You're listening to the Uncommon Life Podcast. Whether you're a startup or you've been in business for 10 years, this show is for you. Each week, you'll get mentored by business leaders who deliver valuable strategies, tactics and tips on how you can pursue your passion without compromise. We’ll show you how to achieve balance while sticking to your core values, so you can have an uncommon life.
Now, here's your host, Jimmy Fullerton.
Jimmy Fullerton: So, welcome to the Uncommon Life Podcast. I'm your host, Jimmy Fullerton, and it's my pleasure today to be talking to somebody who's truly uncommon, Dan Parker. Dan, tell us a little bit about your story, who you are and just share your very interesting past.
Dan Parker: I'm Dan Parker from Columbus, Georgia. I was born and raised here in Columbus. My father, Jimmy Parker, is a drag racer, so I'm a second-generation racer. 2005, I was the American Drag Racing League Pro Nitrous world champion. I formed my own my own business, Parker Chassis, where I built and designed race cars for people around the United States, Canada, even as far as Qatar.
March 31, 2012 was a day that changed my life forever. While testing a new motor combination, had a very violent wreck and Steele, Alabama. I would wake up from my induced coma two weeks later to find out that was 100 percent blind for life. After about six months of deep depression and a dream one night, I dreamed that I could race again, and the next day I started my quest. I designed and built a motorcycle.
In 2013, I became the first blind man to race the Bonneville Salt Flats. I returned in 14 and set my official FIM class record with no exemption from blindness. I was able to do that because I'm the only blind man in the world that has ever raced with no human assistance.
I have a custom guidance system built by a friend of mine, Patrick Johnson. It Boeing Phantom Works that gives me audible feedback, so I know how to correct and stay on course.
Jimmy: Well, that’s a lot. That’s too much for me to take in at one time. I’ve got to go back, because that’s a lot. That’s pretty heavy right there. So, let’s go back to the actual incident that changed your life when you had the wreck. I don’t want to bring up any bad memories, but…
Dan: Oh, you're fine.
Jimmy: Let’s go back to that. So, your background before this race happened, tell me a little bit about how you got into racing to begin with.
Dan: My father is 76 and he still races today, so I grew up at racetracks. I was eight years old the first time I went down, Phenix City Dragstrip on a minibike, 12 years old the first time I went down in a car.
And so, after high school, I started bracket racing and gradually moving up through the ranks, driving faster and faster cars. And then, in about 1997, I drove for a local man Ellis Milner, as a [03:00] called pro mod or pro modified, which is the fastest cars that still have doors to operate zero to roughly 185 miles an hour in four seconds over 3g of acceleration on start line. And so, racing has been my whole life.
Jimmy: I see this. So, you're passionate. You've always been passionate about racing.
Dan: Mhm.
Jimmy: And so, take me back to that, that day when you had the accident.
Dan: Yeah, we were testing a new motor combination. It was 864 cubic inches, plus five stages of nitrous oxide, so realistically you’d make about 2,400, 2,500 horsepower with all the nitrous turned on. It was our first day out. We went to the track. They were having a race, but we went there with the intention of just using it as a test session. First two passes and everything went good, and so, the first qualifying session, we decided to enter the race.
I have no memory at all of the day of the race. Basically, the first two passes, I was shut off at halftrack, the 330-foot mark, and everything was good, so this would be the first pass. We took it all the way to the eighth mile. And we don't know what happened, maybe oil drop from the car in front of us or whatever. But I was left lane. I went 407 to 175 miles an hour, and when I went to the finish line, I was already airborne and sideways. I went across the track, hit a poured concrete wall. The car went over the wall, then went to tumbling, and then it broke the car completely in half. There was nothing forward of my feet, no motor transmission, front suspension, firewall, steering column, anything.
Jimmy: Wow…
Dan: And so, I'm not supposed to be here. I should be dead. If you look at the pictures of the remains, there's no way that … you’ll say there's no way that you might survive that wreck. But I had a HANS device, which is a head and neck restraint system that I had adjusted properly and I credit my HANS device as the only thing that saved my life.
