Virtual Tour Software ~ Virtual Tour Company: Tally Tours

Friday, November 16, 2007

Tally Tours - Beyond Virtual Tours

I have one customer who is pretty demanding. She's a nice lady, but always wants to go above and beyond and unfortunately most of her virtual tour business is about 45 min out of town. But she pays for it, so I don't mind taking day trips to do virtual tours for her (there are some good seafood stops along the way, and a KILLER BBQ).

The agent also owns a local real estate magazine and she likes to get good photos of her homes in there, so I sometimes go down to shoot better quality stills than I would for a normal listing. One particular time she asked if I would be so kind as to come take some photos of the "nature around the house", focusing on the "wild cows" that have been in this area for hundreds of years. Wild cows?

Anyway, sounded interesting. I get to this house in the middle of NOWHERE and I'm thinking...OK I'll take a couple good shots of some cows and flowers and then come home. Well when I got to the house, the first thing I noticed was the lack of cows.

After some introductions to the homeowners the realtor says "I'll bring you to your boat." Ummm... what?!?

So we walk to the river behind the house and sure enough there's a kayak. OK the sun is almost up and I'm about to get into a kayak in what I know to be an alligator infested river. NO PROBLEMO! I kayak pretty often actually, just not in the morning when the gators feed, and not in THE WORST KAYAK EVER MADE. This thing seriously had to be made by Playskool. It had a clear bottom so I could see my potential death coming from below. It was also made for someone about half my size and once I was in, I was probably about 6 inches from the surface of the water.

I'm told to go down the river a bit, get my boat stuck in some weeds in the middle and sit quietly to wait for the cows that come to the water. OK honestly I was still having some fun at this point.

I'm sitting in the middle of the river at 6am getting eaten by bugs watching for cows, and human life is pretty much not around these parts. ...but mostly I'm keeping my eyes on the gators who don't seem to care about me yet but are probably planning my demise.

So... I'm sitting there. Waiting for some "Cows", and pretty soon, I see something moving in the trees...COWS...I hope. OK they kinda look like cows...well whatever it is, it looks like a lot of them. OH man those things have giant horns. Alright, there is about 50 or more of whatever it is... OK those are freakin huge long horns and their coming to the water. Yup they are getting in. OK now their walking towards me. They seem pretty curious as to my presence.

They seem more interested in eating grass more than anything else. I guess they are too big for the gators to eat, except for maybe this guy:

Well OK this is cool now. No gators are eating my face and cows seem pretty calm maybe I'll start cruising down this pretty fast moving river and see if I can get some better shots. Many of the cows were scared off when they saw me, but some just didn't care.

I made it out of it alive. I came out with about 50 bug bites and I'll take 50 bug bites over a single gator munching. It's not easy doing virtual tours in Florida!