| This Month's Featured Cacher: Call2teachfamily |
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The Call2TeachFamily started geocaching February 19, 2005 and has gone to some pretty impressive caches such as Hole in the Rock, Down the Rabbit Hole, A Place Where National Treasures are Stored and Virgin Gorge Overlook #1 & #2. Jan and Chad are the main seekers of their crew and especially enjoy the caches that take them on the back roads or in some remote area. Jan is a dedicated mother and nurse who works at the Dixie Regional Medical Center as
the trauma coordinator , lead nurse of Life Flight, training to teach nursing at the
University of
Pheonix and is still able to juggle her family life.
Chad on the other hand, is in the 9th grade at Dixie Middle School and looks forward to the day he gets to legally drive. Jan spoils him by letting him drive every now and then on the back remote dirt roads they travel. Chad enjoys cross country track, piano and theater /dance. He is just completing his eagle scout project. The Call2TeachFamily enjoy camping, hiking, skiing, off-roading and motorcycling. They happened to be the cachin' crew that got the SnappyTurtles involved in the game. |
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Call2TeachFamily |
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ST: How were you introduced to geocaching?
C2TF: Our Life Flight pilot
(KingAir)
and another Life Flight nurse
(Bri-LFRN)
introduced me to geocaching and how to read a GPS...I never fly without it...it is fun cause the pilots will say..."Hey Jan where are we?" Cause they always know I have my GPS on when we don't have a patient in the airplane...and my response to them is "I got your back covered!!!" As if they really need my navigational help...We have some awesome pilots...I trust them with my life!!!
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ST: In your opinion, what makes a good cache?
C2TF: I love the geocaches that make you think and work for the answers...but yet can call for help to accomplish it and not feel like a failure. |
ST: Do you have a favorite cache?
C2TF:
There have been so many fun and interesting ones with such variety that it is hard to single one out...but if I have to choose one it would be, for Jan it was the "Treasure Chest" and for Chad's it was the "Eagle's Nest" |
ST: Which cache of yours is your favorite?
C2TF: The Utah Bridge over Troubled Water...I like this one because I did a lot of research in microfisch at the library and I learned a lot about St. George during that time period. |
ST: What makes geocaching fun for you?
C2TF: Being together with my family and friends and out in nature. |
ST: What is the best treasure you have taken from a cache?
C2TF: Jat's China Geo Coin |
ST: Do you go for quantity, quality, or both-just the thrill of the find?
C2TF: I think it is a little of both, depending on the mood and the day....If I am on Life Flight call then it is for proximity and ease in case I get called out during Geocaching...I need a 30 minute response time. Other days it is for the thrill of accomplishing a particularly difficult geocache...and then there are days when Chad and I like to see how many we can do in a day. |
ST: What is your greatest geocaching adventure?
C2TF: The Dam Quiz has to be mine and Chad's greatest adventure...we psyched ourselves out over that one for a good 3 months before we finally did it. |
911 Memorial |
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ST:Outside of Utah, what cache has been your favorite?
C2TF: I really liked the geocaches in Arlington Cemetary...they have several, one about 911 "Challenge to Pentagon" that was especially touching and another about the challenger disaster.
Chad's favorite cache outside of Utah was "It's a Dam Quiz" |
ST: Do you have any geocaching hints, tips, or trade secrets that you want to reveal?
C2TF: Never give up...always stick with it. |
ST: Is there any pre-planning before a day full of cachin'?
C2TF: Oh most definately...besides food and water that goes with the day...We plan out which caches we are going to do and in which order...usually from the closest to the fartherest away. |
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ST: What is your favorite quote?
C2TF: Live life on the edge like there is no day but today. |
ST: Besides geocaching what is your favorite thing/hobby to do and why?
C2TF: I love to ski, camp, go to movies. I enjoy these things because I can do them with my 3 kids and husband. |
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ST: Are you a paper or paperless cacher?
C2TF: We're in the process of going paperless, but for now still a paper cacher. |
ST: Have you ever encountered a snake or Gila Monster while caching? Or has anything gotten between you and the cache?
