Randy Lewis
World's #1 Ranked Trackchaser
BAY OF GREEN BAY ICE TRACK (OVAL), MARINETTE, WISCONSIN
RANLAY RACING TRACKCHASER REPORT
DAY 1 – HOW COLD WILL IT GET TRACKCHASING TOUR
Editor’s note: This trip was originally planned to include a Saturday ice race in
TODAY’S HEADLINES
Will my fellow competitors be gaining on me in the 2008 trackchaser rankings anytime soon?...................more in “The Objective”.
There comes a time when it is a good idea to give thought to new ideas that might currently be foreign to you. …………..details in “The Trip”.
I am always amazed at how variable my customer service experiences can be.…………..details in “The People”.
Click on this link or paste it in your browser to take you to today’s Trackchaser Report via my website at
http://www.ranlayracing.com/february9102008.htm
GREETINGS FROM
I WOKE UP IN
PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS
The Objective
I have gotten off to a fast start in the 2008 trackchasing season. “But, Randy, you told us in your 2007 annual report that you would not be focusing on a fifth straight trackchasing championship, what gives?”, the concerned and ardent reader of the Trackchaser Report might ask.
To set the record straight I will repeat what I said about this subject in my 2007 Annual Trackchaser Report. I have a number of commitments that will likely limit the number of tracks I will see in 2008. I intend to do a good deal of foreign travel this year in search of new trackchasing countries. Often this, like my trip to
Carol and I also have personal commitments to friends for their weddings and other activities. I have already committed to two multi-day golf outings with friends. Additionally, I just learned that UCLA will have seven home football games this year. That’s one more than usual. This means, pending my contractual agreements with Carol on this subject that I will have seven weekends in the fall where I will be tethered to the Rose Bowl on Saturdays.
Alas, I don’t want my fellow competitors to get their hopes up. I still plan to aggressively trackchase. As I stated in my annual report, given all of my other 2008 non-trackchasing commitments and interests, I still expect to earn a podium finish, somewhere in the top three in 2008.
In order to pull that off, I need to build up a lead so when I do back off later in the year, my fellow competitors will not go rushing past me in the 2008 trackchaser standings. The trackchasers, who are likely to best me in 2008, are not current threats in the lifetime trackchasing standings. This means I can still finish in the top three this year and make nice gains against those other fellow competitors in the lifetime standings.
The Trip
On the night before a trackchasing trip, Carol and I try to go to bed early. We do this regardless of whether she is coming along on the adventure or not. I normally leave my house between 4-5 a.m. on these trips. We both understand we need to be as well rested as possible in order to both enjoy and make good decisions once the trip begins.
When I went to bed last night, I had my bags completely packed. My computer was shut down and placed in my new Swiss Army soft sided leather briefcase. As I lay in bed, it dawned on me! I had not made a bid on a Priceline rental car. Yes, it’s hard to leave trackchasing business at the office.
I briefly excused myself from the bedroom and went next door into my office. I fired up the laptop. I already had a reservation with the National Rental Car Company. It called for a full-sized car for three days at $121 all taxes included. That wasn’t a bad rate. However, unless I at least made a bid or two at Priceline I wouldn’t know if it was the best I could do.
Time was of the essence as well. When I bid for a hotel on Priceline, I can do so on the same day I need the room as late as 11 p.m. Eastern time. However, it has been my experience, that Priceline does not allow a customer to “name your own price” on the same day a car needs to be rented. I guess, with the ease of internet access these days, they don’t want someone (like me!) landing at the airport and then at the last minute shopping for a rental car to replace the car reservation they already have.
As I mentioned, I already had a three-day reservation for $121. I needed to beat that by $20-30 or more to make my time worthwhile. By making a Priceline reservation a day in advance I was taking a risk. What’s the risk? I would be flying standby. If there were no seats, or the weather turned bad or I decided to change my destination at the last minute, my rental car in
This was a risk I was willing to take. I bid $18 per day for a full-sized rental car. For three days, the base rate would total $54. However, by the time all taxes were added, the total would increase to $78. That would still be a $43 savings for less than ten minutes of work on my laptop. I pressed the “send” button.
While a William Shatner graphic was explaining how hard he was negotiating for me, I waited. The wait was less than 20 seconds. Yes! Priceline had accepted my offer. I would be getting a full-sized rental car for three days for $78. Who would be letting me drive their brand new car as far as I wanted to drive it for three days? You might have guessed…..the National Rental Car Company. Yes, these same folks had quoted me a “best” rate of $121 for the very same class of car.
