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Turning a dive into a dream. Planning a one-way trip to Alaska.
Marrying a girl you've seen 17 times.
Big leaps, all.
Readers share stories about the time they took a chance, a big one, and how they came out the other side.
(Spoiler alert: Every one of them says it was worth it.)
Lobster and a dream
Cyndi Robbins, Poland Spring
It?s December 2007. Mel Robbins, my husband of 33 years and business partner, has just died. One of his dreams was to have a ?lobster in the rough? restaurant at the Poland Spring Resort, our business.
An adjacent property, restaurant and boat rental place is for sale and (has) been for sale for a long time. It had had improvements but still needed a lot of work. It was known as the local hangout for drinking but not known for great food.
I took my friend Betty to see it. The restaurant was dark and dirty. I know she thought I had lost my mind wanting to buy it. I talked to friends like Peter Bolduc, who offered us for free a lobster tank so I could offer Maine lobster. I convinced John Piper, our wonderful chef, to help, and knowing that I had him in my corner, on April 7 we closed the deal.
John, Betty, Maddie and Tom and many more worked diligently to clean the place up, and in June we opened as a takeout place. Three days later I realized that wouldn?t work and we then added a waitstaff. Two weeks later we add a liquor license. Changes, improvements and daily challenges are the norm.
Five years later, Cyndi?s Dockside is open year-round, and I?m very glad I jumped the cliff. I'm blessed with customers and staff that have become my friends.
The wood life
Chris "Kit" Begin, Farmington
I?ve made several big leaps in my 55 years on this planet, but two of them rise to the top as life changing.
The first "leap" was picking up stakes in New Hampshire, getting married and moving to Maine in August 1981 . . . with no job, no house and $5,000 in my pocket. My dad had given me a parcel of land in New Sharon, and once here I began the process of building my dream house, a 24-by-24-foot log cabin in the woods. Dad gave me a copse of pine on his land in Rome, where we cut, milled, hand-peeled and then built the cabin (short version).
Our first winter we had no flush, shower or refrigeration, and the cabin ran off a single outlet. It was a long winter, but we made it and things improved each year after that, including two wonderful boys, now young men.
For the second "leap," fast forward 30 years. I have a great job in sales making six figures, lots of travel, fancy hotels, the best restaurants, planes, meetings, conference calls, telecommuting, trains to Boston and a nice paycheck every two weeks. Oh, I seem to have left out the "stress" part. This was not the life I had imagined 30 years ago when, as Louise Dickinson Rich said in the mid-1940s, I "took to the woods." (That first cabin had been sold years earlier.)
After several years of planning and wringing of hands, I left the security of corporate America on July 1, 2011, and chucked it all for a smaller house, a large garden and self-employment as a Maine Guide, and continued use of my sales skills as a real estate agent. I made a lopsided trade of money for time, and a year and a half later, life is as good as it gets. Time to camp, fish, hunt, go to camp, travel, putter in the garden and the wood shop, tap maple trees, visit with family and friends, and just wander, wonder and reflect.
He had me at moo
Kristina Gailloux, Peru
So the time I took a leap was when I was 18 years old. I was working at a local convenience store right out of high school and every day a guy would come in after he got out of work. He was just absolutely handsome. I would get red in the face and butterflies every time. After me telling his friends that I was just crazy about him, and them telling him, he called me at the store and we finally ended up hanging out.
(After) he showed me his place, I met his dogs and he mooed at some cows that we were driving by, he brought me back to my car. A week later, we were heading to my house for him to meet my parents for the first time and pack my stuff! We had been hanging out for a week and he asked me to move in and we are still together and now married with two children almost eight years later! He?s my best friend, and I just love him so much, and I'm glad I took that crazy leap of moving in with him, even though I only knew him for a week.
A new life? Why not?
Mark and Lynn Klinger, Auburn
The big leap? Try jumping off the Empire State Building and surviving. That?s more like what we accomplished in our move to Maine in 2001. While growing up and making a living in the Southwestern deserts of Arizona, Maine couldn?t have been any farther from our thoughts. Why would someone want to live in the snow and cold of New England?