C2TF: NOOOO,,, but Chad bought me a hiking stick for my birthday and I call it my snake stick...I'm not sticking my hand in there without my snake stick going in first and rattling things around.
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ST: Have you ever found any fun treasures while you were out cachin'(besides what was in the cache)?
C2TF: A real cool petrified rock in a wash. |
ST: What is your favorite game besides geocaching?
C2TF: Chad's favorite game is night games with his neighborhood buddies...Jan's favorite game is Spider solitaire, Majong. |
ST: If you could pick any vehicle, what would be your perfect geocaching vehicle ?
C2TF: Rubicon Jeep with the top off and the CD on and the wind blowin in my hair. |
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ST: How many days can you go before you need to go for a find?
C2TF: Wow I used to think it was only about 7...but I have just come off a record and had not been out for 1 month due to some extra Life Flight Shifts....but it always good to get back when I can. |
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| Visit Call2TeachFamily's Profile page to find out what other great caches they have hidden. |
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Skywest Airlines Seizes Opportunities to Benefit the West
Over 30 Years of Service
by Colleen Birch Maile
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The American West, with its rugged mountains, arid deserts and dramatic weather extremes, was historically a most inhospitable place. At the turn of the last century, high-flying pioneers helped transform the nature of the region. Magnificent men (and women) in their flying machines did more than entertain Westerners with barnstorming, wing-walking stunts. They also helped civilize and settle a land of high barrier and great challenge.
Is it any wonder that SkyWest’s national partners, two of America’s primary air carriers, began by meeting the needs of sparsely populated
regions? United Airlines is a direct descendent of the innovative Varney Airlines—an air mail service connecting Boise, Idaho, Elko, Nevada and Pasco, Washington—all SkyWest destinations today. Delta Airlines is equally rooted in aviation history. It represents the posterity of the world’s first aerial crop-dusting organization. |
| Seeing a need and working to fill it has long fueled successful businesses. That simple yet powerful concept forms the foundation of SkyWest Airlines. In the late 1960's a group of businessmen in tiny St. George, Utah were frustrated by the lack of regular air service. Citizens of the southern Utah town would often book passage to Salt Lake City, head to the airport, and wait for a plane that didn’t come. When the manifest was skimpy, the air carriers determined landing just wasn’t worth the time, and the plane would fly on to nearby Cedar City while the frustrated travelers craned their necks on the St. George tarmac. |
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| In 1972, St. George lawyer Ralph Atkin had had enough. With $35,000 received for legal work, he bought the certificate of Dixie Airlines and re-christened it SkyWest. Together with his brother Sid and a handful of their friends they amassed an inaugural fleet consisting of two six-seat airplanes, a Piper Seneca and a Cherokee Six, plus a two-seat Piper Cherokee and a four-seat Cherokee Arrow. Twenty-five dollars bought passage to Cedar City. An extra three dollars took travelers to Salt Lake City. Regular flights were scheduled for Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. |
Fun Fact
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| During its first year of operations, SkyWest carried 256 passengers. |
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| The young enterprise benefited from personnel with a passion for aviation and a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed. To make ends meet they operated a flight school and a fixed-base operation. They chased the tourist trade by running sightseeing tours and expanding into Las Vegas, Nevada; and Moab and Bullfrog, Utah. They seeded clouds for farmers and transported illegal aliens to deportation facilities in California. However, despite all these efforts and increased passenger demand, the leaders’ lack of business training meant the airline was soon awash in red ink. |
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Enter the Atkins’ 25-year-old nephew Jerry. Armed with a CPA license, an MBA degree and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, Jerry Atkin recognized an opportunity to simply “do the right thing.”
“It was just this little dinky company, and even though I didn’t have much experience, I did have some training in an area they needed. So I got involved because it seemed I could help. Did I envision what it would become today? No way,” he said.
In 1975, after just one year with the company, the board asked the 26-year-old, who was managing accounting, ticket pricing and
interline billing, to also become president of the airline. He’s held the position ever since. Through the years, he said, the same basic philosophy
has guided the company during difficult times and soaring successes.