I have readers from all over the world. There are more than 1,000 of you who get the Trackchaser Report via your email inbox. There may be that many or more, who read the Trackchaser Report at www.ranlayracing.com. I don’t know most of you personally. I don’t know how important saving $43 in to you.
I will say this. Carol and I are retired. O.K., Carol still does the chores around the house, because I don’t know how to operate the clothes dryer or the dishwasher or even the heating and air-conditioning thermostat in our house. I don’t need to know these things. I have “people” who do.
The point is we are retired. I do not receive a Social Security check. I do not receive a retirement check or pension of any kind. I do not have the type of budget that allows me to jump on a plane at the last minute, like some of my East coast competitors, just to go to a dusty old racetrack. Forty-three dollars is important to us. Actually, what is even more important is having the personal drive to get out of bed late at night to make this happen.
While I’m on this topic, I will re-visit a related issue. You have seen that I have just rented a car for $78 for three days. I can drive that car as far as I want to drive it in 72 hours. Why is this important? It means I don’t have to wear out my own car.
Do you know what your biggest automobile expense is likely to be unless you drive a “beater” around town? No, it is not gasoline or auto insurance. Your biggest automobile expense is a “silent killer,” depreciation. What is one of the biggest impacts on the amount of depreciation you will suffer? It’s how many miles you drive your car.
Let me give you an example from the real world. Let’s say you have three trackchasers or three skiers or three crossword puzzle solvers driving one of their personal cars to enjoy their hobby over the weekend. They plan to drive 750 miles in three days. We’ll compare that with driving a rental car for three days at a total rental car expense of $75 ($25 per day). Of course, you could adjust these numbers to match any length of trip, number of miles driven or rental car charges.
Now let’s say these folks take eight trips a year for four years. That’s an extra 24,000 miles. According to the Kelly Blue Book, a car driven 24,000 extra miles in its lifetime (over the normal 12,000 miles per year) with a purchase price of $25,000-30,000 will be worth about $3,000 less after four years. That means that each of those incremental miles above the norm (call them hobby miles) costs 12.5 cents each. Gasoline only costs about 10 cents per mile. Excess mileage over 12,000 miles per year will cost you in the neighborhood of 12.5 cents for each mile that you drive!!
In our above example, only the driver and not the other two freeloading friends will be stuck with the 12.5 cents per mile expense. “But, Randy, what if these three folks alternate their cars on each trip?” The impact will be the same. At the end of the car’s life (four years in this example), if the car has been driven 24,000 miles over what is considered “normal”, the owner will still be hit with a 12.5 cents per mile depreciation expense for each of the 24,000 extra miles. The extra “charge” for those above and beyond miles will be about $3,000.
Of course, 24,000 miles means an extra 5-8 oil changes. That’s $100-$200. Those 24,000 miles will probably eat up 50% of a set of tires. That’s another $200. There will be also be other maintenance expenses that will increase with extra mileage. These “miscellaneous” expenses now probably total another $1,000 or so. That’s about 4 cents a mile in expenses beyond depreciaton. Now we’re talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 16-17 cents per mile that is directly associated with driving your personal car beyond about 12,000 miles per year. Heaven forbid, if the 24,000 extra miles actually becomes 48,000 miles or 72,000 miles!
On the other hand, the per mile expense of RENTING a car in this example is only about 10 cents per mile. There’s nothing extra, just ten cents. That’s what driving a rental car 750 miles at a rental expense of $75 comes too. By the way, it’s easy to rent smaller cars for less than $25 per day. If your hobby takes you further than 750 miles, the per mile rental charge only gets cheaper. In these examples, it costs about 60% as much to rent a car as it does to drive the car you own too far!
I write the above for just one reason. If you fall into any of these examples and have not been thinking about your decision’s impact, then this note might be cause for contemplation. One of my readers is a fellow by the name of Mike Leone. He once wrote to tell me that one of the reasons he most liked the Trackchaser Report is that it made him think.
I got feedback from another individual that reading the same thing in the Trackchaser Report made him mad! Now lets think about that. We’re talking about the very same words. One person reacts by being pleased that the words make him think about things. Another person reacts by being mad because he might not want to think.
This is the great thing about
So there you have it. I hope these words cause you to think. After you have thought about whatever idea or concept has been offered up, you can decide what you want to do about it. You might decide that nothing needs to be done or that something needs to be done. At least at that point, you get to decide!
The People
The variation in people that I meet never ceases to amaze me. Let me give you two examples.
