchasing, it is football. Yep! It UCLA Bruin football. You’ll learn more about that in the next report.
1,139. Meremere Dirt Track Club,
1,140. Meeanee Speedway,
1,141. Top of the South Speedway,
1,142. Woodford Glen Speedway,
1,143. Robertson Holden International
1,144.
1,145.
1,146. Angels Stadium of
1,147. Angels Stadium of
1,148.
1,149.
1,150. Grand Prix De Lanaudiere,
1,151. Ste-Eulalie Ice Track,
1,152. St Guillaume, St
1,153.
1,154.
1,155. Northeast Pond Ice Track,
1,156. Lee Pond Ice Track,
1,157. New Hendry Country
1,158.
1,159. Honeoye Lake Ice Track – Road Course,
1,160.
1,161.
1,162. Dawgwood Speedway,
1,163. Toccoa Speedway,
1,164. Tazewell Speedway,
1,165.
1,166. Dacosa Speedway,
1,167. Swinging Bridge Raceway,
1,168.
1,169. Foothills Raceway,
1,170. Mileback Speedway,
1,171. Grand Prix of
1,172. Vegas Grand Prix,
1,173.
1,174. Low Country Kartway,
1,175. Dillon Motor
1,176. Valley Dirt Riders,
1,177.
1,178. Sertoma Speedway,
1,179.
1,180.
1,181. Hollywood Hills
1,182. Meridian
1,183.
1,184. Rocky Mountain Raceways (oval),
1,185. Rocky Mountain Raceways (figure 8),
1,186. Modoc
1,187.
1,188.
1,189. Fairplex at the
1,190. Lowes Motor
1,191. Lowes Motor
1,192.
**
1,193. Thunderbird Stadium (figure 8),
1,194. Thunderbird Stadium (oval),
1,195. Whispering
1,196.
1,197.
1,198.
1,199.
1,200. Castrol Raceway,
1,201. Hidden
1,202. Boyd’s
1,203. Fayette County Fairgrounds,
1,204.
1,205.
1,206. Vinton Speedway,
1,207. Hilltop
1,208. I-70
1,209. L A Raceway, La Monte,
1,210. Valley
1,211.
1,212.
**
** Iowa
1,213.
**
1,214. Kart Kanyon Raceway, Aztec,
1,215. Aztec
1,216. Sunvalley Speedway,
1,217.
1,218.
1,219. Hunterstown Speedway,
1,220. Shippensburg Speedway,
**
1,221. Blanket Hill
1,222.
1,223.
1,224. Iowa
1,225.
1,226.
1,227.
1,228. Lycoming County Fairgrounds (figure 8),
1,229.
1,230.
1,231. Van Buren County Youth Fairgrounds (road course),
1,232. High Banks
1,233. High Banks
1,234. SOIL MX, Bone Gap,
1,235. Western
** Windy Hollow
1,236. Windy Hollow
1,237.
1,238.
1,239. BMP
1,240. Sweetwater County Fairgrounds (figure 8),
1,241.
1,242. Maxville Fire Department Figure 8 Course,
1,243.
1,244. Iowa
1,245. Sarpy County Fair & Rodeo Arena (figure 8),
1,246. Newaygo County Fairgrounds (figure 8),