If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

Life’s juxtapositions can create quite bizarre scenarios. Such was the case last Thursday morning.

There I was, heading down south to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California for my first time as an accredited media member covering NASCAR. Me. Diecast Dude. Accredited. Whodathunk.

Excited? Most definitely. Nervous? You betcha. Determined to do my absolute best? Absolutely. I had dreamt of, prayed for this opportunity. Living the dream? No way to know. Pursuing the dream to see where it may lead? Yes.

Then my brother called.

Our aunt was dead.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

My brother had taken the lead in tending to our aunt since she had become unable to take care of herself last year. Dementia had set in, robbing her of her dignity even as she was mercifully unaware her mind was going. Now she was gone in body as well.

Throughout, my brother had demonstrated strength by every right he shouldn’t have. Wracked by diabetic neuropathy and the onset of MS, nevertheless he did the work and then some needed. His faith in Christ empowered him. It encouraged me. My brother in every sense of the world; in blood, washed by the Blood, fellow right wing outlaw.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

I already had much on my mind heading into the weekend. Now I had even more alongside what had been laid on my heart and soul. Turning back and returning home wasn’t an option. The opportunity laid out before me had to be seized and seized now. I would need to postpone my grief. There were no other options.

I’ve occasionally noted for my own edification that for me, Diecast Dude is more than an oddball pen name. It’s an aspect of my persona. I haven’t been Diecast Dude very often for quite a while. Too busy with other things. Arguably more important ones, such as the book. Still, I rather missed mixing entertainment plus information centered around NASCAR along with sardonic combativeness and digressions into Spirit-desiring sentimentality. Now I needed to be that like never before.

I also needed my right hand to hold up under the ton of typing that awaited as I pounded out blog posts and tweets about the weekends events. Otherwise, I’d be all thumbs. As in writing everything on my iPhone, tapping away with my thumbs since that was the only way to avoid the sharp pains stabbing their way along my fingers. Which is slow going indeed.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

I logged on to Twitter and mentioned my aunt passing away. A few people responded with consolatory messages. To each of you, thank you. To those on Twitter who follow me but missed it because they weren’t logged in at the time, I know you would have said something.

To those on Twitter who follow me but either missed it or ignored it because they were too busy at CPAC…

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Well, it’s on me to forgive you.

It’s also on me to say, “Hey. What are you doing?” There’s nothing that can be done about what happened. Yeah, it hurt, but it’s over and gone.

What about the next time, though? What about the next person who makes public mention of loss? Will you treat that person the same way you treated me, so absorbed in yourself and whatever you’re doing at the moment you can’t take a moment to write a simple ‘I’m sorry’?

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

I had to put all that aside. Friday morning, there I was at the race track, press credentials and garage pass dangling from my neck in an improvised holder attached to a temporary lanyard. I got a real one at the end of the day. But back where I was: there I was, walking into the media center looking at people who before that moment were merely names on bylines. Now I was one of them.

As the weekend unfolded, while there were moments of pure fanboy fantasy (“Jeff. Gordon. Is. Sitting. Three. Feet. Away. From. Me. JEFF!!! GORDON!!!”) for the most part my time was spent doing what I’d come to do: observe, report, interact with other journalists and online with my fellow fans. Which I did as best I could. The hand pain delayed some writing, but it was all completed.

I met a few journalists, some of whom I’d had different levels of contact with online. They were all polite, some far above. Dustin Long is a true gentleman in every sense of the word. Nicole Manske helped me get in close enough to Jimmie Johnson when he was doing a brief presser behind his trailer in a noisy pit area so I could record the conversation. was gracious and friendly during Sunday’s race when we sat next to each other in the press box. Didn’t do as much one on one with drivers or crew chiefs as I would have liked, but I was able to find Robby Gordon and get a scoop.

