Randy Lewis
World's #1 Ranked Trackchaser
RICE LAKE ICE TRACK (OVAL), RICE LAKE, WISCONSIN
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| Rice Lake Ice Track |
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RANLAY Racing Trackchaser Report
DAY 1 – 2008 ICE RACING FINAL WEEKEND TRACKCHASING TOUR
TODAY’S HEADLINES
Today I saw a big white limo doing “donuts” on the lake and was asked to autograph the hood of one of the racecars....................more in “Race Review”.
I chose
Too much strategic planning almost cost me a good deal of money before I even left on this trip…………..details in “The Trip”.
AND THE READERS RESPOND
From time to time interested readers write me about one thing or another.
Here is what a South African reader had to say about
“
They run mostly saloons, and midgets. No Sprint Cars up there though.
It seems as if the racing you guys are doing is WAAAAYYYYY different to what we are up to. (Just saw your website - must say I like the "travelogue" feel of it)”
From Mototown
“Hey Randy,
I'm glad you made it! I told the ticket office to comp
your passes, I hope they did. (Editor’s note: I did not get nor did I ask for any passes to this event)
I checked out the site, the report is awesome! Thanks for
the coverage! Sorry about the cold temperature.”
Thanks for making Mototown your 1,312th track
From a
Randy………..I always learn from these reports. Just loved the comment about the cost of toothpaste and its relationship to the cost of your room. I was laughing for a couple of minutes.
I’m sure those days of $300.00 plus rooms are over for P&G employees just as they are for Nestle employees with computerized travel programs that tell you what airline you must take to your destination, your accommodations, the rental car agency you must use as well as the type of car.
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/march892008.htm
GREETINGS FROM
I WOKE UP IN
PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS
The Objective
Every time I have looked at the weather this winter in the upper
I guess I should not complain about
Ice racing tracks normally get in 5-6 weekends of competition a year. That makes seeing them a much rarer sight than your local oval track that might race 20-25 times each summer.
I’ve knocked off a good number of ice tracks this year (14). It all goes to support my objective of seeing tracks early so I can back off later in the year for attendance at weddings, Angel’s games, UCLA football and maybe even the Olympics in
The Trip
Today’s racing trip started when my alarm clock went off at 3:30 a.m. Carol and I had not gotten much sleep last night. You see, the biggest Pac-10 basketball game of the year was played last night. I’m talking about the Stanford Cardinal playing our mighty UCLA Bruins. The winner of the game would win the Pac-10 conference and become the #1 seed in next week’s Pac-10 basketball tournament.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I take some pride in trying to always get “an edge”. I’m hoping this mental gymnastics will hold off Alzheimer’s just a little bit longer! In an effort to get that edge for the Pac-10 basketball tournament, I ordered some very expensive tickets (we’re talking triple digits per ticket) to next Thursday’s tournament games to be played in the afternoon. Nothing is too good for Trackchasing’s First Mother.
The Pac-10 champion would play then. I was counting on UCLA winning their game against Stanford and wanted to be out ahead of the rush for tickets from UCLA boosters.
However, Stanford got off to huge lead in the first half. At the game’s midpoint, they led UCLA by twelve points. I wasn’t too concerned until that lead continued well into the second half. With less than ten minutes left in the game, UCLA was still behind by 11 points. If Stanford won, I would have two very good tickets to see Stanford play but not UCLA.
Carol and I watched the game from my office. UCLA began to eat into the Cardinal lead. They narrowed their disadvantage to two points in the last 30 seconds. Carol and I were going wild. With just two seconds left, one of our guys was fouled (it really wasn’t a foul). He made both free throws to take the game into overtime. UCLA then took over and won the game by ten points after trailing for 99% of the game’s regulation period.
It was nearly 11 p.m. Carol and I were spent. That’s why we didn’t get much sleep. When my alarm did go off at 3:30 a.m., I put things into super fast and efficient mode (read that as eliminating many basic procedures) and was actually backing out of the driveway just ten minutes later at 3:40 a.m.