Jimmy: It’s called a—what’s it called?
Dan: A HANS device.
Jimmy: HANS device.
Dan: H-A-N-S.
Jimmy: Okay.
Dan: So, I credit it and the good Lord willing to allow me to survive. They called for a medical flight to helicopter me to University of Alabama Hospital, which was the nearest hospital, Trauma Center, which was about, I think, 60, 70 miles away. There was a bad storm in between UAB and the track, so the helicopter couldn't go through the storms, so they put me in an ambulance. Jennifer, my fiancée, was riding pasture. I was in such bad shape. They called ahead and got another ambulance to meet mine on the side of the highway, so one of their EMTs could get in mine, help my EMT keep me alive till I got to the hospital.
Jimmy: So, not only did you have the wreck. There was also weather preventing you from getting to the hospital. It's like that was just trying to take your life right then and there.
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: So, you get to the hospital. What's your first memory after you get to the hospital?
Dan: I don't have any memory for the two weeks I was in an induced coma.
Jimmy: Two weeks you said -
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: - in an induced coma. Okay.
Dan: My whole right arm was completely destroyed, so they had [06:00] to… I had some infections and they’ve tried to stabilize me. Jennifer said that the first things they had to do, a full CAT scan is sort of see what my injuries were. I had broke ribs and a collapsed lung, and my whole right arm was going every direction but the correct way.
Jimmy: It was going every direction except the correct way.
Dan: Yeah, it was.
Jimmy: That sounds bad.
Dan: Yeah, I have a pin in between my shoulder and my elbow, three plates, 14 screws in my elbow, a pin in my forearm, a pin in my thumb. I had one in my wrist, and so all the nerves are crossed up in this right hand because of all the damage. Skin graft site in my right armpit.
So, they told Jennifer, after about 24 hours, they told her just to go home, prepare herself for a long stay, because they told her they would not know the extent of my damages until I woke up from the coma. And for whatever reason, I have to think that they had some signs to know that I was going to be blind because my pupils, they don't respond to light, but they gave my family or Jennifer no full warning.
So, after they started bringing me out of the induced coma, Jennifer, my sister noticed that I wouldn't recognize somebody was there unless they came up and they spoke to me. Then I would sort of jerk my head like I was startled. My pupils were not constricted and they're large, and they stay that way all the time. So, they called in a neuro-ophthalmologist and, after about three minutes of examination, he said, “You're blind. You’re 100 percent blind. You will be the rest your life.”
Jimmy: So, at that point, you were conscious.
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: When he was talking to you. And so, I guess you were probably on drugs at that point as well.
Dan: Oh, yeah. Yeah, still coming out of sedation. Yeah.
Jimmy: So, when he told you you were blind, what was your initial reaction? Can you remember that?
Dan: Yeah. I pretty much knew right there my life was over. I knew it. The first quiet moment that Jennifer and I got together in the hospital, because we had family around at that time, I told her. My exact words were, “I ruined my life. Don’t ruin yours by trying to do the right thing by me.” Jennifer at that time had only lived with me about three months. We’ve been dating a little over a year. I told her to go back home, get whatever she wanted, move back to Birmingham and forget about me. And she wouldn't have it.
Jimmy: Wow. That’s pretty amazing that she was willing to do that. That says a lot about character, for sure.
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: So, at that point you realized your life as you knew it was over, and it was to a certain extent.
Dan: Mhm.
Jimmy: Definitely would change forever. Was that your lowest point?
Dan: No, when I got home the realization that I was losing my business, losing everything that I ever worked hard for, just that really hit me then. Then, the day-to-day struggles of trying to adapt to be blind. My right arm was stuck straight for six months, constant pain. When you're in a coma, you lay on your back, so the top of your feet is away [09:00] from your head, and so all those muscles start to get tight. When I came home blind, I would short step, so the muscles. They got the back of your legs to your calves, and so when I short step, they just kept getting worse and worse. So, basically, six months after my wreck, I couldn’t stand on my feet for a minute and it would just bring tears to my eyes because I was in so much pain along with everything else.
