It's Not Easy Being GREEN

I'm not sure how many of you know this story, but my move to Portland was a fairly spontaneous one. I had moved back to Nevada in 2001 after living in Seattle for nearly 7 years. Whenever I feel like my life is stagnant, I have been known to make big changes with reckless abandon.

That's an entirely different blog.

Toward the end of 2004 I was looking for such a change. In October of '04, I had decided to sell my house in (then) Virginia City to buy a piece of commercial property (also in V.C). It was a very cool old brick building smack dab in the middle of downtown Virginia City. It had a cavernous, I mean massive, open downstairs and a very rundown apartment upstairs that at one point had been a boarding house. The thought was, I would run a cafe downstairs and live upstairs. The building was in pretty good shape for being 130 years old, and I was really excited about it. The offer was in, the appraisal was done ($3,000 for a commercial appraisal-- ouch), and we were set to close escrow December 30th. Everything but the final paperwork was signed.

I had already made plans that year to spend New Year's Eve in Portland. Tickets were purchased. Valerie and I had been coming up with themes for the party we would be co-hosting (That was the year 'school' was the theme-- Good Times). Well, as the story goes, I spoke with my real estate agent the week before I left. We were talking about the deal and my plans for the cafe. He was excited because Virginia City really needed a place that served a decent cup of coffee. He casually mentioned to me that I needed to make sure to carefully screen all potential employees for drugs and backgrounds because there is an element in V.C. that he said, "would either run off your customer base, or rob you blind."

This statement really stuck with me and got me doing a lot of thinking. I thought, "This is not the kind of town I want to raise kids in." I always knew I would eventually find the right someone to start a family with, but it wasn't until that moment that I understood how important a decision it is.

So, here I am in Portland. It's New Year's Eve, and all my friends at the party, specifically Alison asked me, "So when are you moving here?" I had been asked this question before, but never considered it as a serious option. I actually liked being in Nevada, liked my job and loved my house. Things were pretty good, but there was that certain something that was missing. I had missed living in the Northwest since I left Seattle. And, after visiting Portland so often over the years, I used to say to people that if I ever moved back to the Pacific Northwest again, I would move to Portland. On the plane ride home after that trip, I decided to do just that. My house was already sold. My belongings were already packed. All I really needed to do was have a place to go. The next day that I was scheduled to work, I gave notice. My last day was January 12th, 2005. I came to Portland at the end of January and within a week lined up a job and made an offer on a house. By March, it was a done deal. Luckily, the paperwork that would have made my commercial real estate deal official expired on 12/30/04. It was because I was in Portland for New Years that I was able to move here and get out of the deal without any penalties.

That's the backstory, so here's the blog. Portland is a great town. There are many, too many, reasons to live here. First of all, I love the weather and the climate. I like it when things are green. Water makes that happen. I also love the way the city feels. By that, I mean, that because of all the neighborhoods, it still feels like you live in a small town, but have all the conveniences of being in a city. Add to that the public transportation system, more restaurants than you could ever eat at, cultural events, the annual Brewfest, I mean it's just fantastic and keeps getting better. I also love that the community at large votes in a way that is more in line with what I believe than it ever did in Nevada. It's going to take a lot of California overflow to turn Nevada into a blue state, and by then it would suck more than is tolerable. Anyway, the point is, I love that people (and the city itself) are so progressive when it comes to pretty much everything. I love that people are concerned about the environment, and DO something about it. In Virginia City, there was no such thing as curbside recycling. Here, I don't think there's much you can't recycle. What doesn't go in the curbside bin can go to a grocery store for recycling.

I guess the overall point of what I'm trying to get at, is that just feels good to be doing things for the environment, and living in a town where that's supported and sought after. Now, since Elliott has been born, it seems even more important so that he and his kids, and their kids, and so on, respect and care for our planet. I think Portland is a great place to do that.

To date, Stephanie and I have made the following adjustments in our lives, and it just plain feels good, plus it feels like the right thing to do: 1) I personally try to recycle everything they will take. I even take the little cardboard rip cords off of frozen food and recycle them. For some reason, our curbside recyclers only take plastic bottles with "necks". I admit, I haven't been rinsing out the yogurt containers and taking them to where they do recycle, but that's coming. 2) We bought a Prius hybrid in July. We love this car. It averages around 50 miles per gallon. It's much roomier and functional than you might expect and rides really smoothly. We rave about it all the time, so I won't ramble, but we love it. The last time I filled the gas tank of my old truck, it was $75. The first time we filled the Prius, it was $15.65. Basically, we reduced our fuel consumption by about 75 percent. 3) We have started taking daily walks and have been picking up cans and recycling along the way. At first, it started out as a fundraising effort (The 5 cent deposits add up. As Stephanie likes to say, "You wouldn't walk by a nickel without picking it up." So now, we pick up cans on our daily walks. The first day we did it together, we picked up $3.25 worth of cans and bottles. We casually joke that this is how we are going to put Elliott through Harvard Medical School... but we've done such a good job of picking up the section of trail that we walk, that we're lucky if we make a quarter nowadays. 4) We take our own cups when we go out for coffee. This may not seem like a big deal, but with 2 people going for coffee at least once daily, that adds up to over 700 cups we personally keep out of landfills each year. That's an easy one 5) The newest GREEN venture of ours is that we are just now converting our oil furnace to BIODIESEL. We just got the tank filled for the first time today. Supposedly it burns at the same rate as regular heating oil, just much much cleaner. No special equipment is necessary. The only thing we'll have to do is have the furnace serviced in a few weeks to clean out the last of the crud that the oil system will leave behind. It's 20 cents more per gallon, but we feel it's worth it.

I guess the final frontier for us will be politics. Volunteering is tough and being proactive in a practical sense even more so. Anyway, we're doing what we can and hope that everybody else is doing the same. We still have a long way to go. Eventually, I'd like to convert to all organic cleaning solutions, hygiene products, etc. but it's a process. I think we also don't want to be the freaky green people either. I know there are many more people who take it more seriously than we do. I could start commuting by bike or buy a completely electric car. There is a definite end point where you want to do what you can, but it can be taken too far.

Anyway, I didn't intend to be preachy. I just hope to inspire people to do what they can. In a world that feel like it's sliding backwards most of the time, it feels good to be doing what we can to preserve this beautiful world we live in.

Live life. Be green. Peace.

[Tomorrow's topic: Lasik eye surgery... since Stephanie is having it done.]