How time flies...

Wow. The holidays, new year, getting back to school, the start of another work year... time to get back up to speed with the blog and our search for a sponsor! Goal for the week is to finish off the more extended powerpoint presentation, write-up a one page overview of what we are doing, and develop a list of contacts to get in touch with.

The summer is approaching pretty quickly!

RVing in the Eighties...

So earlier I posted about our RV trip as kids with the promise of some photos!  Well here we are starting out on our trip...My parents, Leslie and Geoff, my brother, Kyle and I with our family friends, Joyce and her three kids, Audrey, Charlie and Will.  By looking at this photo, I definitely think this is the middle of our trip as we all look a little worn out!

The previously mentioned, most memorable moment of our first rv trip, the magnets on our cabinets didn't work so well and every time we went around a corner, we had to hold the doors shut!

A quick stop at Colonial Williamsburg, to stamp out some bricks...

It must have been hot in Virginia...as I can't remember my dad ever relaxing like this before....could have been all the kids driving him crazy!

Audrey and I, in our preteen glory pretending we can drive too!

Disco Era Cross Country

Since I was talking about previous cross country trips already, I had to include a photo from one of my family's numerous trips. Growing up in a military meant moving every few years and our family always made the move into a vacation. If this photo is the trip I'm thinking it is, my parents had my uncle and his buddy (both fresh out of high school) drive our VW bug across the country with us. I'm not sure if that idea was wilder or if it was my handmade clothes. Gotta love the late '70s!

And NO, that is not the RV we want to take on our trip in 2010!

Mini-Road Trips & Dressed Up Dogs

Happy Thanksgiving! Long road-trips over the last couple of days for us all. But, enough of that. On to what's important. Cooper! Here he is, wearing his Thanksgiving Day outfit. Note that Keith had nothing to do with this, as he was in Jersey and Cooper was in New York. Renee is the one to thank for this...

And here's how things are going with training... pretty good! Wondering what should be next... spin the other way round? Get me a beer from the fridge? So many possibilities.

Let's Visit Hillsboro!

Alright, so that title doesn't seem very exciting nor to make sense when this entire blog is devoted to taking a cross country trip. But after you plot all the Hillsboros (including Hillsboro Mountain, VT and Hillsboro Beach, FL) in this country on a U.S. map, you get a different picture all together. Though the two NH ladies on this trip will claim there is a Hillsboro in every state, there is actually only 30 states represented. Which to me is still a strong showing.

So, which ones do we visit?

Found the iPhone App!

I'm pretty pumped! I found an app through the AppStore that let's me post straight to the blog from my iPhone. This is going to be instrumental on the trip!

Picture us driving along, seeing absolutely stunning things across the US, and being able to share them right at that moment - with a little blurb. I took the pic below a few weeks back when I was in south carolina - setting sun behind the blue ridge mountains.


I'm excited to get home and see what the post looks like on the blog.

RVer Profile: Renee

Did someone say road trip?!! Count me in. I can’t wait to get the show on the road. East coast to the west coast baby that’s what I’m talking about. This trip has been a long time in the making. I can remember planning my trip across America back in elementary school. I was a pioneer, a wagon leader I was guiding my party of settlers to Oregon.

Well it’s time to hit the trail again, but this time I’d like to trade in the 4 axel wagon for luxury RV and a group of my closest amigos. You have already gotten to know the rest of the gang so here is a little about me…

I grew up in New Hampshire “live free or die” and moved to Boston after college “go sox!”. I spent the last 9 years working in marketing. I started working as a promotional sales representative for Guinness, Pilsner Urquell, Amstel Light, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Jack Daniels. I quickly learned that I loved marketing and I wanted to start a career of it. My first full-time gig was for zipcar. I was responsible for growing the brand in Boston.

After many ziptrips I left for a job at glaceau…the makers of smartwater and vitaminwater. I was the Southern New England Marketing Manager. I educated, entertained and hydrated consumers with samples of the most delicious electrolyte enhanced water on the planet.

I recently moved to Charlottesville, Virginia with my awesome bf Keith and put my zipcar hat back on to launch the largest car sharing program at UVA.