Yes, it was 3:40 a.m. on a Friday and I was backing out of my Southern California driveway headed for the ice races in
The People
At 5 a.m. I was standing in the airport security line. For some odd reason, the line had not moved one inch in 15 minutes. I’ve never had that happen before. Just then, a new security area was opened up. I saw an opportunity and snuck into that short line passing up another line that most other people were going to that had more than 100 people in it.
Just at that moment, I heard someone yelling, “Dad” “Dad”. I turned around to see who was speaking and it was son, J.J. Although he lives in
Today I was fortunate enough to get a first class seat on my Denver-Minneapolis flight. I sat down next to a woman who was just a wee bit older than me but not by much. We had a pleasant conversation. She was from around the
We covered a lot of conversational ground during our two-hour flight. Normally, I don’t spend much time talking to my fellow passengers. In today’s world, most people seem to want to be left alone. However, since I was in a bulkhead row and I didn’t have easy access to my briefcase, I found the conversation most interesting.
There’s something very unusual about this type of encounter. People will tell you the strangest and sometimes the most intimate things about their personal life when they’re sitting beside you on an airplane. I guess they figure they won’t ever see the person they’re talking to again, so they might as well go for it. Little did this woman know that I have my own website!!
We talked about children, building homes, money management and a whole host of topics. This woman was well off. She admitted that she and her husband had considered building a 10,000 square foot home, but had agreed that 6,000 square feet would probably be big enough for the two of them!
The woman was most pleasant and easy to talk too. She did reinforce my experience and belief that people spend a lot more time earning money than they do figuring out how to manage it. I really don’t know why that would be. I guess I might blame the financial information outage on parents and schools.
This woman was extremely conservative financially. Most people are 50 times more concerned about running out of money in retirement than having so much money they can’t spend it all in retirement. In point of fact, about 50 times as many people die with a good deal of money than die penniless.
I would have loved to be a financial planner. The only drawback is that nine people out of ten people can’t implement the simplest financial planning directions and therefore my teachings would have been largely ineffective. Most people think they are acting properly financially by not taking action and making decisions. In reality, not making a decision is making a decision. Proper financial planning and preparation is about as simple as the formula for losing weight…..watch your calories and exercise.
I’m happy to report that this woman walked on the plane today not knowing the first thing about trackchasing. She left the plane with my business card safely tucked inside her person. She now has a full understanding of the hobby and will be rooting for her “favorite trackchaser” to see more and more new tracks.
STATE RANKINGS
Today I saw my 55th lifetime track in the Badger state home of the most serious beer drinkers in the country. I’m just five tracks out of fourth place, which is currently held by Dale O’Brien. He has seen 60
By the way, I met a racer today who looked to be in his twenties. I told him I was a big Dick Trickle fan back in the day. The youngster replied, “Ya, my dad told me something about him”. Yes, time is flying!
Now you can see the entire up to date trackchaser rankings for
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.
This afternoon I saw racing on an ice-racing oval track. This was my 1,047th lifetime oval track (rank #1). Today’s ice track was my 22nd lifetime track in this category (rank #5). I’ve really put a push on ice racing this year. Today was my 14th ice racing track in 2008. Prior to this year Guy Smith had seen the most ice tracks in one calendar year with ten in 2007. Of course, I benefit from entering this year with a very underdeveloped ice-racing program but that has now changed.
By the way, whenever I quote trackchasing stats (most of the time anyway) I will be using the trackchaser’s on line Bible, www.trackchaser.net. I will get my fellow competitors’ totals from there unless they have provided me a more current update. I will use whatever information source of information that is most current at the time I write each Trackchaser Report. I don’t think I can make the statistical information any more accurate than that.
COMPLETE TRACK TYPE CATEGORY RANKINGS OF NOTE:
Dirt Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Dirt
Paved Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Paved
Ice Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Ice
Mixed Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Mixed
Oval Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statoval.asp
Circuit (road course) Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statcircuit.asp
Figure 8 Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statf8.asp
Indoor Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statindoor.asp
RACE REVIEW
RICE LAKE ICE TRACK (OVAL),
I had a wonderful day of ice racing today. I used Google Earth to locate the Bungalow Bar, which sits at the lake entrance to the
Today’s racing was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. I arrived a few minutes early. I was just in time to catch the driver’s meeting. I snuck into the back of the meeting just as some of you do when you arrive late for Sunday morning church services.
