This MN joint is jumpin' folks!

The Hessburgs back in summer of 1999. :)

WHY THE BIG MOVE TO MINNESOTA?

• John's father, who lives near St. Paul, Minnesota, is the strong spiritual center of our extended Hessburg family.  Back in early 1999, he suffered a heart ailment that has changed his life, & ours, for keeps.  John's family is very close, so this unexpected event galvanized an idea that, as early as winter '97, was starting to coalesce.  The author Thomas Hardy was wrong:  you CAN go home again, when the exigencies of time & circumstance so demand it.  We felt it was high time to blend business & family with a lot more emphasis on family from now on; & that was tough to do from Seattle -- a vantage point 1,800 miles west of our family's nerve center.  This is our most important reason, good friends.

• Next, we simply outgrew our office space in West Seattle.  USDT's client volume had nearly doubled each year throughout the 1990s, due to our increasing exposure in national magazines & on the Internet, & thanks to our many new travel agency associates worldwide.  Operational costs were rising much more steeply on the West Coast than they were in the Midwest.  You get far more value for the office dollar in the Minneapolis area -- & less commuter congestion -- than you do in Seattle.

• Next, our eldest son was ready to enter grade school & we wanted him, & also his younger brother, to experience the best educational system possible during their formative years.  Seattle's public schools were then (sad to say) a bit sub-par for a place as politically progressive & beautiful as the Emerald City.  But school districts in suburban St. Paul are among the best & brightest public school systems in the nation, year after year, per national rating agencies.

• We will always miss the myriad beautiful things about Seattle, one of America's great cities.  We STILL (almost daily) miss the easy access to our favorite Cascade climbing peaks; we miss the Pike Place Market & Pioneer Square; we miss the relaxing twilight strolls down by Alki Beach along Puget Sound; we miss the profusion of excellent Asian & Mediterranean restaurants.  But we DO NOT MISS the 90 straight days of rain & dark clouds that season just before we moved!   And life goes on, folks.  We have been blessed to see that most of our faithful repeat clients have "come along" with us to Minnesota.  Scores of you already have written us some amazing letters & e-mails, or you've telephoned to encourage us in this move.  God bless you for your kindness.  The main measure of success we've always cared about was the friendship of our repeat clients, so these communiques have given us some good-time grins, amigos del mar.

L.J. Hessburg landed an ultra-rare white king salmon -- 24 lbs -- on light tackle near Shilshole, Puget Sound, summer 2008.
Local guides confirmed that white kings comprise fewer than 1 percent of all king salmon caught in the Pacific Northwest.
This beauty would've fetched $30 a pound at Pike Place Market, fileted, but our family reunion insisted we bake it with TLC.
© Copyright U.S. Dive Travel Network. All rights reserved.

WHY THIS MOVE daily BENEFITS OUR CLIENTS:
With computerized telecommunications & Internet technology as swift, accurate & simple to use as it is today, we realized we could run this successful partnership from a hayloft in Tasmania, if need be.  But a peaceful green suburb of St. Paul, with speedy telecomm connections, friendly neighbors & easy air access via Northwest-Delta to coastal hubs seems a pretty solid choice.  We are committed.  We started this move in June 1999 & completed work on the new home office in October 1999.  After many years of 60-hour work weeks, we plan on spending more time with our kids, parents, & good old friends from the Minnesota tribe of four decades. In short, when you feel better, you work harder, right?! That means working harder for you. Now, how else will this move benefit you, our clients?
 

NEW NETWORKED PARTNERSHIP for the 21st CENTURY:

U.S. Dive Travel's move to Minnesota has brought zero deficits & many benefits to all our clients:

1. Two of the USDT senior partners will remain in the Pacific NW region permanently, as will a good number of our loyal clients who lead dive groups.  We have an efficient computerized database & communications grid already in place, & working well day after day.

2. We will keep the familiar "grinning eel" website that has been U.S. Dive Travel's livewire trademark for thousands of page visitors a day since 1995.  This website will function as it always has, never missing a beat.

3. We are adding a couple new staffers in the Network to help us handle the growing client volume.

4. We have established an efficient field office on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, with all our database, brochures, files & office gear ready to roll.  This will help us organize our normal Pacific contract tours more cost-efficiently, as we now have a ready-made home office for mounting our South Pacific, Hawaiian & Asian tours.

We are thrilled to be living this new change & we're proud to share these details with the people who always have mattered most to us � YOU FOLKS � our good clients around the world. And this is a world that seems to be getting smaller every day.  You will have the same persons answering your e-mails, the same voices at the other end of the phone line as ever.  The only things that have changed, truly, are phone number, fax number & e-mail address.  We trust that won't bring too jolting a paradigm shift for anyone.

Thank you for your interest in our dive vacation services, & for what we hope will be your continued loyalty to U.S. Dive Travel.  God bless you all & best wishes.

Best fishes too!

>////*>    <*\\\\<

John & Susan Hessburg, Managers
U.S. DIVE TRAVEL Network

St. Paul, MN  /  College Station, TX  /  Vancouver, BC /  Kailua-Oahu, HI
 
E-mail: divetrip@bitstream.net

Boys + Bufos at "U.S. Dive Travel West" on Oahu, August 2009. Situation well in hand, guys ...

... Oh, there you go again! Seems like they were lads only days ago...

Our computer services expert, L.J. Hessburg is hefting
his other passion during free time, jazz alto saxophone ...
One of the Midwest's top young sax players, L.J. worked
a recent evening gig with his spry quintet, Audio Cabinet,
at Artist's Quarter in St. Paul. Photo © Andrea Canter.