Optimism lives on in the New Year for Mike Wallace (cont'd)

But then that optimistic spirit comes back.

"People with money are still out there, and they're still talking, so I don't know that it's as bad as people think -- not that it's easy," Wallace said. "If people get involved now, the timing could be good for them because they'll be involved when things start to turn around [with the economy]."

But at this moment, like a lot of other guys and women, if you count drivers like his younger daughter Chrissy, who had meetings planned this week with team owner Bob Germain to determine what the suddenly sponsor-strapped Germain Racing team might be able to do to race with her this season, Wallace just doesn't know exactly what he's doing beyond Speedweeks -- though he'd consider racing any of NASCAR three national tours.

Mike Wallace

Career Statistics

	Cup	N'wide	Truck
Starts	188	330	113
Wins	0	4	4
Top-5s	3	21	32
Top-10s	14	61	55
Poles	0	0	3
Avg. Start	31.6	23.3	13.7
Avg. Finish	26.4	19.8	13.7

But more than anything, what makes Wallace appreciate what he has going on -- no matter how slim his racing prospects appear right now -- is what he saw a couple weeks ago on a four-day trip to the poverty-stricken Caribbean island nation of Haiti.

"I'm not in a hurry to go back," Wallace said of his trip with North Carolina businessman and philanthropist Tom Van Wingerden, whose family operates the 300-acre Double Harvest training farm, Christian school and hospital in Haiti. "But as much as it made me appreciate what we have in this country, even more than that it gave me an eyewitness look at what some special people are doing in that country.

"You're not going to fix Haiti -- that would be an enormous prospect and probably impossible. But with their Double Harvest complex the Van Wingerdens have made an incredible impact on a small fragment of the population, about a thousand people, helping them to live a better lifestyle.

"It's a commitment that's quite overwhelming to me, to be honest, and it's amazing that a family would make such a dedicated effort to make a difference. You want to talk about passion and commitment with the difficulty I saw in traveling there and getting around once you get there, I have to give them a tremendous 'atta boy' for the commitment, and the people there really appreciate it."

The proverbial icing on the cake for Wallace came when he returned to the United States and found out Van Wingerden's son, Thomas, had proposed to his older daughter Lindsey; the wedding is tentatively scheduled for late 2009.

It puts Wallace in another race -- one of helping to create an event plan -- and, with his optimism, one he has a pretty good shot of winning.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.