Fundamental truth of the matter was even with the turbulence that enveloped me, I was savoring the experience of being where I had longed to be for years and finding it did not disappoint. Moments such as this are scarce commodities for most of us. Now I was in the midst of one. Nothing could steal my joy. The sorrows would be there to be dealt with upon my return. This was a time to celebrate.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

During the weekend, something that had been percolating since 2008 came to full brew. Racing news for the thinking unimpaired has returned. I’ve teamed up with my main man Bram Hume at Backstretch Motorsports. Our goal? Beside total world domination, it’s to be THE go-to site for racing news, information and opinion. A major task to be sure, and one that will involve much work. But if I want to pursue this dream, there is no option to doing the work. Bring it on.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

The weekend, of course, had to end. After the frenetic fun of Friday’s press conferences, the Nationwide race on Saturday during which I politely informed one and all on Twitter I’d be more than happy to repeat my defense of Danica Patrick in person, and Sunday’s torrent of tweeting during the race it was over. Time to pack up and head home to office demands and deadlines.

And funeral arrangements.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

None of us have a complete grasp on what’s going on, or why. We know as best we can the moment we’re in. But even that knowledge is extremely limited. Everything else may as well be lollipop dreams in a cotton candy sky. We are totally, wholly, utterly reliant on God.

Whether we know it or not.

but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

I don’t know why everything shook out the way it did this past weekend. I don’t know why this was the appointed time for my aunt to go to heaven, which is where I believe she is for she was a believer in Christ. I don’t know why a beloved online acquaintance went to the hospital Friday. I don’t know why the sister of my wife’s best friend, someone we knew, finally finished drinking herself to death Sunday. I don’t know why all this took place even as I was fulfilling a dream and started work toward making it my daily reality. I don’t know why one day I was in Disneyland and the next was at a funeral home.

I don’t know.

I know God knows, though.

That’s good enough.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

In the days of my youth I was a voracious reader, often reading the same book several times over. One of these was The Runaway Robot by Lester Del Rey. In it, the referred to runaway robot recalls a line he either heard or read once: ‘After a taste of freedom, captivity is no longer the same.’ While referring to my day job as captivity is ludicrous melodramatic bunk, now that I’ve sampled being a full-time NASCAR writer… ‘nuff said.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

It’s ironic that what is most feared in life, namely its conclusion, is in fact our greatest liberator. No one in their right mind wishes to hasten their demise. Yet in death not only are we promised eternity with Christ, we are promised the answers we could never know nor understand during our tenure on this planet. What’s more, we are promised the full embrace of Christ’s love for us.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

There was magic and loss this past weekend. I could have done without the latter. The former, though… the former made the latter a little easier to understand.

A few reasons. I’ve been focusing mostly on Goldfish and Clowns along with promoting the book. I’ve also been diverted by my new writing gig at the Examiner. There’s also the new book starting up. And as I’ve mentioned on GAC, been dealing with some stuff. Something had to give, and this place has been it.

That said, I don’t want to shut this blog down altogether. I’ve made my best friends in life here, and I’ve had some terrific times here. Not something to easily walk away from.

So rather than goodbye, it’s more a goodnight. When/If time and energy permits I’ll be back. But for the foreseeable future, this place won’t be updated. However, neither will it be abandoned. Napping is more like it.

Thank you, and God bless all of you.

P.S. This song seems appropriate. Even if the video is embarrassingly dorky.

[video http://www.diecast-dude.com/gac/coldplay_viva_la_vida.flv nolink]

I’ve been a Collective Soul fan since first hearing “Shine” in 1994. It’s never been the cool band to like, with most rock snobs turning up their noses as its precisely controlled sound. To me, its gift for melody and band leader Ed Roland’s lyrical bent toward that which while not tipping his hand as to exactly where he’s coming from evidences a spiritual bent holding little if any conflict with the fundamentals of Christian spirituality has always been welcome.

