Say what you will, this is a great cause

At the risk of opening myself up to ridicule from some regular readers of this blog, this offering is about what I'm planning to do on behalf of the Pennies For Wessa auction now being conducted by The NASCAR Foundation and Motor Racing Outreach.

The auction runs through March 27 at www.nascar.com/foundation and includes a lot of really cool items - autographed photos and posters and even a Washington Redskins helmet autographed by Joe Gibbs as well as VIP packages to race events later this year. The money will go to help Wessa Miller, the young lady who in 1998 gave Dale Earnhardt a lucky penny before Earnhardt won the Daytona 500.

Wessa and her parents, Booker and Juanita, are coming to Bristol on March 21-22 to see the races and get to meet some of the drivers in the garage. They came to Bristol in 1998 as Earnhardt's guest after Earnhardt had won at Daytona with the penny glued to the dash of his No. 3 Chevrolet.

"NASCAR Angels" is doing a piece on the Millers and ESPN plans to do a story on them for the Nationwide Series prerace show that day.

I was trying to decide if I could do anything that somebody might be interested in bidding on. Here's what I came up with.

For somebody who's going to be in or around Charlotte during the May races here, I will pick the winning bidder up at Lowe's Motor Speedway on the Monday after the all-star race in my own car (I call it Christine because I am not sure it's not demon possessed). We'll go over to the Hendrick Motorsports museum, then we'll go to Kannapolis and do the Dale Earnhardt min-tour there. We'll go from there up to the Richard Childress Racing museum in Welcome and then we'll come back through Mooresville. I'll even spring for lunch and dinner.

I know it sounds like the "Kramer Reality Tour" from the Seinfeld show, but it's all I've got. Maybe somebody out there would be willing to help the cause and kill an afternoon riding around in my heap of a car.

Check out www.nascar.com/foundation for the auction site. My "reality tour" isn't up there yet, but it will be in the next day or so. But go now and you can see some really cool items that have actual value!