“Doing what’s right has been a strong guiding principle for me personally,” Atkin said. “I think it’s been strongly articulated throughout
the history of the company.” |
That philosophy has played out in two primary core values—providing top quality for the customer and practicing financial responsibility.
“We do what we say we will do. We always have,” Atkin explained. In the early days the airline flew six daily flights. “We were
determined to fly all six on time, even if we only had one passenger. We’d fly that plane to Salt Lake City and bring it back empty if we
had to. We wanted people to know they could count on us.”
That dependability combined with tenacity and sound economic planning echoes throughout the company’s history. Atkin’s financial
acumen served the company especially well in 1984 when it acquired Palm Springs-based Sun Aire. It was a pivotal business deal
and one that almost didn’t happen.
In the early 1980's SkyWest’s business remained largely seasonal—strong in summer, weak in winter. “That was true for a lot of
regional companies,” Atkin said. “But it wasn’t so in California. We could see tremendous opportunities to maximize the use of our
equipment if we could get into Palm Springs—a market that was strong when we were traditionally less busy.
“In 1983, or so, we went and talked to the management people at Sun Aire, but they said they didn’t think the owners were interested
in selling, and as far as we could tell, that was the end of it.”
Undaunted, SkyWest team members determined that if they couldn’t buy a Palm Springs carrier, their Utah airline would enter the
California market on its own. “We believed we should get into California someway, somehow,” Atkin recalled. Early in 1984 SkyWest
opened its own Palm Springs station. That spring, the SkyWest management team traveled to the California resort for the grand opening
of their first California venture. Once there, in the course of a casual conversation, they discovered that Sun Aire’s management team had
given them bogus information. The owners of the Palm Springs-based airline were indeed interested in selling. In fact, it seemed Sun Aire
was already in the process of being sold to another party. |
Fun Fact |
SkyWest’s first pilot uniforms, circa 1975, consisted of western shirts, cowboy boots and polyester Levis. In 1977 they “upgraded”
to blue shirts with epaulets and brown pants…cowboy boots were optional. |
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“We were really surprised. It never occurred to us when we inquired about buying Sun Aire that we might be talking to the wrong
people. We just figured that we’d made our interest clear, and if they ever wanted to sell, they’d call us,” Atkin remembered.
Even though they’d just opened their own operation, the SkyWest leaders understood the advantages of acquiring the larger airline.
Because it seemed that the sale wasn’t complete, the SkyWest team hoped they might still have a chance at buying Sun Aire.“We knew the name of the company that owned it, and we knew they were in San Francisco. I called directory assistance to get the
number and worked my way through the phone maze starting with the receptionist,” Atkin said.
It was worth the effort. Within two weeks of SkyWest’s own Palm Springs’ ribbon cutting, Ralph, Sid and Jerry Atkin were in San
Francisco meeting with Sun Aire’s owners. They learned that parties to the sale had spent six months haggling over some accounting issues and appeared deadlocked.
“They’d been struggling over details we were able to work through right away. That was the easy part. The truth was it was an
$8 million deal and they wanted to close in six weeks. We had no clue about financing, and we told them that. They were a much bigger
company than SkyWest,” Jerry Atkin said. “We could have been intimidated but we weren’t, and, in fact, they seemed to have more
confidence in our ability to get the money than we did.”
When the Atkins reported back to St. George, the SkyWest team united to make the deal happen. Based on the personal guarantees
of every board member, a Utah bank made the loan. The landmark transaction was concluded less than two months after Jerry Atkin
sought out the Sun Aire owners with a “cold-call.” |
“It was a huge step for us—size-wise and mentally,” Jerry Atkin said. The move catapulted the St. George, Utah company into
the highly competitive California market at one of the most significant times in airline history. Code sharing—the partnering of regional
and major airlines was revolutionizing the industry.
By the fall of 1985, the practice was so widespread that SkyWest realized partnering with a “major” was necessary to maintain a competitive
edge. With the added clout of Sun Aire’s service it was not lacking in suitors.
Yet, while other regionals rushed into arrangements with majors, SkyWest’s management team held back, surveyed the possibilities
and finally entered into a cordial agreement to retain its own identity, while becoming Western Express—an affiliate of Western Airlines—
into Salt Lake City.