That?s what we thought as we left our flight, returning from Portland to Phoenix, Ariz., after our vacation in August 2000. Unfortunately, we had been bitten by the ?why not bug.? Why not quit our jobs, sell the house, leave our families behind and start a new life at Sleepy Time Motel in Auburn? Sure we could do it, we thought. Move 2,600 miles and start life anew, work for ourselves and get out of the corporate world.
The fact that the motel was mostly a cash business didn?t help one bit. Banks laughed at us, SCORE advised us to run for the hills. ?You?ll be sorry,? they said.
So we did what any other adventurous, thrill-seeking couple would do. We sold our house, quit our jobs and moved to Auburn, seeking a new life in Maine. We found that Sleepy Time had a less than desirable reputation, just another hurdle for us to leap over in our quest for success.
Now, 11 years later, we have developed a great business, made many changes, new friends and have never regretted the ?leap? we took in getting to Maine.
Alaska or bust
N. Doepke, Greenwood
Itchy feet has been a blessing and a bane all my life. The thought of missing out on an adventure spurred me to take a leap in 1975 to the "last frontier" of Alaska. Single and 19, I had already traveled thousands of miles thanks to being in a military family. This trip would be one-way only and on my own merit. The '70s were still a wild time and to turn down an opportunity to see Alaska left me with only one choice ? go or regret it the rest of my life.
A girlfriend of mine had gone up about six months before and invited me to go and try my luck. My traveling mates were three guys I'd never met but were friends of my friend in Alaska. They were travelling to the "lower 48" to see the sites and would pick me up in Arizona.
When they arrived on Oct. 1 it was 95 degrees. When we arrived in Anchorage 10 days later, it was a balmy 35 degrees!
I had $25 to my name but didn't need to worry. Those guys were generous, and we had 10 days of lazy driving through the most beautiful lands in North America. Driving and surviving the Alaska-Canadian Highway is a feat to treasure.
Although I didn't make a big gold strike, didn't marry a rich pipeline worker or homestead, I did gain three precious gifts: my 18-month-old daughter and boy-girl twins in my womb. Parental kidnapping caused me to leave Alaska and seek the help of my family. Reuniting with my daughter worked out, and my twins were born in Arizona.
In the end, being able to spend six years in the pristine beauty and natural wonders of Alaska made the leap well worthwhile.
On the move(s)
Robin St. Jean, Eustis
I?m sure there are many women that have made a big leap for a man. I have made two. Lucky for me both were for and with the same man.
The first time I was 24 years old and madly in love with Steve, my boyfriend. We decided to move in together at the same time we were trying to get custody of his two children. We found a place, moved in and the kids moved in a month later. They were 4 and 6.
I had been living with my parents to that point and had never run a washing machine nor actually cooked a meal. My kids and husband still joke about the many meals I cooked that even the dog wouldn?t eat!
Twenty-four years later I agreed to sell our house in Auburn, pack up everything and move to our camp in Eustis with Steve, now my husband of 22 years.
I was working as a manager in a manufacturing plant in Lewiston that had recently been purchased by a company in China. Every couple of months came a new round of layoffs. It was miserable waiting for the next round and never knowing who would be next.
Steve proposed the move. He is in financial services and can work from anywhere as long as he has a computer and Internet service. If we sold the house in Auburn, we could pay off that mortgage and be able to put a real kitchen in Eustis. I could quit my job and we would live in our retirement home way before retirement age.
I loved the Eustis area, but I had lived in Auburn most of my life. It was terrifying. Moving two hours away from our families has not been easy, but I?m so happy I agreed.
Sometimes I sit there at night looking around and tearing up. To me it?s the most beautiful place on Earth, and we did it ourselves.
I will leap again with this man, anytime!
Learning experience
Carl Beckett, Mechanic Falls
Growing up, I hated school. I thought it was dumb, boring and a waste of time. Yes, you heard me right.
After I graduated from Brunswick High School in 1954, I worked in the paper mill with my father. At the time, I thought it would be my life's work.
In 1956, I won a sum of money at Lewiston Raceway. The next day, while leaving the bank, I met a friend. I told her I won some money at the races. She asked me what I was going to do with it. I did not know. She suggested, "Why don't you go to college?" I replied, "That's a great idea! How do you do that?" I really didn't know.
She told me to talk with the principal of Brunswick High School and he would help me. The next day I told the principal I wanted to go to college. He asked me what I wanted to be. Darned if I knew!