Afterwords, the band’s most recent (2007) album and of their catalog my overall favorite, has a song entitled “Good Morning After All.” The lyrics give cause for reflection, to put it mildly:

Yeah you give up some days
When the tears they must flow
But God is always your strength
The only strength that you know
Now everything starts to fall in place

Chorus:
As you wake just to crawl
Still you say good morning after all
Then you stand just to fall
Still you say good morning after all

Yeah you questioned this life
Sure you wondered about love
But you swear there’s always hope
Always hope from above
Now everything starts to fall in place

[chorus]

It’s just another breath
It’s just another breath you say
It’s just another step
It’s just another step today

[chorus]

Twice yesterday I heard first hand about people whose bodies have been ravaged by cancer and who by all standards ought to be dead or dying. Yet they live, healed or healing. Coincidence that people of faith have had them in prayer? Hardly. Science and medicine treated them, certainly. But God cured them.

I’ve always found it slightly — slightly — amusing how in situations such as these I’ve had zero problem believing that God can and will cure people according to His perfect will and the grace He shows us. Yet when it comes to myself and dealing with the stuff of life and its inherent issues, be they professional or personal (for the record, the former is extremely edgy right now), my natural reaction is near-paralyzing fear that it won’t work out. Why? Why is my faith so lumpy, for lack of a better way to put it? I’ve long sought to understand that, but to date the reason or reasons escape me.

Perhaps the reason is somewhere within how its time I admit I’m human. I too get upset, and angry, and frustrated, and scared. Perhaps it’s time I admit I need prayer and comfort and reassurance as much as everyone else. I’ve always strove to be someone who comforts, cares for and prays for others. Now I need comfort, care and prayer. I need wisdom to know how to deal with matters. I need courage to do the right thing. I need strength to do the right thing.

I need faith, really.

It’s embarrassing how strong my faith is when extended to others yet weak when extended to myself.

How I pray that I will be able to say for myself as I’ve said to others no matter what…

… good morning after all.

Please keep me in prayer.

Thank you.

I’ve mentioned on occasion that I first started blogging about NASCAR in August of 2003.  I’ve saved all my posts from the first one onward, with the idea of perhaps eventually reposting them all here.  Even the really stupid and embarrassing ones.  I’m not much for revisionist history, even when doing so saves face.

As of yet I haven’t reposted much of anything.  Too many posts, not enough time, been busy doing other things.  There is however one post from August 2005 I’ve put back up.  Here’s the link.  Although I didn’t know it at the time, it’s a rather important one.  It chronicled an event that would shape and come to dominate not just my blogging, but my life.  Earlier this evening, what started on that August night in 2005 came to fruition when I sent the files for God’s Not Dead (And Neither Are We) to the publisher.

To me, GND is more than a book.  It’s the fulfillment of a dream I thought had died in 1994 when I walked away from what had been my overriding passion in life, namely spreading the word through journalistic efforts about the music and artists I loved.  It’s the living symbol of my broken, bitter, brooding heart again made whole.  It’s the final chapter of what was started in 1987, relating the stories of the artists I wanted to talk to all along but almost never had a chance to speak with except in passing.  It’s a reminder to those who remember and living history for those who want to learn where they came from.  The book is offered with the prayer that when read by others it will do for them what it did for me in writing it: bring me Home to once again taste life and love in the presence of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This is why NASCAR’s played second fiddle for a while.

For the sake of the book I’d put this blog (and a lot of other things) on the back burner.  Late last year I walked away from the amazing SportsBlogs Nation to focus on it more fully and not abuse the privilege it was to write for SBN by delving into the book and related matters on its NASCAR site created for me.  Now that the book is done, while the plan is to resume regularly writing here, offering for your approval the mix of commentary and entertainment I like to present on this site, the book and the Spirit behind it will always be preeminent in my heart.  I hope you’ll excuse me when this manifests itself by my occasionally going into preacher mode.  Even we rat bastards can use a little churchin’ up now and then.