I also work at Veritas, a local winery and vineyard. I’m learning everything there is to know about wine…in vino veritas!

As you can see being the brand is what I am all about. I take a brand and put it on my back. Does your brand need a piggyback? I’m ready for my next brand challenge!

In my spare time I like to travel, attend theme parties, make pottery, dress my dog up in silly costumes, go bike riding, hiking and hit the slopes.

The reason for the trek

So I thought it would be nice to show "the why" behind this trip. It's not that we want to drive across country with two dogs in the hopes of driving each other crazy with our personal habits and increasing the risk of losing one other as friends. Not that all. It's because some of our closest Everyday Friends (I think Hannah may have a trademark on that name) Thereasa and Shane are getting married in Oregon next July.

To give you a better idea who Thereasa and Share are, you can check out their engagement video:

 

If you want to know more about Thereasa, you can follow her blog about her life on the East Coast after moving to Boston from San Francisco too.

The word on Social Media

When this was all just idea that we were shooting around to eachother, we hadn't thought about how impactful it could potentially be - when combined with some of the different social media vehicles out there. Well, a month in and I must say that I'm intrigued (and eager to keep learning!).

Twitter: We're starting to tweet from e2wandback. The number of people that we can connect with is phenomenal. Last week, I ran a couple of google searches - "CPG brands twitter", "Food companies on twitter", etc - and the number of hits returned was pretty impressive. I started following a bunch of those hits, and will continue to do so. Check us out on twitter to see what we're up to... and follow us! I sent a couple of tweets out too - haven't heard anything back yet (granted, I did tweet Doug at Nature Valley and Angie at MountainDew - two big brands with a big following), but I will continue to drop tweets and see what comes up. Overall, a great way to make connections.

The Blog: Not much to say here - other than the fact that it's becoming quite the vice! Paul even started up his own blog soon after we got the ball rolling on this one. Check him out at saturdaymorningicedcoffee... We're trying to make this blog as userfriendly as possible - just this morning I reformatted the site so that it would display well at different screen resolutions, added a number of gadgets to the sidebard, and put up some quick links to what we're trying to & our profiles.

Facebook: We are all on Facebook - I'm going to figure out how to link our profiles to this site. As we put up posts, I am using TweetDeck to post up to e2wandback and to my status update simultaneously. Pretty cool, and it's generated a number of clickthroughs to the site.

Google Analytics: I guess this falls under social media. It's a cool tool that was sent my way from one of the Darden Student Bloggers - JulyDream. I'm actually kind of addicted to checking it - and it's going to work wonders in showing the reach of our voice to potential partners. It's basically a service that lets you see where you are getting hits from, how long people are staying on your site, number of hits, etc. Don't worry... it doesnt say WHO you are, it just tells us that we are getting seen. So far most people have come from the States, but we've had a visitor from Jordan, another from the UK, and one from Amsterdam.

Platial: I posted up about this earlier - check out the map at the bottom of this page. I downloaded the IPhone app for Platial - which is going to be huge when we're on our trip. A great way to do a quick geotag.

Blogger App: I'm sure this exists - in fact, I think I've seen it somewhere already. In between wireless hotspots we'll be using the IPhone to post up pics / our thoughts on the road. Who knows - maybe we'll me you and you'll be featured on the site!

E-Mail Signature: Ok, this one's a bit of a stretch, but we're adding our twitter & blog URL info to our email signatures... we're all about experimenting at this stage.

So, what else? How can we be more integrated? We will undoubtedly be learning more over the coming months, but if you've got any advice please post up a comment!

on the road entertainment

pulled out the guitar hero this morning after a few months absence. im surprised that my motor skills for the game were still sharp. stepped in and rocked a 5 song set with 98% accuracy.

there has to be jacks on the RV tv to allow for the wii to travel with us right? we could be guitar heros, do some bowling or maybe even throw in the occasional yoga workout during the hours of road time. with christmas around the corner maybe ill pick up a few more games too.

cant you just envision the lounge scene inside the RV? i sure can!!