Dustin Long: Tell me about your welcome to NASCAR moment.

Jimmie Johnson: There's two that I have. The first one is the first [Cup] race I had. I qualified for the show, didn't have any points. That weekend, unfortunately, Blaise Alexander, one of my close friends, was killed. Saturday was a very difficult day for me because he was killed Friday night. That whole weekend was crazy, but qualifying for my first race amongst all of that really meant a lot to me. The second part of that would be in that race on Sunday ... we were running fair, had a good pit stop, came out up in the top few cars, and I remember Mark Martin and Dale Jarrett were around me and I'm like, "Wow, this is the show. I'm here with the big dogs. This is cool."

DL: Tell me about cliff diving when you were younger.

JJ: I love jumping off of things, so the Colorado River at Lake Powell, Lake Havasu, wherever there was water, we would look for something to climb up and jump off of. I remember being real young and jumping off a bridge overpass when we were camping out at the desert of all things, but there was this canal that ran through and I wanted to jump off this overpass. There were other people up there, adults jumping off it, and I went over there and launched off this thing as maybe a teenager at best. I remember it hurt like hell, but it was a huge rush, and I was just into those things as a kid. It seemed like 300 [feet] as kid but it was probably 40 or 50 feet.

DL: Other than racing, tell me about a passion you have.

JJ: I love traveling. I love to play golf. I love to mountain bike. Snowboarding is fantastic. Snowboarding is like a constant slide, which is cool to me and reminds me of skateboarding and surfing, which I did as a kid. To be doing the long slides and transitioning from corner to corner and sliding along down the mountain is a good, cool rush.

DL: What's a mystery you would like to know the answer to?

JJ: What the hell are we all doing here? Seriously. I'm out there earning a living as a source of entertainment. Am I really helping mankind? What's my purpose? What am I doing here? What are we all doing here? I guess that's one reason why the [Jimmie Johnson] Foundation feels so good to Chani and I, because we can make a difference, we can give back. But at the end of the day, what are we doing? I'm just driving around in circles and making a living doing it and entertaining people. It's a crazy thing.

DL: What gets you going in the morning?

JJ: I get out my French vanilla creamer and a couple cups of coffee, my laptop and start going through some e-mails. That kind of gets my brain going for the day.

DL: What are your rules to live by?

JJ: I'm trying to think of things that aren't corny. I think at the end of the day, the No. 1 rule is to be yourself. It may not win popular votes, it may not always be right for everyone else but if you're ... being yourself and living your life how you see it, how you want to live it, you're the only one you really have to live up to.

DL: Finish this: Never ...

Never quit.

DL: Finish this: Always ...

JJ: Always be patient.

DL: Explain those responses.

JJ: Those two things have taken me to where I am in my personal life and my professional life. It doesn't matter if it's business, life's relationships, personal relationships, whatever it is, never quit and always be patient. Things seem to fall in order from there.

DL: Tell me about a star-struck moment.

JJ: I have three. Two are with Jack Johnson the singer. One, Kristine [Curley, team PR person] had him call me for my birthday. I couldn't believe it was him on the phone, and I've called people and have had them freak out when I called. I was doing that. I was like, "Stop it. Quit doing it." Then I realized it was him and it was very cool. Then I saw him at Central Park maybe the next year at a show. I couldn't really talk to him. Cat had my tongue and I was staring at him, like "Whoa, what's up?" The other one, that same situation was Lance Armstrong when I met him. I didn't expect to run into him or see him and of all places I was at the Vanity Fair party [after the Oscars last year]. To my surprise he knew of racing and he knew of me, congratulated me on the championship. I'm like, "Wait a second, you're a seven-time Tour de France champion and you're congratulating me on my one championship at the time?" I thought that was pretty crazy.

DL: Tell me a skill you wish you had.

JJ: I wish I could play an instrument. I really do. I tried the guitar thing a little bit. I'll probably try again before too long. At a month or two in, [I] just could not pick it up. I've got an electric guitar. I've got an acoustic guitar. I have "Guitars for Dummies." I've got DVD follow-along things. I have some friends that can play that have tried to work with me some. I can't get it.

DL: What's a habit you need to break?

JJ: I could lay off the ice cream, late night. That's a bad habit. That's my problem, I like it all. In a pinch, I'll just go with some standard vanilla. I prefer the Ben and Jerry's stuff because they have so many cool combinations of candy and stuff.

DL: What scares you?

JJ: Failure scares me, to be honest, more than anything. I guess it also inspires me at the same time. At the beginning it was fear of not figuring it out. Then you clear that hurdle and it's on to the next one. Now it's fear of maintaining. We've set a high bar for the 48 team, set a high bar for myself. The last thing I want to do is not be able to maintain the bar we've set and the level we've been able to compete at. I know it's a lofty goal. I just don't want to fail. I want to keep this going.

DL: What did you learn from your mom?

JJ: My mom taught me to always give people the benefit of the doubt, always treat people how you want to be treated and really how to be a caring person.

DL: How has Jeff Gordon's recent fatherhood impacted any thoughts of having children?

JJ: Jeff included, along with a bunch of friends that are in various stages of raising children, has pushed my timeline back I would say. I also feel another thing rolling in parallel with that is our lives, Chani's and I, ... have changed so much in the last five years -- four years since we've been married, two years since the championships -- that maybe early in our marriage children were an immediate focus but now so much is going on. I'm not sure we'll ever be ready, and I've heard from a lot of people that you'll never be ready. We had some marks set in our mind and it would be around now to start having children and both of us are like, "You know what, let's wait and hold on a little bit longer and see what happens." But it's something we both do want. I just don't think we're ready yet. We've just got too much going on.