Today on my flight into
In the row behind us, was a woman with two children. One child was an infant and the other was maybe a three year old. I’ve had my share of loud and unruly children on planes in my time, but none was louder than these two or more ill behaved than the three year old who occupied the window seat.
The three-year old kept kicking (sometimes violently) my skater friend’s seat back. The volume of these kid’s screaming and crying had everyone within earshot looking there way in annoyance. My skater buddy kept turning around to find out who was kicking his seat. However, he was either too inexperienced with the flying world or too timid to say anything.
When the very senior flight attendant came by to serve our drinks, trying to be a nice guy and stand up for the skater dude, I asked her if she would ask the folks behind us to stop kicking this guy’s seat back. I told her that he was a likely novice flyer and didn’t have the gumption to ask them himself. She looked at me and demurely said, “I can’t do anything about it, unless the boy asks me himself.” Talk about passing the buck. With that, the child behind us continued to cry, whine, and kick the skater’s seat back all the way to
On the other hand, when I reached the National Rental Car lot I found the opposite end of the customer service spectrum. When I entered the 25-degree indoor parking garage to select my car, I received a surprise at the Executive Selection area. A young man called out, “Hi there, what kind of car are you looking for?” I told him, “I want a car with XM satellite radio”. “Do you want a fast car”, he replied. “A fast car would be O.K., but I want to get some decent gas mileage since I will be driving a lot of miles”, I said.
Off he ran and soon returned with a bright red brand new Chevrolet Impala SS. “This will be a great car. It’s really fast, but it’s got a special engine that turns off four of the eight cylinders when it cruises. The mileage will be good. It’s got heated seats and XM radio. You’re going to love this car. Can I put your bags in the trunk for you?”
Wow! What a difference in customer service experiences. Yes, people are different. Some know how to behave and some do not. I’m place the responsibility on the parents. I’ll bet dollars to donuts the young man who did such a great job in the rental car area had someone in his life that helped him along. Maybe, the flight attendant in the above example didn’t.
STATE RANKINGS
Today I saw my 51st and 52nd lifetime tracks in the Badger state home of the most serious beer drinkers in the country. I broke out of a 5th place tie with Allan Brown and Dale Danielski who each have 50 tracks.
To view the complete state ranking click on the link below or paste it in your browser.
http://trackchaser.net/statregion.asp?country=USA®ion=WI
TRACK TYPE
In the world of trackchasing, we have three types of tracks that are considered countable. These include ovals, road courses (circuits) and figure 8 tracks. Generally, a road course includes both left and right turns. Figure 8 tracks cross over themselves.
Four different track surfaces are counted. These include dirt, asphalt, ice and mixed. Any other surface you can think of i.e., concrete, steel, board, etc are included in one of the first four track surfaces.
Today I saw two ICE tracks. This brings my ice surface trackchasing total to 16. This puts me into a tie for 5th place in the ice track standings. Click on the link below or paste it in your browser to see the complete ice track rankings at www.trackchaser.net. Please note my totals are the most current in this Trackchaser Report.
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Ice
RACE REVIEW
BAY OF
A couple of weeks ago, Ed Esser discovered that some racers were running on an ice track road course layout on the
I had never seen any racing on the
When I drove onto the frozen bay, I discovered a plowed road nearly a mile long that headed out to where a several vehicles were parked. I approached a fork in the road. I had to decide if I wanted to park in the spectator area (free) or the pit area (5 bucks). I chose the pit area because I wanted to get close-up pictures of the race machines and because I wanted to talk to the racers. I have found that ice racers can be a plethora of information on nearby, unknown to me, ice tracks. That was a good choice today.
I had corresponded every so briefly with the track’s website webmaster, P.J. Today’s race date was not on the original race schedule. However, when I was doing some trackchaser research I saw these words on their website (www.ffrawi.com) “We will be holding a car race on Saturday, Feb. 9th”. That one simple sentence and a two-line email from P.J. changed my entire trackchasing weekend. I am amazed how much I can gain by putting more time into trackchasing research.
I’m sorry but I didn’t get P.J.’s last name. However, I soon met the “mother of P.J.” She was an enthusiastic and welcoming woman. She was most pleased to see that someone had come all the way from
At the drivers meeting, P.J. himself introduced me to the group. I told them I was happy to be there and ended up talking to several folks during the day. Even the “father of P.J.” and the “brother of P.J” came up to say hello.