And so, about six months in, I was on the verge of suicide and I went to bed one night thinking about my late brother. He passed away in 2009. My mother passed away six months before the wreck. And Chris told me… He loved racing, motorcycle racing and the history of racing, and I remember him talking about a French team, four guys from France, built a motorcycle, a 50cc bike. They took it apart, put it in their luggage, flew to the United States, rented a car, drove to Bonneville, put it together, and each got a record with/without sidecar, with/without fairing, etc. You just got the ultimate four guys pulling off the ultimate goals.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Dan: So, I went to bed that night thinking about it and thinking about Chris, and I was pretty much … I probably was at the end of my rope, so I was close to cashing my own check is what I tell people.
Jimmy: Let me stop for a second right there. So, at that point, up to that point in your life, what was your...? Did you have a relationship with God or what was your situation there spiritually?
Dan: I did. Spiritually, I believe in God. I’ve tried to live how I think God would want me to live. I didn't attend church lot. But, yes, I did have a relationship with God.
Jimmy: Okay. So, here you are now on the … once you’d gotten out of the hospital, you realized the extent of what you were going to be dealing with and how your life has changed, and you're trying to figure out if this is worth it. Can I do this? And you're at the point to where you're thinking it’s not. And what got you over the hump in that particular moment?
Dan: Like I said, I went to bed that night and about two o'clock the morning I woke up, and I’d had a dream, that I was racing a motorcycle at the Bonneville Salt Flats. I never went back to sleep, so when Jennifer woke up, I told her. I said, “I figured out what I'm going to do. I’m going to be the first blind man to race Bonneville.” And she said, “Okay,” and that point, that was my pivot point that gave me a purpose, that gave me a reason to try to move forward, to have a goal, to have something to work for, to work on.
Needless to say, I had very little support from a lot of people. They all thought it was stupid, etc. But I just believed in myself and believed in the project, and surrounded, tried to surround myself with people that would help me and started moving forward from there.
Jimmy: Wow. [12:00] Once you had a dream that night and you discovered, I mean, it was like, almost like an illumination in your life to where you realize that this is what I want to do, and having a goal and a purpose is important. It's what kind of injected life into you, right?
Dan: Oh, yeah.
Jimmy: Gave you some hope.
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: And you also realized how hard that would be to do that. So, what was the next step you took after you got that awakening of what you wanted to do?
Dan: I was in infancy of starting to learn how to use an iPhone which is an amazing device, a piece of technology for the blind has a setting in it called Voiceover that reads everything to me on the screen. So, I started this research. I had a friend of mine in New York that has done some land speed racing. He put me in contact with a guy in California who has 50cc land speed bikes. I knew I wanted a 50 because I didn't want to try to do stupid fast off the bat. I wanted to have a stepping stone, prove what I could do, and also something cheap.
He told me I needed an Aprilia RS50. A friend of mine Frank Porzio who owns Porzio Performance here in town, I called him, and just by chance he had one. He said, “I got one that’s wrecked.” He says, “It’s fine for what you want to do.” So, I reached out to the BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials, told him my plan, and initially what I told her about, I think they thought I was prank calling them when I told him I was blind, I wanted to race Bonneville. And so, they told me they wouldn't even consider me racing unless I made a three-wheeler to take balance out the equation.
So, that changed the whole concept of the motorcycle itself because that entailed building a whole new frame and designing it, and grafting everything together, which I did everything in my head myself. And I had some friends who would come over and help me weld and I would make parts, and it might be two or three weeks in between times, but we got it finished. I had a motorcycle 75 percent finished before I had the final approval that I could even race it.