To those of you who’ve been kind enough to stick with me while I’ve been quite quiet on the NASCAR front, thank you doesn’t even come close to cutting it.  But it’s all I’ve got.  I pray as I gradually get back into the swing of things your patience will be rewarded.  Hopefully I haven’t lost my edge.  If anything, now that I’m back where I should be the edge should be even keener.  We’ll see.

Thanks for indulging my little musing about things.  God bless you all.

You know folks, I have had my ups and downs in life, my racing, my marriage, my businesses – pretty much in everything I have ever done. One of the things I learned over the years is that I had to surround myself with people that tell me “I can” and not people who tell me “I can’t.”

I learned pretty quickly that I didn’t want to be around people who constantly give you reasons why you can’t do something. I like being around people that say, “Well, it might be difficult, but let’s see if we can figure out a way to get it done.” So I learned in my career that I performed at a higher level by being around people that encouraged me and gave me hope. You’ve heard it before, but it’s still true – without hope, we have nothing.

Sure, there were times in my career when I just about ran out of hope. Those are the times when my wife Stevie, who has been my biggest fan, encourager and cheerleader for 39 years, would step in and say, “DW, you can do this. We just need a plan.”

So in some of our darkest hours, we would get out and read through our Bible and find scriptures that would apply to the obstacle we were facing at the time. That’s actually how she began putting scriptures in my racecar every Sunday. They were scriptures of encouragement. Like I have mentioned to you before, starting back in 1994 in Daytona after Neil Bonnett was killed, Dale Earnhardt wanted scriptures to put in his car every Sunday from Stevie, too.

Lake Speed, myself, Bobby Hillin and some of the other early members of Motor Racing Outreach always had a signal. We would hold our hand in a shape of a cup and hold it up. If you hold your cup up, then the Lord could fill it with his blessings. Naturally, if you held your cup sideways or upside down, then the Lord couldn’t bless you.

There are scriptures that always seemed to pull it together for me in difficult times. One of the scriptures is in Ecclesiastes. It talks about when times are looking really bad. It’s easy to watch the news every night and hear about the wars, foreclosures, layoffs, etc. It’s pretty grim out there right now. The scripture says, “Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one. They get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone, when they fall, they are in real trouble.”

So I learned that in my most difficult times I needed a good support system. I needed my wife, family and friends around me. I needed Christian friends that I could rely on. They were normally older men that I could call for advice or a kind word of encouragement like my father-in-law, my dad, Bill France and yes, even Dale Sr. at times. There would be times when we both would be struggling so we would have these conversations and encourage each other.

Our oldest daughter was born in 1987. I wanted to set a good example for her and I never wanted her to see her father drink. So I gave up beer, wine and alcohol of any kind. You know what? I quickly learned I could live without all of it. Looking back, some of the worst decisions I ever made were when alcohol was involved. There’s another scripture in the Bible in Proverbs that talks about the perils of drinking. I read Proverbs every day. There are 31 Proverbs so I can read one every day of the month. I read them over and over again. I never get tired of reading them, and they always seem to be applicable to something that may be going on in my life at the time.

So words of encouragement, hope, faith, love, family – when things are going bad, like the name of this story – always choose right. That’s the main thing. Yes, if you look around you see things look pretty bleak. But if you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, then you can endure and get through anything. Trust me, it’s made a difference in my life and many of my friends’ lives.

If you read about Job in the Bible, you’ll read that he lost everything he had, but he never lost his faith. The Lord rewards those that are steadfast and true. I know its tough, especially with the holidays here, but my message to you is don’t give up. Hang around with good people. Hang around with good people that love you. Take advice from people who have experience and know what they are talking about.

One of my good buddies who is a football coach once told me, “DW, if I am going to take advice, its going to be from someone that has accomplished something.” So remember that. Be encouraged with the fact that even though we go through tough times, it just makes us stronger. Tough times really develop our character and we find out who we really are and what we stand for.