I remembered my friend was going to Gorham State Teachers' College and studying to be a teacher. What was good enough for her was good enough for me!
Imagine that! A school hater deciding to become a teacher.
In September 1957, I started college. I graduated in 1961 and started teaching. I was determined my classes would never be dumb, boring or a waste of time. In all, I had 28 years of wonderful teaching. I believe I was meant to be a teacher.
Maine to Montana and back
Lorraine Charpentier Jarden, Auburn
Forty years ago I left the state of Maine. It was a time in my life when nothing was going well for me, so I decided to go as far away from here as I could. I ended up in the great state of Montana where I met the love of my life, a real Montana cowboy and rancher, and settled down learning all the ins and outs of ranch life.
We had 400 Angus cattle, horses, chickens and one donkey who thought he was a cow when he went out to pasture with the cows, and a horse when grazing with the horses!
Life was good on the prairie and as the years went by we enjoyed the peace and quiet of ranching.
Donald passed away in 2010 and, although I had many friends, the urge to return "home" to my roots began to niggle away at my heartstrings.
During our marriage we vacationed in Maine quite often, and I began to view Maine in a different light. Having spent 40 years on the prairie where there are very few trees, not much water and lots of mud (it's called gumbo out there), I looked forward to trees, lakes and the ocean.
In July of this year, my brother, who lives in Poland, flew to Montana for a visit. His desire was to return to Maine by car. I saw this as divine intervention, packed up my car, tearfully said goodbye to all my friends, and returned to my roots where I know I'll live happily ever after!
Love on the open road
Mary Waterhouse-Spear, West Paris
I was a convenience store manager ? in all honesty, a dead-end job for me, nowhere to go. Money was very tight and it was difficult to make ends meet.
I had always played my kids' birthdays in the Megabucks, one six-digit number once or twice week at the time. In October 1994, I hit five numbers for a $1,000 prize. BIG money for me. I bought a VCR for the TV, my daughter and I adopted a pet cat for her. He was a wonderful little black kitty, and he brought us a world of joy for many years. I put the rest of the money away for an "emergency."
In 1994, at the age of 39, I took what I have always referred to as a giant leap and went off to professional driving school, a.k.a. tractor-trailer school. After making a deposit of $600 on the class (that emergency fund), securing a student loan for the balance and being assured that they could indeed teach me to drive a standard vehicle, off I went.
Every weekend for nearly six months, it meant an overnight trip to New Hampshire, rain, snow, sleet or hail, 10-hour days.
Each weekend was an adventure and a whirlwind of events. Looking back on it, I should have been scared out of my mind. It was a tremendous commitment, physically, financially and emotionally.
Little did I realize at the time, it was all a part of God's plan for me. He gave me the strength and the fortitude to achieve my goal, and not only did I gain great confidence in my abilities, not to mention a great increase in my income and job security, but it was there in that classroom that I met a wonderful young man with dreams of his own whom I would grow to love, Tom Spear.
We pooled our dreams together and set out on the highways of this great country in 1995. We married in 1998. Now it is our leap that we so fondly recall what brought us to where we are today. We highly recommend it!
Seventeen great dates
Bob Woodbury, Winslow
In July 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened the Great Lakes to the world. I was on one of 28 U.S. Navy warships to sail the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes for the first time since the War of 1812, one of four ships to sail all five Great Lakes and one of two to go all the way to the end, Duluth-Superior Harbor, where my wife, Marion, picked up a sailor.
Actually we were in Duluth three days. I went out with her girlfriend the first night, her sister the second and her the third. We continued to communicate, then a year later, in July, she came to Maine on two weeks' vacation.
With my ship in dry dock in Boston, I took two weeks leave. My mom, dad and I wined, dined and showed her much of the state of Maine. She returned to Minnesota. I was discharged from the Navy in August. In October, I drove to Minnesota to marry her after we had been together a total of 17 days over a year and a half.
We celebrated our 52nd anniversary last October.
Leap of faith
The Rev. Doug Taylor, Lewiston
First of all, my whole life has been summed up by a simple phrase: "Go big or go home." Everything in my life has been radical, crazy, extreme and cutting-edge stuff. I went from living in the devil?s den to serving a savior overnight. I went from bar hopping to hopping up and down at church revival services.