However, my attempt at blending in didn’t seem to work very well. I had hardly joined the group when the fellow standing atop a truck bed, motioned to me and said in front of the entire group, “Are you the trackchaser?”. I nodded. I guess I didn’t look “like I was from around here”.
At this point in the driver’s meeting, I was introduced as “the world’s leading trackchaser”. With that, the large group of
Then…….the entire group broke out into grins and applause as my welcoming gift. Yes, the people of
One of the first people to introduce themselves was Karen Koltunski. I suspect that Karen is an authentic Polish girl if I’ve got my
I think she was referring to my being a trackchaser. She probably thinks this is one fine lifestyle. Karen probably thinks it’s a lot of fun to travel all over the United States and the world nearly every weekend going to races, eating in fun restaurants and seeing the sights of every local area I visit. Karen must be one smart cookie. It IS a lot of fun to do what I do. I enjoy the heck out of it!
I also met a young fellow named Brent who was driving in the front wheel drive division. He gave me some great go-kart track information that I intend to follow-up with this coming summer. Brent has a couple of unusual occupations. He is both a bouncer and a cage fighter! I think I would want him on my side when it came time to face off with those dreaded East coast trackchasers. Brent and his buddy were nice guys and I enjoyed talking to them.
The next person to introduce himself was Bob Thompson. Bob aka “Biker Bob” drives the #70 car in the 6/8 cylinder full-sized stock car division. Bob had registered at my website and left a nice hello in my guestbook a few weeks ago. By the way, if you’ve never reviewed the guestbook on my website at www.ranlayracing.com please take a look. It’s amazing what a diverse group of folks have had such positive things to say about my site. The funny thing is I have never ever met most of them.
I spent some time talking with Biker Bob in the pits after he pulled out of the feature event. It’s fun to meet the local people at the track. This way I get the inside scoop. Bob’s Ford Thunderbird racecar was sporting a rear driver’s side window that was covered in duck tape. This seemed odd. Biker Bob filled me in.
You see, Bob is a golfer. For some reason he wanted to drive a golf ball into the side of his racecar. I guess that’s what happens when you merge a golfer with a racecar driver. Anyway, he did just that and had the ball mark in the door to prove it. However, he did not count on his graphite golf shaft breaking in the cold weather. The golf club’s head then flew forward when the shaft broke, breaking the rear window in the race car!
Later in the day, after Bob was finished with his feature event, he pulled up to my National Rental Car Racing
I also was able to meet
I talk to promoters and track representatives on the phone and via email all the time. Some times the reception I receive is much better than at other times. I will tell you this. The folks that have the foresight to make people feel welcome normally have much better shows than the track promoters and owners that don’t seem to be able to make time to answer a question or provide any information.
I never ask to be admitted free to a racing event. Sometimes a promoter will make that offer to me and I will accept only because I was taught to be a gracious guest. However, I prefer to pay my way at every race. This way I am not beholding to anyone in anyway. I want to be able to tell you my loyal reader my TRUE opinion of the day’s activities. At most events I will find things I like and things that need to be improved. You will rarely if ever see me write a report so positive you might think the track wrote it. You also will rarely if ever read a report so negative, you would think that Scrooge wrote it.
That being said, today’s event was one of the best ice-racing experiences I’ve had this year or during my 22-track ice racing experience. I am sure the generous welcome and acknowledgment the track gave me went a long way in getting my visit off to a positive start.
The
Like most ice tracks, there was no P.A. announcer. I also didn’t notice any concessions being sold. There is no spectator admission fee charged to see the races.
