Oregon, Here We Come

The last bit of resistance has faded. My East Coast roots are apparently no match for the pull of the Pacific Northwest. After a lot of talking, dreaming, worrying, and more talking it comes to this: the von Doom family is moving to Portland.

This photo is freakishly accurate, as long as you’re willing to replace the little boy with a chihuahua and the gun with…well anything that’s not a gun.

Taryn and I have talked it over and feel that Portland’s a good fit for the family. I’ve spoken with a lot of people involved with CASH Music and it seems like a good fit for the organization too. So when I say “we’re moving” I mean everything. My family and I are headed out to Portland, OR in September and we’ll be bringing CASH Music to Portland too.

We looked at a few cities, but in the end Portland had the draw of friends and a great community, with all the West coast benefits of California. On a family level, Portland offers connections, great food, other young parents, and frankly the rents are more affordable than we’ve seen elsewhere. From the CASH Music perspective, Portland has an enthusiasm for nonprofits and social change, there’s a rich tech development scene, and the music community is second to none.

Moving cross country takes a lot of planning. We’re in the process of selling a lot of our stuff, packing up other stuff, and figuring out how to ship the big stuff. (Lots of stuff!) We’ve gotten transfer papers for the girls’ WIC account and we’re trying to figure out health insurance on the Oregon end. The biggest challenge, and the hardest thing to do from Rhode Island is for us to find a place to live.

We’ve been looking on Craigslist for a 3 bedroom place, and it looks pretty realistic that we could even find a small house to rent for $1300/mo or less. That’s a pretty big stretch for us — doing a startup nonprofit doesn’t exactly place you in a comfortable middle-class bracket — so we’re trying to find a rental in a good situation: a known landlord or friend with a house, a great close-in neighborhood, or a nice place further-out that might be less expensive. Any help would be greatly appreciated and repaid ten times over in cookies and curry.

Once we settle the housing thing it’s on to transferring the nonprofit, setting up regular CASH meetups, and all the other parts of establishing the organization as a part of the community. You know…no big deal.

So there’s clearly a lot ahead. Exciting times, but to sum it all up:

Oregon, ho!