Portland, Oregon Slowtwitchers, I may have an opportunity to relocate from Alaska to Portland. I’ve never been to Portland, but my wife ran the marathon a few years ago and loved the area. The web is a good source, but first-hand experience is better. We’re mid-40s, tired of 6-months of winter every year, no kids to worry about and have two main questions:
Work would be at Portland International Airport. Is it possible to live within a 30-minute drive, in a safe neighborhood, in a newer home (2000 sf) on at least 1 acre, with front door access to good biking and running, for under $250K? Any words on real estate would be helpful.
I see from weather history that there’s quite a bit of rain, especially in the winter. If you do all your running and biking outside, how often are you doing them in the rain?
Any other thoughts on the Portland area are welcomed. Thanks.
Bill,
Make sure you check out the Washington side, too. Good news… you be really close to Bike Tires Direct, it’s the next south bound exit after the airport on I-205.
I’ve been getting into NWTT series with OBRA. If you lived in the Portland area you could do 1-2 TT’s a week from the end of February thru September. Gives me my motivation!!
I live in Seattle which has similar weather. The rainy season is not too bad. I run outside 4x a week and it’s wet enough to require a jacket maybe 6 times a season. It drizzles a lot but only rains hard enough to warrant a jacket occasionally. About half my long rides seem to require a jacket but that’s usually not for the whole ride. This season has been very dry. The driest Feb. on record and lowest snow in 50+ years. Some years it will rain every day -but not all day- for 90 days straight.
Portland is a very nice town and big in to cycling!! I’m over the Cascades in Bend, but most of my racing is done in the Portland/Willamette valley. And as Jay has said we have a lot of TT’s and Portland has weekly races at Portland international race way (PIR) we have the best cyclocross series in the US! The weather is on the wet side but not that cold as you can’t go out and ride or run. You just have to be prepared for the rain. I think a lot of people have a winter/wet bike with fenders. And I think it will be easy to fine a home for about that price. Again as Jey said on the Washington it may be easier to find a home at that price.
Oh and as for running, there is a ton of races of all distances. Heck Nike is in Portland I was a runner before I found the bike and I think you can run a race every weekend if you would like.
Bill, I’m a Yankee that lived in Beaverton for 14 years, moved home for family. So realize that my experience is 6 years old.
The area is beautiful!! We were 65 miles from the Pacific and 75 miles from year round skiing on Mt. Hood. Portland is a beautiful, clean city with everything you could want. Traffic was getting bad (not L.A. bad) but they had just extended the light rail through to the West side so things might be better.
Yeah the weather can be wet. You get used to doing things in wet weather. It’s pretty dreary from November to February. Then you get some warm teaser days. Adding more nice days until summer. When the weather’s nice there, it’s nicer nowhere on Earth! Very nice through September and into October. Coming from the NorthEast, I appreciated no humidity or mosquitos!
OK. Here’s the bad part; unless there’s been a downturn in the market, real estate is $$$. One thing I didn’t like out there was postage stamp house lots. One house we built was on 1/4 acre and that was like an estate. To be in proximity to PDX, you’d probably want to be on the East side like Gresham or maybe even Sandy. As you start to get further away from Downtown, things get cheaper and further apart. This info is 6 years old. You can get a better idea of $$ online.
I moved to Portland from Anchorage in 1989 and love it here. Word of caution. The threat of a snow flurry sends the city into a panic. Rain? What rain? Never stopped me from running, although I may rethink tomorrow’s 15 miler where it’s calling for 43°, 22 mph wind and an inch of rain. Probably will have my vest on over t-shirt and shorts. It rains during the winter, but doesn’t stop the runners. Hard core bikers are out in it too. Just need to have the right clothes. Both running and biking scene are big here. For the Shamrock Run two Sundays ago they had over 10,000 enter all the various races. Bike races every Monday and Tuesday out at the racetrack. On Wednesdays you can go learn to ride the velodrome. Portland is convenient to all the tri scene in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California. You won’t be looking for a races. Lots of pools in the area.
If you’re going to work at or around the airport I would suggest living over in Clark County Washington. You’ll still get stuck paying Oregon income tax, but you’ll get more house and a bigger lot than in Portland. Better funded school system and lower property taxes. And within 30 minutes of the airport. Last year I was looking at a new house in Clark County. 1350 sq ft, nice size lot for $170,000. Same exact house, smaller lot, 20 minutes down the freeway and in Oregon was going for $195,000.
I was stayed there 4 weeks on business about 10 yrs. ago. As a runner I loved it. Pathways along rivers, parks etc. There was a run called Terwilleger (sp?) road that went along the hill near the downtown with spectacular view of the Mt. Hood and the city. I’ll never forget it.
While the Portland weather IN GENERAL is similar to Seattle, there is one feature (that I’ve seen first hand several times) that Seattle doesn’t have – ice storms. The Columbia River is the only sea-level passage through the Cascades. Which means that you can get a lot of cold air from the east dumping into the region under heavy rain clouds. Temperature inversion. Can get quite messy. Not that it happens often, but when it does, it can pretty well lock up the town.