Three weeks before I was slated to be in Bonneville, we tested the guidance system for the first time in an airport in North Alabama close to Patrick's. Had some problems. Patrick took the guidance system home, reprogrammed it. We met the next week. Everything went fine. I made my first successful solo pass, come home, load everything else up in a little trailer and took off on a three-day journey across nine states to Bonneville. Bonneville is 2,500 miles from Columbus, basically.
Jimmy: Yeah, so let me make sure I heard. The Bonneville Salt Flats you're talking about. So, what is the Bonneville Salt Flats?
Dan: It’s a dried lake, a salt lake, and it’s 120 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah. Thousands years ago, it evaporated, so all the salt settled to the earth, to the floor. It’s perfectly flat. It's about 20 miles long and about 10 miles wide, and people have been setting land speed records there since 1914. And so [15:00], that's just a mecca in the world for land speed racing.
Jimmy: Okay.
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Jimmy: So, when you first had that idea in your head about racing on the Bonneville Salt Flats, you wanted to do it not only three-wheeler?
Dan: Originally, I was going to do it on a motorcycle with a sidecar, and then the people at BUB told me the sidecar was actually harder to drive than a regular motorcycle, so because all the weight is to one side. Then that’s why he told me they will need to build a conventional tricycle configuration, two wheels in the back, one in the front. And so, I completely stripped the Aprilia RS50, all the parts that I could use, motor, exhaust, front forks and a few other things. Threw the rest of it away and then started from scratch, building a whole new motorcycle, completely from scratch.
Jimmy: Okay, let me go back again because you went from … we went from you being suicidal to having a dream one night, then getting the idea and the goal in your head about what you wanted to do. And then, there had to be, I know there was a series of steps in between there where you were having to relearn how to live your life. So, what was one of the first things? Where were you at that point as far as what you knew how to do? What were some positive steps that you took after you had that awakening of what you wanted to do? What were some positive steps you took to start making that dream come to pass?
Dan: There was so many things going on in my life. I had to have surgery to reconstruct this right arm for the second time, so, typically, my week consisted of two days of hand therapy, two days of back therapy and, generally, at least one trip a week to the UAB, University of Alabama Hospital.
And so, I was trying to teach myself adaptive techniques in the shop. They’ll run my equipment, mill machine, lights, tubing benders, sheet metal equipment, etc. I had some resources, and then, early into my blindness, I learned about a place in Seattle, Washington. It's called the LightHouse for the Blind and they have about 100 blind machinist, and a friend of mine went there. He had a tour. He said I’ve got to see this place because he ran a machine shop. Any place to get, employ 100 blind machinists has to have organizational skills that would help a regular machine shop. [18:00]
He brought back some adaptive tools, ones at top box that I could hook to my calipers, my indicator that will speak, sound to me my measurements. And so, I started trying to teach myself all the adaptive techniques. Also, in the meantime, I'm trying to teach myself skills, how to wash clothes, how to get around the house.
Jimmy: Yes.
Dan: Just the common things.
Jimmy: Yeah, so you’ve got this vision in your head of racing the Salt Flats, first blind man to race the Salt Flats at a certain … the fastest land speed?
Dan: Well, I wasn’t going for the fastest at that point. I just wanted to become the first blind man to race.
Jimmy: Right. And here, at one point, you’ve got this mountain in between you and that goal, and so you started to attack it in small ways, one bit at a time. You had to learn the adaptive techniques. You had to learn some basics and you also got some people around you that rallied you a bit as well. So, you started doing things one thing at a time, with the ultimate goal in mind of racing the Salt Flats, and you are working towards that. So, okay, what were you going to say?
Dan: The people is the key thing. When you go through something like I go through, you're going to find out who your friends are, and one of the hardest parts I went through all this blindness is I found out that people I thought would take a bullet for me were the first ones that abandoned me, and other people that you might not even know would step up and just be your strongest supporters.
Jimmy: Wow, they abandoned you when this happened.
Dan: Oh, yeah.
