The Fishdood, Austin “Fish” Farner joins Rich for Episode 88. Right seat, left seat, media, Fish has done it all. Listen in as they talk desert racing and Fishgistics.
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to Conversations with Big Rich on your favorite Podcast Player
5:19 – Where does Fish come from?
9:09 – we raced in the 1450 class back in the day
14:57 – you can barely get a flat tire anymore and expect to win a race
20:58 – “Oh my God, is he really doing that right now?”
27:51 – Anybody could get in a trophy truck and with a little skill you could go finish a race
34:16 – what’s it like to be a co-driver? What are your responsibilities?
41:34 – if you get motion sickness, you probably are going to get sick in a car
46:34 – that’s the point, it’s a joke name that everybody will remember
54:12 – the game is going to change in the next two years as far as media and technology
1:03:18 – I was the only Sportsman truck entry Sal Fish had to put out a Press Release about after the race
We want to thank our sponsors Maxxis Tires and 4Low Magazine.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:01:20.290] – Big Rich Klein
On today’s episode of Conversations With Big Rich. We have Austin Fish. Farner. Austin is an off road racer, Navigator, media personality. You might say he does a lot in offroad, especially in the desert racing scene, getting his feet wet in the ultra4 scene. So we’re going to talk to Austin about his life and what brought him to where he’s at Austin. Thank you for coming on board.
[00:01:47.660] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Right on. Yeah. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.
[00:01:51.130] – Big Rich Klein
Yes. So let’s go ahead and get started first before I ask where you were born and raised. Is Fish actually your middle name?
[00:02:01.990] – Austin “Fish” Farner
No, it is not, actually, but it might as well be it might as well be my first name, because that’s just what everybody calls me, right?
[00:02:09.190] – Big Rich Klein
Well, it’s so much easier because when you say, hey, I talked to Austin. Everybody. Which one I talked to? Fish. Everybody knows it’s either you or Sal.
[00:02:20.530] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Yeah, exactly.
[00:02:23.290] – Big Rich Klein
I think Sal is more Sal.
[00:02:25.450] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Yeah, exactly. And I’m not related. Some people are always like, are you related to Sal Fish? Like, no, just nickname.
[00:02:34.330] – Big Rich Klein
All right, so let’s go ahead and get started with where were you born and raised?
[00:02:39.370] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Actually, right here in San Diego County, in Vista Vista, California. And I’ve been in either Vista or Oceanside most of my younger life. And, yeah, pretty much San Diego County.
[00:02:50.830] – Big Rich Klein
All right. So starting there. Is that more rural or is that more suburb?
[00:03:02.730] – Austin “Fish” Farner
No, it’s suburb. Yeah, it’s track home stuff. It’s suburb. It’s you’re right next to the five and the 78 freeway, not far from the 15. It’s kind of right in the middle of the five and the 15. So, yeah, that’s definitely not rural.
[00:03:14.340] – Big Rich Klein
Okay, so you couldn’t jump on a motorcycle at a young age and go ripping out in the fields.
[00:03:21.540] – Austin “Fish” Farner
No, but we did do some of that in my truck, and we got in trouble quite a bit for that, but, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to do that stuff.
[00:03:30.880] – Big Rich Klein
Well, let’s talk about those earlier first, and then we’ll get talk about that trouble on the truck. How did you do in school and did it influence your decisions in offroad later on?
[00:03:44.510] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Well, school. I don’t know. It wasn’t, like, super exciting. It wasn’t, like the 4.0 student or anything. Definitely had fun. Got in trouble a little bit. Not too much. It was fairly nice in school. I had quite a few friends. And then, honestly, throughout school, I never really did anything with off road. Didn’t have anything to do with offroad until maybe in, like, high school was the first time I was even introduced to anything off road. My parents didn’t do off road or anything like that. I went to Mexico with my parents quite a bit.
[00:04:15.310] – Austin “Fish” Farner
We would go to San Felipe quite a bit or even Ensenada. We would go to Estero Beach and stay there just on family vacations and go fishing and stuff off the shore there. That was my first Mexico experiences. But as far as offroad racing, none of that really started happening until in high school.
[00:04:31.440] – Big Rich Klein
Okay. So what were your interest back then then?
[00:04:34.610] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Fishing, actually, fishing was my big interest, hence. It still is.
[00:04:40.130] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah.
[00:04:40.440] – Austin “Fish” Farner
I’ve been fishing since I was probably, I don’t know, seven or eight years old. Maybe something like that going out on it started in the Lake. We lived right by a Lake. So there was Guhomi Lake. In Vista was actually right behind my house. We would just every day, like, walk back there and go fishing and there’s little creeks there. We would go in there and do fishing stuff. And then it started transitioning into ocean fishing, and I would go out on the sport boats out of Oceanside and do ocean fishing.
[00:05:07.290] – Austin “Fish” Farner
And then that kind of took over. That was a lot more fun than Lake fishing, in my opinion.
[00:05:11.810] – Big Rich Klein
Yeah, I agree.
[00:05:12.740] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Yeah.
[00:05:13.630] – Big Rich Klein
So then, of course, fish comes from your desire to fish all the time.
[00:05:19.570] – Austin “Fish” Farner
Yeah. As far as the nickname that everybody knows, it actually in, I think it was 2001. I signed up on racedezert. Com, which everybody knows Race Dezert. And my nickname on there when I signed up was Fish dude. It was Fish D-O-O-D. That was kind of my nickname for any online message boards or anything that I did. So I signed up on there as Fish dude. When I was, I don’t even know how old I would have been then. And that was 20 years ago. I guess so 17 years old then. READ MORE
