Dale Earnhardt Jr. blinked back tears as the moment socked him at Daytona International Speedway — a track bursting with triumph and tragedy for his family — that he was, with a country star and a NASCAR champ in tow,

"Where else do you go and barely make the field and cry tears of joy? Nowhere," Earnhardt said of the fabled speedway and race.

The words that are written and the ideas conveyed on the sands of a beach, with the rising and receding of the tide, can simply be washed away in short time. But just off the shores of Daytona Beach,