The relationship turned out to be a marriage made in heaven. Increased activities sparked the need for expansion and in the spring of
1986, SkyWest embarked on its first public stock offering. The financial community’s response was so enthusiastic, the board immediately
authorized sale of an additional 250,000 shares. The highly successful sale earned the airline almost $12 million—enough to pay off debt,
purchase new aircraft, and construct new facilities, just in time for another unforeseen milestone.
Within two months of the IPO, SkyWest’s code-sharing partner, Western Airlines, was acquired by the much stronger Delta Airlines
securing SkyWest’s future as an independent—and giving SkyWest passengers access to the world.
In 1997, SkyWest’s reach grew broader still when it also established a partnership with United Airlines. A partnership with Continental Airlines was revived in 2003, but was discontinued June 2005. On Monday, August 15 , 2005 , Delta announced that it was selling Atlantic Southeast Airlines to the newly incorporated SkyWest, Inc. for $425 million in cash, and on Thursday, September 8 , 2005, SkyWest, Inc. announced that the acquisition had been completed. Today, SkyWest operates as
United Express in more than 40 cities while also continuing to provide Delta Connection service to more than 40. SkyWest is the nation’s
largest independent regional carrier and employs more than 4,500 people.
Despite the phenomenal growth, Atkin said, “the commitment to quality and financial prudence remains as strong as ever. Only now
those standards apply to an even broader audience. In addition to our passengers, we want our employees and our stockholders and the
communities we serve to know that they can count on us to do our best and to be financially responsible,” Atkin said. “If we do those things
well and are ready to respond to needs, our company will always be prepared to accept challenges, recognize opportunities and make the
most of them.” |
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Today Skywest has Grown to: |
Type |
Fleet |
Seats |
Aircraft information |
Embraer EMB-120 |
62 |
30 |
550nm range turboprop operating under United Express and Delta Connection. |
Canadair CRJ-100 |
9 |
50 |
980nm range regional Jet operating under United Express and Delta Connection.(Most -100 have undergone engine modifications to -200 standard.)
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Canadair CRJ-200 |
116 |
50 |
2005nm range regional Jet operating under United Express and Delta Connection. |
Canadair CRJ-700ER |
42 |
6F/60Y |
2032nm range regional Jet operating under United Express and Delta Connection |
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FUN FACTS |
Early “offices” consisted of four desks and two filing cabinets huddled together in a windowless, tin airplane hangar, and
the original reservation system was a recipe box filled with index cards—one card per flight, the lines numbered to indicate how
many seats could be sold; maximum capacity was six. |
The Canadair Regional Jet is the most environmentally sound jet in the world. |
In 1978 SkyWest was only the third commuter airline in the United States to become a regularly certified air carrier.
In April, 2000, SkyWest was named the Top Regional Airline of the Year by Professional Pilot Magazine.
On July 9, 2000, Aviation Week & Space Technology named SkyWest the Best Managed Regional Airline in the world. |
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| How Did You Do That: Using HTML on your cache page, Part 3 |
Using HTML on your cache page, part 3 .
I'm going to show you how to do some fun things when creating or revising your cache page. You can also use what you learn here and use it on your profile page. In part one, we went through some simple terminology and a few easy codes for you to play with for the month.In part two, we went over how to change the font face and the font color. If you want you can even cut and paste from the page to help in your learning these processes. In part three we are going to learn how to place an uploaded picture on your cache page.
As before, when writing HTML code, the code is placed in what they call a tag, which is also called angle brackets <>. Code writing within these brackets and are properly tagged will not be seen on the web page. The cool thing is, is that what you put in the brackets tells your browser how you want the font to look like, where you want to link to, what picture you want to show and so on. Before any of this will happen geocaching.com needs to know you are going to write in code, make sure you place a check mark where it asks are you writing in HTML. |
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All right here we go, so let's say we have created a puzzle on our computer and we have saved it as a .JPEG file, example "Let's Dance" (note: we can hand write a puzzle, if we have a scanner we'll scan it, and save it as a .JPEG file) or we have a picture that we want to place directly on our cache page, example "On the Cover of a Magazine."