Can you get housing within a 30-minute drive? Sure. That’s actually a pretty big region. And while Portland downtown traffic can get pretty bad in the afternoon commute, the are is set up much better than Seattle. Northbound I-5 is the worst, and that is possibly due to the propensity for continuous construction (much like the Seattle area as well).
I’ve been in Portland or the vicinity for most of my 50 years. A few possibly relevant thoughts:
Runners around here are fanatics - think Nike, U of O distance runners (Pre), Alberto Salazar’s training, etc. Adidas HQ is in town also, as is InSport. Probably a bunch more that skip my mind.
Gore-tex and running are meant to be used in the same sentence around here. It does rain a lot.
Bike courses tend to be hilly, sometimes very hilly. Accordingly, one may see more drop bars and STI levers in tri races.
VERY friendly tri culture. Some good bike and multisport shops.
Working at the airport gives you many options for where to live - SW washington, E. Portland (Gresham, Boring, Wood Village), NE Portland (Laurelhurst, Hollywood) just to name a few. I-5 and I-205 make traveling to and from airport really easy. I live south of Portland a bit and can get to the airport (which I do frequently) in 1/2 hour.
City of Roses. Bridge City (11 of them). 1-1/2 hour east to Mt. Hood and snow, same distance west to the beach. Population 1.5 million in the metro area. Rugged independent spirit. Liberal politically. Unchurched. One of the whiter metropolitan cities in the country, although that is changing rapidly.
Having just left Portland after nearly 5 years of living there, I miss it terribly. You’ll love it there. It’s such a great place, in every aspect. The rain is tough the first year, but you get used to it, and it’s really quite nice year-round for all activity. Great biking, running and tri communities. Great outdoors. Gorgeous scenery. Man, I miss that place.
Rain, what rain? We have been in a severe drought this year with less than 4" so far. My friends in Minnesota don’t think 50f and raining in the middle of Jan. is all that bad. I ride pretty much year 'round depending on motivation. Fixed gear bikes are really popular here, fender up and get out there.
Also, two words about running in Portland: Forest Park.
PS: I hope you like Cyclo Cross (this is like the ultimate mecca for it)
Good choice on Portland. The city seesm to have the biggest selection of Non-Starbucks coffee shops and also micro-breweries that I have ever seen. If you love good beer and coffee, you will love this side of Portland.
As for the weather - I lived up the coast a bit in Vancouver for 10 years and the winter it is wet. It can also be very grey, for days weeks on end. If you need to see the sun a couple of times a week, you may want to think again.You will need a winter bike with fenders for riding on the wet days. Fenders are were mandatory for winter wet group rides in the Vancouver area.
Great place to train though. Nike did not settle in nearby Beaverton by mistake. I suspect that Phil Knight and Co. set up shop there because they like to be outdoors training in beautiful natural seetings, and Portland defiantly has that. There is a Park right near the downtown area where you can run for 20 miles and never cross a road!
Thanks to everyone for the feedback validating that Portland is indeed a nice area.
Our biggest concern was housing as several real estate web sites were full of $250k+ homes on lots less than 1/4 acre, and not a lot of quality looking homes for under $250K. Based on several replies, it seems feasible to find a decent home in our price range. I’ll get a good map and check it out in better detail.
Forest Park is just to the North and West of Downtown. You can access the Park from the city level streets. My wife is running a 100km trail race today in the park all on the Wildwood trail, out 31 miles and back. And yes, we are having a wet day. But hey, that’s why it’s so green and beatiful. I’m delighted the Californians are freaked out by our winters, otherwise this place would have 6 million people!
Popular spot to access Forest Park is to drive up NW Thurman as far as it will go, and you come to the start of Leif Erickson trail; which is 11 miles of a gravel road. One and only porta-pottie is 1/4 mile in. From Leif you can take a number of side trails. Big spot for runners and mountain bikes. First mile can be a little rocky. There are maps of the whole trail system.
Two questions for Forest Park running: 1) Is it safe for a woman to run in the park alone during the day; and 2) Does the Garmin 201/301 work in this park or is there too much tree coverage?
In response to question #1: yes, she’ll be safe there. Leif Ericson is a dirt road that’s flat with some very gentle rollers and always has runners and mountain bikers on it. The Wildwood Trail is more of a single-track run/hike only trail that’s over 30 miles long with a lot of hills. Wildwood is a little more desolate during the day on weekdays, but quite a few people on the weekends. There’s quite a few shorter trails that link Wildwood and Leif throughout the park, as well as some fire roads. Mountain bikes are only allowed on Leif and some of the fire roads.
I don’t know if a garmin works in the park or not. I would think that it would on Leif, BUT…both Leif and Wildwood have markings every 1/4 mile, so it’s pretty easy to calculate your distance.