Life Is But A Dream

Companies reinvent themselves. Celebrities remake themselves habitually. So why not you? We sought out people who switched courses late in life to pursue a dream that had been on hold for too long. And we found a country full of inspiring stories: the commercial fisherman who now surfs three months a year, the business exec who becomes a sculptor and the teacher turned activist. Everyone's dreams are different--like the former pilot who swam the English Channel--but just the idea of a dream can be powerful and contagious. As Goethe said, "Whatever you can do or dream, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." Turn the page to meet people who are making their dreams come true.

The Lifelong Thrill Of the Wave

Fred Sears, 59

Surf Bum

Morro Bay, Calif.

Fred Sears is packing his white F-350 truck for his annual trek from his home in Morro Bay, Calif., to Baja, Mexico, its enormous bed filled with surfboards, wax, wet suit and sunscreen. He is as stoked as any surfer dude in his mid-20s, which by some accounting is what he is. Sears grew up in Hermosa Beach, Calif., and surfed as much as he possibly could during his teenage years. At 15, as soon as he got his driver's license, he began sweeping floors at Hobie SurfBoards, eventually working up to glassing and polishing the boards, and then he insisted on staying at the beach to go to college in San Diego. When it came time to get serious about work, he even decided that he wasn't going to get a "real job," that he would stay close to the sea instead. That meant another go-around--you guessed it--making surfboards, and then, Sears groans as he says this, "the death knell came when I bought a commercial-fishing boat. My mentor said, 'It's time to put away the toys, son.' Of course I said, 'You're wrong. No. I can do it all.' My plan was I was to fish six months a year and surf six months a year. But over the course of the next 15 years, I surfed less and less and less."

The fishing life was demanding. Throughout the 1970s, he would be gone for nearly five months at a stretch on his boat, The Aguero. In the 1980s, after his daughter Heather was born, he tried to fish closer to home, but that still meant leaving for 10 or 14 days, seeing his family for two or three days and heading right back out as soon as the weather allowed. What happened to the fish-six-months, surf-six-months plan? "Well, by 1976 I had to take on a winter fishery, which was herring," says Sears. "And by 1983 I had to take on a fall fishery, which was swordfish. So it was pretty much a big deal if I got 10 days to go on vacation once a year. The economics were tough. That battle was straight uphill." During his tenure, Sears caught hundreds of tons of salmon and albacore. In 1997 he quit.