He won't be taking any time off for a long while now.

But yes, it's true. Workaholic crew chief Chad Knaus actually did take some time off after helping his No. 48 team for Hendrick Motorsports, which includes driver Jimmie Johnson, secure their unprecedented fourth consecutive Cup championship last November.

“

It's not like I'm ready for the X-games or anything like that. I'm just learning how to do some small jumps and things like that. But I can go down a hill no problem and not fall. I have fun with it.

”

-- CHAD KNAUS

With the 2010 season-opening Daytona 500 looming Sunday, Knaus long ago went back to work. But he talked recently with NASCAR.COM about what he does on those rare occasions when he lets himself put down his wrench and get away from the shop.

Q: Did you get away at all in the offseason? How much time did you take off?

Knaus: I took off about a week, a week and a half, and went to Mexico. I wanted to go scuba diving and snorkeling and that kind of stuff, but it was rainy and cold. So I left there and went to Colorado and went snowboarding for five or six days. So that was pretty cool.

Q: When you do that, are you able to shut it down as far as work goes? Do you even maybe find that necessary to do once in a while?

Knaus: It's pretty easy. I've done a good job of trying to find that balance. What we do now, with help from my office administrator, anyplace I go we make sure ahead of time that they've got good Internet access. What I can do is get up first thing in the morning and check e-mails, make sure nobody has got pressing questions or anything like that, and I can knock all that out in 30 or 45 minutes. And from that point, I'm free. I feel comfortable in not keeping tabs on what's going on at the shop beyond that. Nobody at the shop is falling too far behind because I'm not there to make a decision. And it gives me a little bit of a sense of accomplishment before I go out for the day to have fun.

Q: Are you a pretty good snowboarder?

Knaus: Yeah, I'm pretty good.

Q: Any special moves you can share with us?

Knaus: (laughing) Nah, well, I'm not that good. It's not like I'm ready for the X-games or anything like that. I'm just learning how to do some small jumps and things like that. But I can go down a hill no problem and not fall. I have fun with it.

Q: And your other passion away from the track is scuba diving?

Knaus: Yes. I absolutely love doing that.

Q: How long have you been diving?

Knaus: Probably five years now. I usually try to go once or twice a year.

Q: What's the best place you've been?

Knaus: I've been to a lot of neat places. Honestly, every place I've been has been so unique. ... I want to keep going. I want to go to Belize. There are some cool dive sites there. I want to go to Haiti. There are some cool places there. But it's all about timing.

Q: What's the coolest thing you've seen while diving?

Knaus: Oh, geez. I've been through like a huge field of sea rays. This was when I was in St. John. What appeared to be sort of a beachy floor right in front of a sea wall, the dive instructor went down and started paddling his fins -- and all of a sudden all these sea rays started to move up and around in the sand. Then about 20 of them just popped up right in front of us. We've seen sea rays, deep-sea turtles, manta rays, a lot of neat stuff.

Q: Any sharks?

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Knaus: I haven't been on a shark dive. I have seen sharks. I went on a dive in the Exumas (a chain of small islands in the Bahamas) and there were some sharks down there. I didn't get real, real close to them. They were sleeping, so that was fine. They could just hang out there and relax all they wanted to as far as I was concerned. Sharks, you know, as they're resting they still have to move so they can breathe. But they were moving really, really slow and kind of chilling down there, so we just let 'em be.

Q: Does Jimmie do any of this stuff?

Knaus: Jimmie has been on a shark dive. We've never been diving together. We've been different places about the same time, but never together.

Q: And you probably don't want him snowboarding?

Knaus: No, Jimmie's a real good snowboarder. You have to realize that Jimmie gets hurt real easily all the time, doing all kinds of stuff. Golfing ... just about cutting his finger off while running the 24-hour [Rolex] race. So what's the worst thing that could happen when he's snowboarding?