Soldier ready to return to family, fill NASCAR void

Each morning when I check the litany of e-mails that fill my inbox, I always cross my fingers for something good.

Not the English teacher with too much time on his hands correcting my sentence structure or the creep that complains about my hair and questions my femininity. No, I'm hoping for something good to read.

Like something from Julie who likes it when my stories make her cry at work, or Meredith who appreciates the fact that fashion and pets can be topics of conversation in (gasp) NASCAR.

Maj. Young

But the e-mails I truly feel honored to read come from Maj. Bill Young, active duty in the United States Army stationed in Afghanistan. He's always giving me words of encouragement and telling me not to let the "knuckle bumps" beat me up on Track Smack.

Despite his limited resources and access to the sport, he manages to stay on top of things better than myself sometimes.

And after being overseas off and on for more than three years, Young is coming home in March and can't wait to watch a NASCAR race -- on time and without interruption -- for the first time since the 2006 Daytona 500.

Young used to be stationed in Iraq, where he said he was working in the international zone in what used to be Saddam Hussein's presidential palace in Baghdad before it was briefly converted into the U.S. embassy. A banquet hall was fashioned into a lunch room for the soldiers and a big screen television and snacks were brought in. "Picture like a library with tables around inside, it was a fairly ornate room," Young said. (Continued)