[Porsche-O-Phile]

I lived there for a year. The upside is that when it's nice out, it's seriously one of the most beautiful places on earth. There are endless places to go explore - lush forests, waterfalls, etc. The mountains (Cascades) are breathtaking. Portland and the surrounding communities are great - very laid back, family-friendly and genuinely pleasant places. The microbrews and coffee shops there can't be beat. And there's Powell's Bookstore - worth a trip there just to go and kill a day. The Portland suburbs (where I lived) were awesome - it was like you went back in time 50 years ago to the way the USA used to be. People actually say hello to their neighbors. They're friendly and polite for the most part. It really threw me and took some getting used to - especially coming from L.A. where people are generally pretentious a-holes by nature.

The downsides (as has been said) are that the weather absolutely is suicide-inducing bad for about 9 months out of the year. Yes, the rain makes those beautiful forests, but when I lived there it literally rained for 50 straight days in a row, with little or no letup. I'm not joking - I tracked it. I did not see the sun for literally 50+ days consecutively. Sorry, but I can't handle that. I ran away screaming for my sanity.

The other (major) downside is the economy. Even in the best of times, Oregon is tough to find work in. In this economy it's probably downright impossible. We lived there in 2002-2003 just in time for the GWB recession (the one virtually everyone has forgotten about) hit full swing. My wife lost her job and looked for months, only able to find junky part-time or pitiful-paying full-time work that she wasn't interested in. She eventually got a position back down in Orange County a week after applying and looking around once we made the decision to get out and go back to SoCal. YMMV, but a lot of the economy up there is NOT what I'd consider exciting, dynamic, forward-thinking type stuff - it's a lot of residential contracting, landscaping, truck driving, auto repair and similar "job, not career" type stuff, most of it involving some kind of manual labor. It's not a place for highly-educated, white-collar types unless you get VERY lucky (there are some good professional businesses in/around the cities, but they're few and far between). There are a lot of low-rent loser/hippy types and a lot of boorish redneck types, which is a drag on things (most people are pretty cool though, but there are a lot of roach clips and skoal tins/old pickups disproportionate to the population size...)

YMMV. It's a nice place and I got to see/do some amazing things up there. The flying I did there in particular was something I'll never forget. It was simply awesome. I greatly enjoyed moving up there to experience it, and I greatly enjoyed leaving it after seeing how dreadful the weather and economic climate can be.