Jeremy Mayfield has had some time on his hands since his Sprint Cup Series deal with Haas CNC Racing didn't work out.

Earlier this season, Mayfield proved he could still race when he stepped into Chip Ganassi Racing's troubled No. 40 Dodge at Dover and, in a one-off ride for a team that dropped out of the top 35 like a rock as the season opened, scored the car's second-best finish of the season -- one of only two it's had in the top 25.

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But as the economy's plummeted and NASCAR's Silly Season's swirled -- with more drivers being swallowed than open seats created -- Mayfield has stayed busy while waiting for his next driving opportunity.

There's always something that needs tending on the expansive North Carolina property that he and wife Shana occupy, and their brood of dogs can always use a run.

But never let it be said that Mayfield lacks heart, or commitment.

A few weeks ago he took a 10-day trip to the Middle East in support of the U.S. service people who are deployed there and, maybe even more than his desire to get back into a quality Sprint Cup ride, which is considerable, he came back with a fervent hope.

"I'm going to let you know, that's the biggest message I got from being over there -- is that we need to support that, support our troops," Mayfield said. "You have to stand up for what's right, and that's what we're doing over there.

"Those guys are over there because they signed up to be over there -- and if you listen to the politicians saying 'we've got to pull all our troops out of Iraq.' That would be the worst thing they could do -- and all of our troops over there believe that [because] the mission of the military is to never leave until you complete the mission.

"That's what the United States is and what it stands for. And they're not leaving, I can tell you that -- because it's a positive thing that they're doing, and they feel good about that.

"They hear from their [family] in the U.S. what the media is saying, and it's not true. This is what they told all of us, everywhere we'd go, to 'please, get the message across to the American people, what is really going on,' and that's what I've tried to do."

Mayfield was the only NASCAR competitor who could join the expedition as he traveled along with NHRA and IHRA drag racers Erica Enders, six-time world champion Clay Millican and Phil Burkhardt.

Needless to say the trip, during which his group visited numerous military facilities and thousands of service people, was an eye opener.

"All I knew was what everyone else [in this country] knows -- and that's what you hear from the media -- from watching TV or whatever," Mayfield said. "You really don't know what to expect when you go over there and I didn't really know where, or how or what we'd do -- and if we'd really be in the mix of things or not."

Bottom line, they were.

"Flying from Kuwait on the C-130 I got the feeling it was going to be the real thing, because we were on a plane filled with soldiers, wearing helmets, goggles [armored] vests and carrying their guns," Mayfield said. "And we had the same type of gear -- everything except for the guns.

"I figured when we got on the ground, no one from that area was going to be welcoming us there; and that's when it started hitting home that this was the real thing -- we were in the middle of a war zone, and everywhere you looked was a Hummer or someone with a gun."

Other than getting picked up by a military-issue Chevrolet Suburban at their transport aircraft that took them from Kuwait to Iraq; all their trips were made by Blackhawk helicopters.

And even for a guy used to traveling 200-plus miles an hour and undergoing extended periods of heavy g-loading, it was an experience.

"Wherever they went, there were always two or three [choppers] traveling together, and man, they were fast," Mayfield said. "They didn't do it like we do flying into a racetrack, where we gradually come down and land. These things were wide-open and all of a sudden -- boom! You're on the ground.

"They tried to never be in a position where they were sitting still, and that's when you had to say, 'man, this is crazy.'"

Mayfield said there was nothing he saw in Iraq or Kuwait that he could equate with the normalcy that he or anyone else in a NASCAR garage would be used to in the States. But there was one glaring fact that he said isn't necessarily reflected by the media covering the war.

"I don't know how you would say it's 10 times better over there than what you expected, but from what you hear on the news all the time is negative, negative, negative," Mayfield said. "And over there, none of the soldiers -- I didn't see one negative soldier -- nowhere.

"Here's what I heard, and it was pretty consistent. It was totally opposite of what I expected. Everybody was pumped-up and willing and ready to defend their country -- that's what they're doing and they're proud of it.

"I even went into hospitals, and in one place I saw a kid that had to be 19 or 20 years old, who had just been wounded by an IED -- he was sitting up in a chair and he couldn't see us because his eyes were bandaged, but when they told him we were there, he was smiling."

Mayfield said the most amazing thing he found was that despite getting in very late, sleeping very little and getting back in gear very early; he was ready to get up and at 'em every day.

And maybe the most eye-opening fact of all was the impact their group made. It was similar to what former Modified Tour champion Jeff Fuller had related when he returned from a similar trip to Afghanistan earlier this spring, which he made with Randy LaJoie and Ricky Craven, among others.

"I almost felt guilty before I went over there, because I felt like, 'what can I do -- what difference can I make?" Mayfield said. "Of course, like I said before, I was getting all these negative feelings, being over here -- but you would not believe the difference that we made, and how happy it made us feel.

"Everybody was happy to see us, we made 'em laugh, made 'em smile and joked around with 'em. I had never dreamed we could make that much of a difference, but while they're over there, they virtually never get to see civilians from their country -- there's just no contact.

"We went to between three and seven bases a day -- everywhere. It was unbelievable the number of people we saw, and when you could make a little bit of a difference, it was pretty cool."

That came despite being in a position where he and his party were told, "If you hear a siren, you have 10 seconds to get in a bunker." Luckily, Mayfield said, "bunkers were everywhere."

And so were the sounds of war, which came "every day -- and for sure, every night."

"At any time you were over there, there was always something going on," Mayfield said. "So when I got home, that was the first thing I noticed when I got off the airplane -- how quiet it was."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer