Five blogging moms are driving coast-to-coast in an SUV, all the while blogging about their travel adventures.
The blogging moms will travel from Virginia to San Francisco, ending at the BlogHer conference July 18-20, 2008. Learn more here.
You go girls!
The Cannonball Run from New York to Los Angeles record is 32 hours, 7 minutes. Wanna break it? Watch the video for some tips on the equipment you may need. Alex Roy claims to have broken the record. His time: 31 hours 4 minutes. Gee, I wonder how he took a pee?
Alex is doing a documentary on his record run.
Blog Tour USA will roll again in 2008. Do you want to roll with it? Here’s your chance to get away, have some fun and create something.
We are looking for 2 or more fools volunteers to hit the road and record their experiences on video and in blog posts. All expenses paid. Send us your ideas for your road trip. It can be on any topic or theme— it does not have to be real estate related.
Let’s roll.
Check out the Fly Video on Sellsius Blog.
Blog tour USA in San Francisco July 28- August 5, 2007. Pics here.
We’re still fishing……
This thank you page is in the August issue of Blogger & Podcaster Magazine - (page 26) both in print and online. Thanks to all our sponsors and to all the great folks we met along the way. We love ya! See you on our next blog tour…..
~Rudy & Joe
Technorati Tags: Blog Tour USA, Connectsf, sfconnect, Inman, Sellsius
We finally made it. New York to San Francisco (via Miami Beach). 10,000 miles and 30 cities in 31 days. Our first stop— Haight Street— where love (and hippies) reigned one summer forty years ago. We are here to spread some blog love.
If you want to share the love, call us at 646-714-2720. You can find us parked on Haight Street (at Belvedere), just across the street from a Zillow-like establishment.
Day 16: July 16, 2007 . We have traveled over 4,500 miles.
Blog Tour USA was hosted to a “Weenie Roast” at Cherokee Park in St. Paul, Minnesota by Blog Mayor, Teresa Boardman of St. Paul Real Estate Blog. We celebrated blogging and the Real Estate Weenie, which we are happy to report continues to feed hungry readers useful information, with no artificial additives.
Teeing up the weenies
We all gathered in Cherokee Park to talk shop ‘an stuff between bites. We learned that Edina Realty is the top dog in town, don-chya-know, and real estate agents are not allowed to use “MLS” on their sites or ads— some clever weenie somehow got ownership of those magic letters. Hmm… doesn’t sound kosher.
Others in attendance included Bonnie Erickson (Real Estate Snippets) Lisa Dunn (Real Sage Advice), Jennifer Kirby (Minneapolis Luxury Real Estate), Aaron Dickinson (Aaron Sold), Alex Stenback (Behind the Mortgage), and Jake Hines (Brandl Anderson Homes). I know I missed someone. Oh yeah, there was this weenie in a suit doing some dude marketing.
Rudy & Bonnie
Alex, Jennifer and blogger in training
Lisa & Teresa
Aaron behind the RV
Alex behind the pickles
Teresa signs in
Undercover Teresa
Uncovered
The gang’s all here.
After the roast, Teresa and Bonnie took us for a tour of lovely St. Paul. The unique architecture and varied home styles, dating from the mid-1800s, makes the city an unzillowable paradise. I was surprised by how many homes have dem porches. We learned author F. Scott Fitzerald called St. Paul home, along with cartoonist George Schulz, of Peanuts fame.
We stopped for drinks at a local pub in town. Bonnie and Teresa had the apple-tinis while Rudy & I sampled the local brew. It dint disappoint.
Bonnie’s pet dinosaur
A cool ending to a hot day
We left St. Paul with hugs and kisses from our favorite Minnesotans– you betcha.
July 15, 2007. Sunday. Today we arrived in Chicago, Illinois. It was another beautiful, sunny day. We drove the streets around the Ukrainian Village and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. The area was buzzing with activity. We had planned to meet Gino Petro (Chicago’s Home Weblog) and Jeff Kerr (ChitownLiving). But first we thought we’d take in an Open House.
We found one in Ukrainian Village. Hmm… what if we Zillowed the house and went in with our laptops to guestion the agent? Sounded like a good idea— to test Zillow as a buyer tool. The house we found was listed at $499,000, but the zestimate had it pegged at $449,000. Not bad. Maybe we could use the difference to our advantage.
The agent’s assistant was a bit taken aback when we approached with camera, microphone and computer. She consented to show us the house (which was very nice with an upgraded kitchen and appliances). We asked her if she knew of Zillow. She did not. We explained to her that it was a valuation site which estimated home values based on public data. She seemed surprised when we showed her the zestimate. She was at a loss to explain the difference. She said she would visit Zillow. We thanked her and went outside to wait for consumers to come by.
We interviewed several visitors to the Open House. None had heard of Zillow but all were intriqued by the possibilty of using zestimates to negotiate lower prices. Funny, we found ourselves promoting Zillow to buyers.
When we asked how the folks knew about the Open House, several said Dreamtown, which they said was a Chigaco search engine. Funny, we never heard of it. We checked it out and found that it was actually a brokerage made to look like a search engine. Clever.
After the Open House experiment, we went to visit real estate agent and blogger Gino Petro, who was holding his own Open House— at HIS condo. He took us for a tour of his crib in Lakeview (gorgeous). He had advertisied it on Craigslist. To entice visitors, he offered a free bottle of wine. It worked.
Gino also showed us his blogging throne:
We discovered that Gino was once a stage actor. He also plays the guitar, which he gladly demonstrated for us. And here’s an interesting tidbit. Gino told us he was the recipient of one of Zillow’s goodie bags (they have a point woman in Chicago) which contained $500 in free ads and some pens. It seems Gino rated as an influencer in the Chicago market— one of the fringe benefits of blogging.
Since Gino had some more visitors, we took some pics and said our goodbyes.
We set out to get some lunch before meeting Jeff Kerr. We struck up a conversation with a local resident, who happened to be a published author and French Literature professor. He recommended Capri. The food there was delicious.
As we were eating, we noticed the crowds thicken on the street. It was the fans who had attended the Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We noticed no one was smiling or animated, suggesting that the Cubbies had lost the game. We were surprised to learn the Cubs won. Interesting. Maybe the fans were so used to their team losing, they instintively wore those game faces.
Jeff Kerr signs in
Jeff met us outside the restaurant. We showed him the RV and put him in the hotseat for an interview. As we were talking, a meter maid walked by. I immediately jumped up and ran outside to feed the meter. Jeff chuckled at my panic and said it was Sunday and there was no need for concern. As he was explaining the city parking regs, he looked out the window at his own car parked across the street and noticed what looked like a parking ticket. He rushed out to check and sure enough, Jeff had been bagged. Rudy and I started to laugh and told Jeff not to worry– we told him to send the ticket to Brad Inman. Sorry Brad.
As it was getting late, we got a few last pics and headed out of town.
Thanks to Gino & Jeff for welcoming us to their windy city.
Joe, Jeff & Rudy
We started the long drive to St. Paul. We stopped at a rest stop and called it a night.
Rest stop nightcap.
July 24, 2007. 11:00 pm.
We were just ninety miles from Ardell’s house when strong winds swooped down on us. The RV started to get blown around the highway. Not wanting to end up like this, we pulled off at the next rest stop. It was already packed with truckers who knew better. See you in the morning Ardell.
