I moved to Portland from Ithaca, NY in August 2004

I thought marine biology was going to be my calling, but I somehow ended up a chemical engineer, and now handle contract negotiations -- so I'm not sure I've settled on a career path yet ;)

In the early days (~Feb 2006), a player from Seattle Rain City club had moved to Portland and tried to form a gay men's indoor soccer team. Sounds easy in a city this large, right? Well, not a first.. After a lot of MySpace, Facebook & even craigslist postings we still did not have the numbers or the skill level to complete, so a couple of us decided to change strategy and form a soccer club to develop players into teams and provide an open, welcoming recreation club for LGBTQ players. From 2006 thru 2009 I essentially served as the club's president, and with help of some outstanding volunteers we grew the club from ~10 to over a 100 participants per year with multiple indoor, outdoor & even traveling teams -- and we began our annual Portland Tournament in 2008, modeled after our friends' tournaments in Vancouver (Out For Kicks) & Seattle (Rain City Soccer.) If asked to name something about the club that most people don't know, I might tell people about some of the names that were suggested for the club -- some were pretty hilarious.. Instead of NetRippers FC, we were almost: The Turf Ferries, The Back Door Missiles, or 'Bend Over Beckham'.

We call Portland "Soccer City USA", but the town I grew up in is often called "Socccer Town USA" because Kearny, NJ had the largest number of professional soccer players on any US World Cup team (at least until the 90's.) John Harkes was always my favorite because he was so involved with Youth Soccer, and Tab Ramos & Tony Meola were also consistently bringing Team USA to Kearny for autographs and to celebrate youth soccer awards. You've probably seen or heard John Harkes on TV & radio since he is now a popular World Cup announcer.

Travel :) I've spent 6-months traveling the US, having gone coast to coast 3 or 4 times and also driving Mexico to Canada. I love to visit Europe & try new spots in the Carribbean.

Mexican when I'm on the west coast and Italian when I'm back east :)

Blue

I lucked out after grad school and received a couple job offers where I could choose my location. Between San Francisco, Phoenix, Rochester (NY) and Portland, I chose Portland because I think it's got the best mix of everything (funky hip city, beautiful mountains, great coast, the gorge, wine country, and all the breweries) and it's easy to travel to California, Seattle and other cool spots.

Wow, there are so many.. Anglesey in Wales will always have a special place in my heart, though I highly recommend Norway, Ireland & Iceland as my European favorites too. In North America, the Pacific Northwest is hard to beat, but I love Ithaca, Vermont, Quebec, Montana & the Grand Tetons of Wyoming too.