My Christmas wish for my racing community is that despite how bleak it looks right now, that in a very short period of time the economy will turn around and in fact, and this period of hardship will make us all stronger. It will make us better. It will cause us to rely on each other more and on the Lord and when you do that, he will never let you down. Take it from me, I know that from my own experience. It’s easy to find people who tell you that you can’t do something, but always find the people who encourage you and tell you that you can.

You are never alone when you have family and friends supporting and encouraging you and when you have your faith. God Bless and Merry Christmas!

I’ve really struggled with what to do about this blog for many months.  I left SBN because I felt the need to get back to being me, tangents and all, like I was before I left here to do Restrictor Plate This.  Yet since making that decision I’ve hardly been here at all.

It reminds me of the surgery I had in 2006.  I had come down with a vicious case of carpal tunnel, yet although I’m right-handed it was affecting my left hand.  Why?  I was born with ulnar nerve entrapment in my left arm, specifically the elbow, and my decades of playing guitar and attempting to compensate for the lack of strength in my left hand by squeezing tighter had taken its toll.  For a few years before the surgery I had pretty much stopped playing for different reasons, and when I tried to pick up the guitar in 2005 I found that without the constant playing of decades at least partially alleviating the nerve problems what little strength I possessed had deteriorated to the point where I no longer had sufficient strength to press a single string down to the fret.  Actually, that was the least of my concerns.  My hand was constantly both numb and in pain — an oxymoron, I know, but that was the case — so I finally asked my doctor about it.  I still remember the shocked expression on the face of the specialist he sent me to, a veteran of not a few decades in the field, who after barely a couple of preliminary tests looked at me and said, “This is one of the worst cases of carpal tunnel I’ve ever seen.”  She finished the tests, wrote up the results and sent me off to a neurological surgeon who discussed the options.  Carpal tunnel surgery to be sure.  My elbow?  Well, that was up to me.  I could live with it if I wanted to.  The carpal tunnel surgery would relieve the pain and numbness.  All the elbow surgery would do should I opt for it would probably increase the hand strength.  Not necessary for normal activities.  My call.

“I want to play guitar again.”

So, after the surgery and the resulting lengthy scar on my arm, you’d figure I’ve have a guitar in my hands pretty much 24/7 the moment the stitches came out, right?  Wrong.  I’ve seldom played a note since then.  Too busy writing was the biggest reason.  Not wanting to deal with the memories of how much I wanted to be a full-time musician and how it never came to be also played a part.  So even though I could play again, I didn’t.  Thought about it, yes.  But actually sit down, tune up and make music?  Once in a blue moon.

Until last week, when something snapped and the light snapped on about how much I loved doing this so why was I denying myself.  I dusted off my guitar — literally — and started the process of getting back to where I could play suitably well enough to make myself happy.  I’m never going to give Phil Keaggy anything to worry about, but if I continue to work on it I can at least resume my once held status of being acceptable.

Which leads back to this blog.

I used to have one fantastically terrific time writing this blog, relishing the time spent spinning opinions and commentary and striving toward entertaining folk.  Even more than this, I loved talking with the people I met along the way.  That gradually went away when I was with SBN.  It wasn’t its fault by any means; it was me gradually admitting the truth to myself that I’m not a sports blogger in the generally accepted sense of the word.  Sure, I wrote about NASCAR.  However, I wasn’t interested in reiterating facts and figures, telling everyone what they already knew.  As I said, I wanted to entertain people.  I wanted to find people of like mind and heart and soul.  This wasn’t happening with RPT.  So I quit.

And I haven’t done a blasted thing here since reviving the site.

Hopefully, prayerfully, just as I’ve picked up the guitar again I’ll pick up this blog again.  Although a massive cloud of uncertainty hangs over NASCAR at the moment courtesy of the Not So Much Anymore Big Three’s tenuous perch on the edge of oblivion, the sport itself should survive.  There will be a season starting next February in Daytona.  I certainly hope I’m here writing about it.

Thank you to everyone for their patience and encouragement as I continue to wallow in angst.  May I get it together ASAP.  And again, thank you.  It’s good to know I’m not alone.