My greatest leap of faith came when the most charismatic church services could no longer cut the cake for me anymore. No longer could a few choruses on Sunday crank my shaft, if you know what I mean. It was a make-it or break-it moment in my life. I was going to go forward or slip backward, so I decided to take a leap of faith.
I would forsake everything that most people strive for. I would sell my house in a nice residential neighborhood and move into a ghetto. I would go from living somewhat uptown to downtown. Most people try to go from rags to riches but I was determined to go in the opposite direction of what most might call success.
It became more attractive to me to preach in the streets then to preach in a pulpit. I started the Jesus Party inner-city outreach and traded in the stained-glass experience to help people with shattered lives. This leap of faith I took 18 years ago has made me rich in other ways. Sacrificial giving and self-denial for the sake of others is essential to my Christian walk with God. The people I have helped have taught me a depth of love and caring for people that I would have never been exposed to if I had just gone through the motions of a normal church service.
A final wish
Nicole LePera, Topsham
Back when I was taking vocal lessons with Virginia Davidson in New York City, I asked my Italian grandmother if she had any song requests. Much to my dismay, she asked me to sing "Panis Angelicus" and Schubert's "Ave Maria," two very challenging songs to perform.
When I played her the tape of my performance, she was moved to tears.
"I only want one thing from you," she said. "I want this recording to be played someday at my funeral."
I kept that tape under lock and key so that it would be safe for that special day. The evening before her funeral, I brought the five-year-old tape to the church, requesting that it be played over the PA system during the service.
"We don't have a PA system," the nun/organist informed me.
At that moment, I knew what I had to do. But how could I sing such challenging songs at my own grandmother's funeral without crying?
"Don't think of her as dead," the nun said to me. "Envision her out there in the audience, enjoying your song. Think of her smiling at you with pride."
I gathered every crumb of courage I could muster and stood up in front of a fully packed church. My relatives looked stunned, for they could not believe what I was about to do.
But they all disappeared before my eyes as I imagined my grandmother, sitting alone in the sunlit chapel, smiling at me. I opened my mouth and I sang. I sang with beautiful abandon. I sang with gratitude for her life and her love. And I sang without tears.
To this day, I do not know how I was able to take such a big leap of faith and honor my grandmother's final wish. But it was one of my greatest and proudest moments ? and somewhere deep in my heart, I knew it was one of hers, too.
(Not) singing the blues
Kevin Kimball, Lisbon Falls
When Mike Bray and I first hatched the idea of creating the Maine Blues Festival, we had no intention of doing anything more elaborate than having five or six blues bands perform in the Bray?s Brew Pub Bier Garten in one day and calling it good. We decided that we would feature Maine artists exclusively, and that all musicians would be paid for their performances. It was an experiment, and we wanted to keep it simple.
What we didn?t expect was that as word got out about our plans, more people and businesses in the Naples area wanted to actively participate. By February 2006 the festival had a full planning committee of volunteers, and had grown from one stage and a half-dozen bands to eight stages and over 30 bands.
The cost of this experiment was growing exponentially and becoming financially dangerous. Yes, we had sponsors, but we also needed to sell a ton of tickets just to break even. We knew the statistics: Most festivals financially self-destruct their inaugural year, never to be heard from again. Add to that the chorus of naysayers who insisted that we were guaranteeing failure by not featuring national acts as a ?draw.?
Despite the odds, the Maine Blues Festival was a success at the get-go and has been ever since. We have thousands of attendees every year, we use our profits to routinely fund area education programs and scholarships, and we are already planning the eighth Maine Blues Festival in June 2013.
Married life
Joan Swindells, Lewiston
It was in the year 1949 when I walked into my first apartment as a married woman. I soon became a wife and housekeeper.
As time went on I became the mother of four.
That was 64 years ago. It turned out to be a very good leap.
New career
Barbara E. Richard
My big leap that paid off was going back to college at 38 years old. I went back to school to get my nursing degree. I was working, a mother and wife and going back to school! It is a decision I will never regret. I have been an R.N. for 11 years now and am happy to say this is what I wanted to do when I grew up.
It was really hard studying, taking care of family and home, and working part time during school. Financially, mentally and physically exhausting as that two years of my life was, I would not trade the friendships made and the opportunities that being an R.N. has brought me and my family.
I love being a nurse and really believe that this was the best decision of my life.
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