Jimmy: Did you ever hear from them since? Did they give you a reason they just checked out, it's too much?
Dan: I had people, one guy that was, basically, my best friend, they ended up stealing from me later down the road.
Jimmy: Wow.
Dan: And so, it is what it is. Like I said, it’s been hard, but they’ve got to live with themselves, not me.
Jimmy: That’s right. That’s right.
Dan: And so, I was lucky I had some good people that would support me, and would come and donate their time. And on the off days when I had nobody help me, I would try to do some research and maybe line up some stuff. And I had luckily Star Racing in Americus, Georgia, stepped up and helped me a lot, and other companies. So, it just all started falling together just a little bit at a time.
Jimmy: Right. You kept your momentum. You made sure every day you kept yourself moving forward. I'm sure you had good days and bad days, highs and lows. I mean, we do, everybody anyway.
Dan: Yeah.
Jimmy: But I'm sure you to a much greater degree with what all you were dealing with, and still do, I’m sure, highs and lows. How do you keep yourself moving forward?
Dan: You’ve just got to keep that goal in sight. Even though I can’t see it in sight, but you’ve got this--
Jimmy: You’ve got to have it in your mind, though.
Dan: Yeah, you’ve got to have it in your mind. You’ve got to stay focused. There’s going to be distractors and haters in anything in life, and I would just ignore the negative, stay focused on the positive and just try to keep my goal in sight that this is what we're going for [21:00]. The rest in between is the part that’s getting me there, but this is the goal.
Jimmy: Keep the goal in sight. What are some of the things you did to help you stay positive? Some daily habits? Because it's all, for me, life is all about … it all comes down to your daily habits, the small things you do throughout the day. That's my perspective. What do you do to help you stay motivated?
Dan: Generally, first thing, I wake up, I sort of try to plan out my day. What am I going to do? And with the motorcycle project, if I didn't have anybody come to help, I would still try to think of something, no matter how small or big, to make progress [unclear 21:41]. When I lay down at night, I knew I might only move the half inch forward, but I moved forward. I didn't move back. It might just be organizing some parts in the shop to doing some research on the internet to making some phone calls. There was so much to do in a project that normally there was always something to do.
Jimmy: Yeah, that’s so crucial because there's so many things, especially when you're starting your own business or whatever it is. There can be so many things to do. A lot of people, a lot, they just get overwhelmed. There's too much to do and you just don't do anything.
Dan: Yeah, that’s right. It's really easy to get overwhelmed and bogged down because of that, so you’ve got to break it down into doable sections and focus on what you can do that day.
Jimmy: Yeah. And you’ve got to adjust to life at times because sometimes life happens. I know in some situations in my own situation, I’ve got an aging mother going through some difficult times right now, and when she needs me, I have to be there. So, my goals need to be subordinate to that based on what my priorities are. But, still, even when life happens, there’s still something you can do to keep yourself moving forward, some little thing you can accomplish to make you know that you're still moving forward. You're not just stuck. So, I think that's so important, just to do something to keep yourself moving forward.
So, what else? What other kind of tool do you have in your toolbox to keep yourself motivated and positive? So, you’ve got friends, your support system. You're trying to keep your goal in mind and stay focused on that. So, is there anything else that you would…?
Dan: Jennifer was always there. She created a Facebook page for the project and then she started reaching out to sponsors. I lost everything financially when I went blind. I lost my business, just everything.
So, that project and my current project, the Corvette I’m building to become the world's fastest blind man, is all funded off donations, sponsors, or other stuff that making sale, but you can't let it overwhelm you because it's easy to throw in the towel and say, I can't do this.
And I've had a bunch of bad days, but I generally keep those to myself by just trying to stay focused, and I've always had a [24:00] motto in life and in racing—you can make excuses or make it happen—and just try to carry that forward to the team and just to the project, in general.
Jimmy: You can make excuses or make it happen. I love that. Also, I did want to ask you about you had … I know that when you realized how well you could use or adapt the iPhone and the iPad to what you needed, to help motivate you a good bit, too, because that kind of helped you to reconnect.
