About Dreams

I often tell my children that all the great things in life that man has accomplished started out as an idea or someone’s dream. Even the space shuttle was originally just a thought that eventually took form. Someone had to decide that they would make their dream come true and worked hard until it did.

Sometimes you have to work hard at dreams, other times they are easy. I know that the accomplishments in my life that I find most valuable are the ones I worked hard at. All of them started with a thought or an idea and eventually they became tangible.

Like the space shuttle, dreams sometimes require other people to become real. They are just too big to contain to one person. This is the idea of this website, to share dreams that are big and find people that want to share in them! Thank you for being a part of this dream!

You've Found Us

You've Found Admire The Dream!

Admire The Dream first began as a website for Roger's Sailing. 

The current dream was inspired by Dave Spence who asked Roger if he would go on a bike trip across the country. We started on August 1st in Anacortes, Washington and finished on October 8th in Newport, Rhode Island. Neal Zimmermann joined us on September 25th in Bay City, Michigan and finished the trip with us.

If you would like to read the daily blog of the trip click here.

To See a Map of the places we stayed click here.

Jennifer French participates in the Stand & Transfer Program for Spinal Cord Injury

As a result of a snowboarding accident, Jennifer French became a quadriplegic from a C6-7 incomplete spinal cord injury in 1998. Prior to her injury, she was recreationally active with such sports as canoeing, snowboarding/skiing, sailing, fly fishing, scuba diving/snorkeling and biking. After her injury, she still participates in all those activities. She is an active user of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) systems. In November 1999, she received the Implantable Stand & Transfer System provided by the Cleveland FES Center, MetroHealth Medical Center and Veterans Affairs; the first women to receive such a system. Most recently in 2010, she received an upgrade to her implanted system advancing from an 8-channel system to a 24-channel system. She has sharing her experience in a blog posted at www.FESCenter.org

Now residing in St. Petersburg, Florida, Jen is a member of the US Disabled Sailing Team, 7-time winner of the Milan-Gruson award for top disabled female skipper, volunteers at the local sailing center, serves on the Committee to Advocate for Persons with Impairments for the City of St. Petersburg, is a Florida state trained Peer Mentor for spinal cord injury, and serves on the National Consumer Advisory Board for the SCI Model System Centers. Over the course of her MBA career, Ms. French has helped launch successful divisions in such organizations as Bombardier Capital and PC Connection, Inc.

Nancy Gets Going!

My friend Roger talks about admiring the dream. While I understand his point, I seek to embrace the experience.  I adopted this view about 20 years ago when on a sailing vacation, I became disabled while walking to the bar to have a post race libation and enjoy the sunset.  The resulting three month hospital stay gave me time to evaluate my life.  Then and there I chose to put a smile on my face and do as much as possible to enhance my life.
My result...I became involved in differently abled sailing and have made friends from around the globe.  I continue to sail and have developed my skills.  And I took the time to develop the right side of my brain and embrace my art becoming an accomplished bead artist.  That endeavor led to even more friends from around the world.