Note: At this point I asked Bob some questions that were inspired by the forum members here at www.dirtrider.com.
From Pojp58: If there was one thing you could have done differently in your career, what would it have been?
BH: In the Honda years, when I finally went to Honda, we rode, basically, six days a week. We trained, rode bicycles, lifted weights, six days a week.
Crazy schedule. Just so I could annihilate everybody. I would have backed down a little bit, and I would have backed the racing down, and I would have backed the jumping down. Because acting like Superman will bite you. And it did bite me. If you look a the points I had a near 100 point lead in both series, and I busted a bone in my wrist on a jump that I did not have to jump. And that was stupid. And I had a mechanic at the time, Brian Lunnis, who rather than telling me to mellow out, he would drive me even more than I was driven myself. He had in his mind to destroy everybody, too. He got his kicks out of that. And, you know, I would have backed it down. If I was going to advise James Stewart I would tell him that, and he wouldn't listen.
And I did tell him that one time, through a guy. He was jumping all sorts of crazy crap in supercross one year and I said, 'why don't you give him some advice and tell him only jump what's necessary to win, and on some days, only what's necessary to get second. Because you'll have a lot longer career and win a lot more races.' Because you are not Superman. Villopoto or James Stewart. Nor McGrath. Because one day you'll get bit, and you could probably win a lot more race and have a lot longer career, but people will not listen to you when they're young and they think they're Superman. But I wasn't really young in '83, I was 27. The only thing is I had the blinders on, I could only see one thing. I quit everything in life. I had no life. I trained to win motorcycle races, that's it. Rode every day. Before the year, let's see, I had something like 79 days out of 90 on the bike before January 1. We rode every day except for travel or if something got screwed up. And that's all right, but I should have backed it down and not jumped stuff I didn't need to jump to win. I didn't need to be the innovator, I should have backed it down and we would have won, easy. And that depresses me that I wasn't that smart. I just didn't see everything. Somebody asked me, 'Aren't you going to get burned out?' I said, 'I'm long burned out. I do this out of pure will power. I'm burned out two years ago. It's my job, I do it.' When I'm out there (training) I think about those guys, I think about the days that I got beat by Howerton and I didn't have the bike. Well now I'm on a Honda. My philosophy on Honda was if you can't win on a Honda, go home, quit. I said, 'they gave me a fine bike, and I'm gonna make it win.'
PP: Do you think that discrepancy between equipment still exists today?
BH: Probably. I don't know, but I'm sure someone has the advantage sometimes. I'm sure, maybe especially in the smaller ones, the 250s, maybe Payton's bikes run quite a bit better and work quite a bit better than anyone else's. And if you're lucky, and you're at the top of your game, and you're on the best bike, you're a lucky dog, and you better take advantage of it. And then you'll have bad luck and twist your knee... And you know what, Villopoto ought to laugh, take some time off, and say 'I'll be back when it's fixed,' because it could be worse, you could have broke your neck. And if you walk out of this sport you oughta look back and go, 'you know what, I could have won three more championships, so what, big deal, so could Ricky Johnson. He could have won three or four more. David Bailey unfortunately probably could have won seven, but #$%@ happens, and if you're walking when you're leaving, and you won two races and you had a good time and you made some money, shut the hell up. Because some people never got the opportunity to do it. There were some guys coming into the sport when I signed with Yamaha that should have beat me to the contract, but they got hurt. I was lucky to make it in there. I consider myself very damn lucky.
From DLHamblin: Going to supercross 2009, there was some battling and aggressive riding between James Stewart and Chad Reed. Was that racing too aggressive, or is there not enough of that today?
BH: No, it wasn't too aggressive. If they leave those guys alone, it'll stay on the track. I don't think it's too aggressive.
From Mxracer199: Did you ever get arm pump, and did you have a cure for it?
BH: You know, here's a funny story. I never got arm pump in my life until we went to upside down forks. When we went to upside down forks, I got it, and you just have to ride more. And when I really got it was when I sort of quit riding, in '87, '88 and '89 when I was only riding about ten races a year.
Well that was only racing about once a month. In those days my arms would give me some trouble. So I'd get someone to rub 'em really aggressively before the moto, and that would tend to help. I don't hang onto the bars tight, but those forks, they put everything, all that shock, back into your arms. They do not flex. And the guys that have never ridden anything else don't know that. On an outdoor, grand prix track in Europe, I'm still not convinced that a 50mm conventional fork would not be a better set up.
Because they do have some flex. If you can get 'em to turn right, have some rigidity there, in the clamps, and have some flex forward and backwards, but have real rigidity in torsion, I think would be better. Now on the supercross, maybe not. Outdoors... If I was riding right now in my heyday I'd make 'em make me some conventional forks to try. When we went to upside downs, I know the conventionals would outwork 'em, I know that, but they wouldn't let me run 'em because they wanted to develop those upside downs.
Nobody's every gonna change back, but I'm not a firm believer in 'em.
From sanders: You ran lighting bolts on your helmet. Where did the idea for that come from?
BH: It came from a shop in Illinois. Friends of mine owned a Suzuki shop and they had a lightning bolt in their logo. It was Midwest Action Cycle.
PP: And you started running it for a sponsor and it caught on?
BH: No, it wasn't a sponsor. They were my friends and I liked that lightning bolt and I ran it and it kinda just took off.
Both sites have a trailer so you can get an idea of what you're in for. And watch the website here and Dirt Rider magazine for more from Bob in the future. I hope you like reading about him, because it sure is fun to interview him.
Artwort provided by Michael Petersen. For prints, a portion of which go to road2recovery during the month of July, check out www.michaelsactionart.com.