Dan: Yeah, it did. I've always been a very social person and an extrovert, talk to people, so the iPhone allowed me to have the independence to go back and have that freedom, pick up the phone calling somebody or surfing the net, or anything like that. And it's a lot of stuff I've had to teach myself over the years. Now it's going on seven and a half years since I've been blind.
Technology is amazing. I have another piece of technology called oCam. It’s a camera that mounts to glasses and they'll take a picture of any printed material and read it to me, and so, I use it. And so, technology has made blindness easier. I tell folks, if you don't have any patience, I don't recommend going blind, but it's definitely easier than it was 25, 50 years ago.
Jimmy: Right. Okay, so let's talk about real quick you're Blind Ambition Foundation.
Dan: Yeah, my Facebook page is Tragedy to Triumph Racing and that's where we have documented everything that I've done over the last seven years throughout all this, and everything from me going to the Louisiana Center for the Blind. I spent nine months there in an adult training center for the blind to learn adaptive techniques, cane travel, kitchen, etc., daily life skills. And now I'm building a 2008 Corvette to become the world's fastest blind man with the goal of 210 miles an hour. A legally blind man has been at 200.4 in Europe, so I want to break that record, bring it home to America.
Jimmy: Awesome.
Dan: So, now the Corvette is painted. It’s getting closer. Realistically, I think next summer I'll be able to set the record and go for it, attempt the record, and just … and so I’m back in the same boat. You just have to stay focused, move forward and just keep trying to make things happen.
Jimmy: One foot in front of the other, as I say. So, the Blind Ambition Foundation, so in addition to having passionate about racing, you're passionate about serving others as well. You also have the Quest for the Salt Project. Tell us about that.
Dan: Yeah, that's basically renamed originally the motorcycle page. It was Dan Parker's Quest for the Salt, so then we renamed it Tragedy to Triumph Racing. The Corvette I more than likely will not race in the Salt Flats. I'll find an airstrip. There's some half-mile races and one-mile races. Air strips now to set the record, somewhere like that on asphalt because it's safer. Salt Flats is really easy to spin out. And so, I'm not looking to get folded up again.
[27:00]
The Corvette has got an extreme amount of safety built into it. It actually has two steering wheels. I have a steering wheel for passenger side, so when I'm testing my new guidance system, if there's a problem, someone can take over. When you're going 200 miles an hour, you’re on a football field per second, and so it is serious business at that point. The motorcycle, how fast I went was 65 miles an hour. I'm the fastest independent blind driver in the world, but I want to be the fastest blind driver in the world and just happen to do what [unclear 27:27] that also did it independently with no human assistance.
Jimmy: I think you're going to do it.
Dan: Mhm.
Jimmy: So, how do people look you up? How can they find you on Facebook and all the other social media?
Dan: Yeah, I just got a new website launched is TheBlindMachinist.com and I make and sell aluminum pens to raise money for my Corvette project. So, anybody that’d be interested, they go check it out. It’s growing every day, writing content, a lot of videos. It’s new, and so it has only been up for about a month, but we're on that. My Facebook page is Tragedy to Triumph Racing on Facebook, and people going there see the Corvette, the whole history of everything I've done since I've been blind, and we're going to keep building it and go from there. And, hopefully, like I said, next summer, I'll be attempting land speed record in the Corvette.
Jimmy: Oh, man, I really appreciate you taking time to share your story. It’s very inspirational. And what's your tagline again?
Dan: You can make excuses or make it happen.
Jimmy: That is the truth. Dan, thanks again, man. I really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
Dan: Thank you.
Jimmy: Thank you all for listening to this episode of The Uncommon Life. Stay tuned for more.
Thank you so much for listening to this interview with Dan Parker. If you enjoyed that, then you can find more content like this at my YouTube channel at UncommonLifePodcast.com.
And, remember—make excuses or make it happen.
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