Former Four-Wheeler writer, Robin Stover gives us some insight on what it was like to travel during the heyday. Dakar, Baja, South Korea, it’s all there! Listen on your favorite podcast app. This is Episode 150 – feels like a milestone! Thank you for your support and encouragement!
2:56 – my first exposure to the off-road scene was on the Big Island
10:17 – there’s a story to every single repair, the beginning, the middle, and end
16:19 – they handed me the keys and said, “here, we want you to do part two.”
22:15 – Looking back I guess Baja would be the one thing that was the biggest takeaway
31:03 – we don’t want people coming home in coffins
34:50 – we got to go into tunnels that actually extend under North Korea
47:54 – Live coverage begins tomorrow of Top Truck Challenge, so I promptly quit my job…
57:40 – I feel like I aligned myself with the right person in life that really has his sh*t together
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:47.480] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s episode of Conversations with Big Rich, we have Robin Stover. When I first met Robin was about 2002, 2004. Somewhere in there, maybe three. He was a freelance writer and photographer with Four Wheeler Magazine. He was also has worked as a marketing director and now he’s I believe it Lavender Brothers Automotive.
[00:02:11.600] – Robin Stover
That’s correct.
[00:02:12.370] – Big Rich Klein
And I want to say, hey, thanks for coming on board and being part of Conversations.
[00:02:18.380] – Robin Stover
No, thank you for having me. It’s an honor.
[00:02:20.570] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, it’s awesome. So let’s start off right away. And where were you born and raised?
[00:02:27.140] – Robin Stover
Well, see, I was born in Aptos, which is a little town near Santa Cruz, California, and didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. My parents were on the move, and basically I grew up in Hawaii. That’s where my early childhood memories started. Which island lived? Big island for about five years. And then when my parents split up, I got kind of batted around between the Big Island and Oahu for about two years.
[00:02:55.070] – Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:02:56.140] – Robin Stover
And that’s where I first got my exposure to the off road scene was on the Big Island. We lived in a very remote area in the northern tip called Kohala, and one of our favorite things to do, my dad would take us out and has a subaru car and go splashing through the mud puddles on the back roads. That’s kind of where my passion started for off road. Awesome activity. Yeah, it was cool. So that was a neat place to grow up and plenty of opportunities to get your tires in the mud and dirt there, especially if you know the locals.
[00:03:32.110] – Big Rich Klein
Right. That’s what we did. We went to vacation there on the Big Island and we spent, I think it was close to two weeks. And what I realized is that the Big Island is not so big. It’s two days every paved road.
[00:03:50.240] – Robin Stover
Yeah. You can definitely get around it in a couple of days.
[00:03:52.870] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, absolutely. Your parents went from Aptos they’re outside of Santa Cruz over to Hawaii. Was that work wise?
[00:04:07.700] – Robin Stover
Yeah. So my dad was a classical musician, does Latin American style classical guitar.
[00:04:13.070] – Big Rich Klein
Okay.
[00:04:13.960] – Robin Stover
He passed away four years ago, but in his era of his passion of guitar, he became one of the world’s leaders in a particular genre, and that took him a lot of places like Hawaii where he could play at clubhouses and that sort of thing. He’s also very accomplished in music. He’s got many albums and books and long history and classical guitar music. So that was having him as my father. That kind of dragged us around to places where he could make money. And when my parents split up, my mom ended up getting in custody of my sister and I. And we moved back over to California, to La Quinta in the desert, Palm Desert area. And we spent a year there and then basically moved back up to the Bay Area where my family my mom went to high school. Right. And that’s where her life was as a young adult. So we moved back into my grandfather’s house in San Jose West Gatis area. READ MORE