The track itself was a quarter-mile oval track. Unlike many ice tracks of this type there was an outer wall snow bank some four feet tall. Several of the drivers used this outer wall to “lean” against nearly all the way around the track. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Don’t miss the photos of this event at www.ranlayracing.com to see how the drivers ran up against the snow bank and sometimes nearly over it. Most of today’s drivers also carried a passenger in the car while they raced. This seems like a very common thing to do in Midwestern oval ice racing.
The pit area was large. There wasn’t much snow covering nearly four feet of ice. Much of the ice was clear. It was really “glare ice”. It was also very slippery. I had to tread carefully to avoid falling on my butt.
I always see or do something at a new track that I visit that I’ve never seen or done before. Today there was a huge white
The full-sized feature event started about 16 cars. The racing was close with lots of passing and cars running 4-5 grooves. It was really exciting to see the cars that chose to run “up high” close to the outer wall snow bank. At a minimum they sent the snow flying and sometimes almost sent themselves flying over the four foot snow bank. When there was a race stoppage the red flag was thrown rather than the yellow flag. The cars were stopped and realigned. This entire procedure never took more than a minute or two.
The front wheel drive class was also noteworthy. Karen Koltunski, mentioned above, drove a pink colored #45 four-cylinder racecar with a huge black and white checkered flag on its side. Other folks in the pit area told me to be on the look out for her. They said, “she will pull away just a little bit each lap and win the race”. She did.
What was so odd about Karen’s success was the driving line she chose. She hugged the inside of the track. In the turns it looked like she was only going about 10 M.P.H. All of her competitors were male. They seemed to be driving crazy racing lines all over the track. They went through the turns with their car’s rear end way out of shape. They bounced off each other as well as the outer wall snow bank. All the while their arms were flailing around their steering wheels, Karen was increasing her advantage on every lap and won the feature event. Way to go, Karen.
I spent the last half of my day watching the races from my car. It was warm in there. I was able to take a large number of photos to give you an idea about what the day was like. The final feature event checkered at 4:12 p.m. I want to thank
RENTAL CAR UPDATE
I will be driving the National Rental Car Racing
This is my fourth separate trip to
Thanks for reading about my trackchasing,
Randy Lewis
One of the hardest things to do in life is to break in a new maid. TRAVEL DETAILS
AIRPLANE
Los Angeles, CA – Denver, CO – 861 miles
Denver, CO – Minneapolis, MN - 679 miles
RENTAL CAR
TRACK ADMSSION PRICES:
Rice
RANKINGS
LIFETIME TRACKCHASER STANDINGS UPDATE:
There are no trackchasers currently within 100 tracks of my lifetime total.
1. Randy Lewis,
Full Lifetime World Rankings
http://trackchaser.net/trackchasers.asp
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,
28. Ken Schrader,
29. Max Allender,
2008 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS
1. Randy Lewis,
2. Mike Knappenberger,
3. Guy Smith, Effort,
4. Carol Lewis,
4. Paul Weisel,
Tracks have been reported by 24 different worldwide trackchasers this season.
Complete 2008 Trackchasing Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statyear.asp?year=2008
LIFETIME COUPLES TRACKCHASING STANDINGS
1. Randy & Carol Lewis,
2. Allan & Nancy Brown,
3. Guy & Pam Smith, Effort,
LIFETIME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY STANDINGS
2007 NGD results are posted at www.ranlayracing.com
Official Trackchaser Rules
http://trackchaser.net/rules.asp
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 aka “Dusty”
UPCOMING TRACKCHASING PLANS
Finally, the 2008 ice-racing season is ending for me. I have just one more track to see to wrap up the hardwater season. Then it will be back to terra firma for the balance of the year.
RACETRACKS VISITED IN 2008 (** not the first time to visit this track)
1,299.
1,300. Bira Circuit, Pattaya (road course),
1,301.
1,302.
1,303.
1,304.
1,305. Ozark Empire Fairgrounds (oval),
1,306.
1,307. Brainerd International Raceway Ice Track (road course),
1,308.
1,309.
1,310. Shawano Lake Ice Track –
1,311.
1,312. Mototown USA (oval) –
1,313. Moosehead Lake Ice Track (oval) –
1,314.
1,315.
1,316.
1,317.