First let's go to our cache page we want to modify, For the example I will be using Snappy Daughter Turns Double Digits. Alright, at the cache page in the blue navigation box in the left corner click on "UPLOAD IMAGES". |
Step 1
It should take you to a page that looks like this (Uploading for Cache Listing). You will want to click on the browse button.
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Step 3 Image. |
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Step 2
When you click on the browse button it will open into your computer document files. Choose the fold that holds the .JPEG image that you want to use. Double click on the image that you want on your cache page. |
Step 3
It willl then return you to the previous page (Uploading for Cache Listing), but this time it will list the name that you gave your picture from your computer. Below the file name is a box for "File Caption", I would suggest giving your picture a file name just to keep it/them organized. After you do that click on upload button and it will take you to this next page. |
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For multiple picture uploading, repeat Steps 1 thru 3.
NOTE: If you have more then one picture that you are going to place on your page instead of clicking on view, click upload another image and repeat the previous steps before moving on. You will do that from this page.
Step 4
When the next page comes up you should see your picture that you picked with the name that you assigned to it below. If all that information is correct click view. |
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Step 5
It will now return you to the cache page, scroll down the page until you come to the words LOGGED VISITS, just above those words is where you will find your uploaded picture. Click on the picture's name, it will be underlined. |
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NOTE: Sometimes your upload picture may take awhile to get uploaded and listed on your cache page. If this happens, this is a good time for a break (3 to 5 minutes). After your break click on your refresh button or go back to you account and click on this cache page again. Either way works, whatever way is easiest for you. |
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| NOTE: With web pages, there is an address assigned to all of them. Example: geocaching.com is an address. All pages within this site have their own address, but are still related to geocaching.com. |
Step 6
This is your picture's address page, it will only have your picture on it. The address is located in the address box on your computer. This is where you type in web sites that you want to visit. OK, now we want to copy and paste. Click once in the address box on your picture's address, that should highlight the entire address. If it doesn't you will need to do that manually. Once highlighted copy it. |
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Step 6 1/2
Click the X in the upper most right hand corner to close the picture page. This should now return you to your cache page. Go to the blue navigation box and click on "EDIT LISTING." |
| NOTE: When you paste the picture's address it won't paste highlighted as seen in this example. I highlighted it to show you an example of what the address will look like within the code. |
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Step 7
Scroll down to the "DETAILS" section. We are going to be using some HTML coding, so make sure you check the box that asks for that. Now if you have placed words/sentences in your long description area, you need to choose if you want your picture before, after, or between. (I had two paragraphs so I placed my pictures between the two.) Once you have located where you want to place it write this code <img src="paste your picture's address here"> NOTE: do not write "paste your picture's address here". After placing the quotation mark leave the cursor where it is and bring up your paste function and click paste. This should automatically paste your picture's address, then type the second quotation mark and the last bracket. |
Step 8
Now go to the bottom of your edit listing page check the two agreement boxes and click the Edit Listing Button. Go to the top of the edit listing page after it reloaded the changes, click View Listing. When the cache page loads, Wah-La there you have it. |
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| NOTE: If you use multiple pictures and you want them in a certain order you will need to place the code in that order. Also the cache page is only X amount wide. If your pictures are too wide to fit side by side the listing will automatically drop the last picture down below to other one (On the Cover of a Magazine is a good example of this). ALSO NOTE: With each picture you will need to repeat steps 5 thru 7, per picture. |
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You can play with different combinations. From what you learned from this one, part 1 and part 2 issue to create some fun cache pages.
There should be enough here to get a hang of it, if you have any questions on anything that we have covered here just email me and I'll walk you through it.
Next issue and last part of this series, we will cover adding a link to your cache page, you will be able to link to any page within geocaching.com or outside of it, within the guidelines of geocaching.com. A good example of links within geocaching.com is the Journey to Ahhz Series |
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| Check us out next month for an interview with the V=Brats, cache creating ideas, get to know Southern Utah and more. To make sure you are notified of the next issue click here to sign up. |
| Share ideas and talk with other cachers in the area. SU Forum |
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