UPCOMING TRIP: Pacific Northwest

Willamette Speedway in Lebanon, Oregon  (Track photo)

Each year, I try to make it a point to get out and visit a few new race tracks.  By no means am I at the top of the heap when it comes to race-chasing, but I am fortunate enough to have seen races at 165 different tracks in 33 states.  The thrill of going to new tracks, especially those in new states, is my equivalent of being a kid at Christmas.

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be selected to be a presenter at a college admissions conference in Portland, Oregon the last week of May.  As several of you know, college admissions is my "real" job...the one that pays the bills.  Just as anyone would do with an opportunity to visit a part of the country they've never been to before, I'll be taking a few extra days off to enjoy myself and catch a few races.  Most likely, this will be the only chance I ever get to visit the Pacific Northwest, so I'm going to enjoy it while I can.

Even the best laid-out racing trips are often detoured thanks to Mother Nature. Especially mine.  Three years ago, a 10-day journey that was set to begin in Iowa, Colorado, and Kansas was vastly (and impromptu) rerouted to South Dakota, Wyoming, and North Dakota.  Two years back, a planned trip to a track in Oklahoma found my wife and I scrambling to Kansas to attend the only track racing in a four-state region, immediately followed by a detour through Nebraska.  And just last year, our New England trip to seeing racing in five different states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut) was cut to four when a late rain shower washed out an event on our schedule and forced us to bypass the Connecticut track.

So, it goes without saying, this schedule is certainly subject to change without warning.

However, if all does indeed go as planned, I'll be able to knock off four new tracks in four new states with visits to Willamette Speedway (Lebanon, OR), Grays Harbor Raceway (Elma, WA), Electric City Speedway (Great Falls, MT), and Atomic Motor Raceway (Atomic City, ID).

Soooo, keep checking back.  In the coming weeks, I'll lay out the plans in some more detail and tell you about the trickery involved in trying to pull this off.  As always, it's a wild ride...