There were three classes of racecars competing today. These included FWD non-studded, RWD non-studded and FWD studded cars. The car counts were five, six and nine respectively. Today there were four heat races, three consies and three features. The top two from each heat transferred to the feature and the rest went to the consolation events. This meant the consies didn’t have too many cars.
Although the National Rental Car Racing Chevy Impala’s temperature gauge said, “27 degrees” it seemed much colder than that. With little sun and a strong wind, veteran observers told me the wind chill temperature was about zero. I would agree with that.
I define a road course as a track that requires a driver to turn both left and right, but where the track does not cross over itself. There were a couple of mild right turns today. Several people commented on the fact that they race on a road course and the competing sanctioning group that runs on the
One noticeable aspect of most of today’s non-studded racecars was that they did not have roll cages. They have plenty of iron around the body, but no cages. I told one driver about my experience in
The “mother of P.J.” and her helper worked the concession stand. She mentioned they had just “lowered prices”. I had a delicious cheeseburger, some potato chips and a Diet Pepsi for the princely sum of $2.75. I would say they are keeping inflation in check.
The racetrack was a good distance from both the pit viewing area and the spectator area. This distance coupled with the amount of snow on the lake made getting a good view of the action difficult. I would estimate the track’s length at about 0.5 miles.
Nevertheless, I was happy to be out on a frozen lake in
I left the
I made just one stop along the way. It was a McDonald’s bathroom stop only. From the track’s website I knew the lake was on
When I drove onto the lake, I saw the pit area filled with racecars, racecar haulers and the vehicles of spectators. I noticed many of the race cars were already on their trailers. This was a bad sign.
I lowered my window and asked a group of people if there were any more races to run. “I think the last race just ran”, one fellow told me. Dang! I continued to drive toward the track. There were a few cars parked on the track at the start/finish line. Was this some sort of trophy presentation or were these cars lined up for another race?
I asked a new group of race fans who were huddled just beyond the snow bank barrier in turn one if there were any more races today. “Yep. This is the last one”. “It’s the front wheel drive (FWD) non-studded feature event,” they told me. Fantastic!
I quickly jumped out of the car without a jacket to get some pictures of this race. The group of
It was now about 3:15 p.m. There was no sun any more and the wind was strong. I suspect the wind-chill was about zero degrees. It didn’t matter to me. I was seeing my 1,309th lifetime track and I was lucky to get it.
I’ve noticed many of the ice tracks in this part of the world close their programs with both a powder puff (women) and then a mechanics (presumably men) race. Following what I was told was the last race of the day were feature events for the powder puff drivers and then the mechanics. That meant I was able to see three feature races at the second half of my blended double.
The
RENTAL CAR UPDATE
I’ve got a fire engine red National Rental Car Racing Chevy Impala. If I was interested in a domestic car, I would certainly consider this model. On a cold weekend like this, the heated seats are great.
Thanks for reading about my trackchasing,
Randy Lewis
Be kinder than necessary this day;
for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle. TRAVEL DETAILS
AIRPLANE
Orange County, CA – Denver, CO – 845 miles
Denver, CO – Minneapolis, MN - 679 miles
RENTAL CAR –
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 or more) of Carol’s current trackchaser total.
26. Mike Knappenberger,
27. Carol Lewis,
27. Ken Schrader,
28. Max Allender,
2008 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS
1. Randy Lewis,
2. Carol Lewis,
2. Mike Knappenberger,
2. Ed Esser,
5. Bruce Eckel,
5. Pat Eckel,
5. Guy Smith, Effort,
5. Paul Weisel,
Several trackchasers with one track.
Tracks have been reported by 16 different worldwide trackchasers this season.
LIFETIME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY STANDINGS
2007 NGD results are posted at www.ranlayracing.com
Past trackchasing reports are available at:
Official trackchaser standings can be viewed at:
Some of the data in this report comes from www.trackchaser.net
and my Garmin GPS
UPCOMING TRACKCHASING PLANS
The ice racing season in North America is short. It runs pretty much during January and February only. This means there are only 2-3 more weekends for ice racing. Most of the ice racing in the Northeast has been canceled due to lack of ice in the Northeast. That situation has forced me to search for hardwater in the upper Midwest and Canada
RACETRACKS VISITED IN 2008 (** not the first time to visit this track)
1,299.
1,300. Bira Circuit,
1,301.
1,302.
1,303.
1,304.
1,305. Ozark Empire Fairgrounds,
1,306.
1,307. Brainerd International Raceway Ice Track (road course),
1,308.
1,309.
