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When I came out, it didn't go well. My dad kicked me out. I ended up sleeping in my car.
My dad would load me into the car under a pile of blankets in the middle of the night so I could sleep the whole way and be on the mountain when it opened.
I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old. When I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, 'Son, you should write a song about your brother.'
My dad drove me to Eindhoven for training at 9am, he slept in the car, it finished at 11am, then we went back and I'd be in school in Almere until 4pm. We did that for four or five years.
When I was really young, I busted my nose when I was racing. The first thing my dad asked me was: 'Are you OK?' I said, 'Can you fix the car for tomorrow?' And I won the race the next day.
I think about me and my dad taking a road trip from Phoenix to Nashville when I was 19. He's no longer here with me, but I still drive that same 1994 Chevy truck. I never have bought a new car.
I was really, really shy. My dad used to drive me for an hour and a half to go training. I used to finish school, jump in the car, come back, and go to bed. I missed out on socialising with my friends when I was a shy child anyway.
When I turned 16, my dad made me sign a contract - he made us sign contracts for everything - that if I hit my car, I would be responsible for paying for it. I was in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and I tapped someone. It was so not a big deal, but I had to pay for it.
Mum and dad would drive me to the ACT Academy of Sport gym at 5 A.M., sit in the car and read a book, and then drive me to school. I appreciated it when I was younger, but I didn't really understand how much they were putting into it. Now I look at budgets of $70,000 to compete, and I think, 'Wow, they've put so much into this.'
My engineer dad is where my technical acumen comes from. I remember him taking me to the factories to see how what works. Often he used to open up his motorbike to fix things and I saw how the wheels worked. His car used to be open for dissection very regularly. All this taught me and inspired me to look beyond what I could see on the skin.