Most everyone knows it (some of her work doesn’t… if you’re from there, SHHHH!), but this is the official announcement. We’ve been sitting on it because we had a bit of a snafu with our landlady that’s nearly worked out at this point.

Everyone asks the same questions so hopefully I’ll be able to answer all of yours with the following:

Where are you going? Portland, Oregon.
When are you going? Our lease ends September 30th. We have nine days to make the 2800-mile trek from that date.
Why move? We’ve both been here since childhood and couldn’t phone it in without seeing something else. Also, we’re over what this area has become (the general demeanor of the people) and housing costs are unrealistic unless we move somewhere we don’t want to live.
Why Portland? I made a pretty amazing spreadsheet with metrics that are available for most cities and we individually scored them based on our preferences. Portland was the leader by a large margin.
What other cities did you consider? The Denver area (mainly Boulder) and Austin were the only other strong contenders.
Why didn’t you choose them? Portland blew them away metric-wise so we visited it first, fell in love, and were able to save ourselves a couple grand by not visiting them. Now we can treat those spots as vacations. In addition, Boulder isn’t particularly cheap, and Austin is HOT.
What’s so great about the place? The people are nice, the weather is preferred, the geography is amazing, housing costs that are about 60% of what they are here, bike-friendly, great wine, accessibility to the ocean or the ski resort that is open the more days per year than any other in the US (both about a hour away).
I heard it’s always raining there. No, it’s not. They do get more cloudy days per year than here (220 v. 165), but their rainfall totals are actually less due to the rain shadow effect. It does rain a fair bit in the winter, but those are days I’d have been spending inside due to frigid temps here anyway. I’m not yet sure, but I might prefer mid-50s and drizzle over the 20s. I might not, but mid-70s the rest of the year will make up for it. I’m a huge fan of having our windows open all summer rather than shelling out $150/mo in air conditioning.
Have you seen Portlandia? Yes.
How are you moving? Another spreadsheet decided that one. This is not yet finalized, but it looks like we’re going to rent a truck from Budget and drive ourselves. We’ll then ship both cars on an open trailer. There’s a possibility that we’ll trailer one of the cars on the moving truck, but it’s a comfort decision for us that we’ve not yet made.
What does that cost? Our total move including movers, gas, lodging, vehicle transport, and storage on the other end is looking like it’ll be about $8k.
Do you have a house? No. We have been watching the market very closely for months, but found it too hard to shop seriously from across the country. The cost to fly out just to check something out was too great and/or we are too poor 😉
So what are you going to do? You may have keyed in on the word “storage” above. All of our things will go straight into storage and we’ll move into a furnished month-to-month or even weekly or daily apartment until we find a home to purchase.
Do you have jobs lined up? I am fortunate enough to be able to take my job and work remotely. Without that, we likely wouldn’t be moving. Heather will work on finding something. We’re hoping her LEED certification makes her pretty marketable out there.
What if you lose your job? I’ve been there six years now and feel pretty secure. Regardless, we did factor in the possibility and Portland ought to give me plenty of options with Intel just over the hill, Nike nearby, and lots of tech firms flocking to find the next best area, which Portland is 😛
What about your business? It must go. I’ve given my clients an option to continue using me remotely, but it involves them purchasing LogMeIn for all their machines so that may not happen. It was a good run, I learned a lot, but my heart is no longer really into it so I’m happy either way.
Do you have any friends out that way? We do have a few friends in town, some friends made via our plane ride to visit, a couple up in Seattle (3hrs), one down in Bend (3hrs), and family and friends in San Fran (10 beautiful hours of driving, which we will be doing hopefully far too often).  I’m also already in touch with cyclists and runners 🙂
Aren’t your families here? Mine moved away a few years ago and are six hours by car. They’ll now be eight hours by plane. Heather’s crew is all still here, but for how long? Her parents are definitely retiring and getting out soon.
Will you be back to visit? Work will likely fly me back every few months. Heather will hopefully be able to join me now and then.
Can we visit? Yes, please do. We’ll have a room waiting for you and an itinerary that’ll hit all of the awesome. Budget a week to really do Oregon right. If you only want to hit Portland, a long weekend should suffice.
When is the party? Not sure. We’ll have to do something. Taking over a bar or beer garden sounds like a splendid idea.
Will you miss me? Yes.

Any other burning questions?