Essay #1

Someone knocks on the door. The dog goes crazy barking, and I go to the door to find a scruffy looking 20-something, his beat up pickup idling loudly in the dooryard. "Ya got any sleds available?" he asks. "I don't have a credit card, but you can have my truck as collateral." I tell him "no", and as he leaves the phone rings. "Yeah, Marj, this piece of crap snowmobile won't stay running." I ask if they left the choke open. "Oops. Sorry Marj!" Crisis averted - at least I didn't have to drive for two hours down a camp road to tell them that. Having your own business has its ups and downs. In our case it was the ATV/snowmobile rental business my husband and I ran out of our house for five years. From late customers, broken machines, late night rental inquiries and operator inexperience, running this business out of our home was a drag.

We thought that it sounded like a great idea -- by running our business out of our home we would save on overhead costs and we could work the rentals around our schedule. However, many people seem to think that since you run a business out of your home you're open 24/7. Machines were due back by 5pm, but many came back at 6:00, 7:00, even 10:30pm. It was difficult for us to have dinner at a set time together when people didn't bring back their machine. It was also impossible to make a 6:00 basketball game when you were waiting around for a late customer. Then, when you finally got the customer ready to go, the trailer lights wouldn't hook up to his truck and we would spend another 30 minutes or so trying to figure out why. One night we were going to take the kids out to the movies after our customers got back with the snowmobiles. They called us at 5:30 to let us know they were an hour away. Over three hours later they showed up. They decided to go to Bugaboo Creek for supper before they brought the machines back. So much for the movies.

One of our least favorite customers was ND. He always wanted something for nothing. Our rentals were for 24 hours, 5pm to 5pm usually. "Marj, if I bring it back around noon, can I have a discount?" Or "Marj, can I bring it back the next morning for the same price?" "Can I get a discount since I've rented from you before?" I only put up with him because he seemed to rent when things were slow. He was the biggest reason that we didn't like to rent to locals. Our prices were very reasonable, and the tourists knew and appreciated it.

As with just about anything mechanical, snowmobiles and ATVs break down. It really sucked when the customer was in Millinocket, or worse, Presque Isle, and called us to say the machine was broken down. This would result in a long, late night drive to pick up the machine and deliver a different one. Sometimes there was actually nothing wrong with it - the customer simply didn't know how to operate it. Sometimes those late night calls weren't a customer with a problem. We actually would get phone calls as late as 1:00am, inquiries about our rates.

One of the good points about our business was some of the people we met. We met a film crew from Denmark. They were here to film how effective the brine was on the roads. We enjoyed them so much that we personally gave them a free guided tour to Pushaw Lake. We met a family from Paris, some who couldn't speak English. We had a couple from Arizona that rode snowmobiles in sub-zero temperatures and had a blast. We had some regulars from NYC, cops that were there when the Twin Towers fell. They were incredible. We had a large group of regulars from NJ that took all of our sleds the 2nd weekend of every February. We had a large group of Blue Knights. One lost her diamond earring in our garage, and I spent 45 minutes on my hands and knees until we found it for her. We delivered our sleds down to Bethel every March for Kraft Foods. One lodge owner became a good friend, and kept two of our ATV's during the summer and rented them out for us.

Since we closed the business, when the phone rings it's usually for one of the kids. On the weekends that I don't work we can actually go do stuff instead of waiting around for people. What's in store next? Possibly a self-serve car wash down the road from our house. We'll build it and pray for sand and salt in the winter and no rain in the summer. The hours are good and the customer contact is minimal.