Why Portland

So lemme tell everyone why I just drove from Denver to Portland OR...it will hopefully inspire others to follow this blog and help me out.
So I graduated from culinary/baking pastry school, yep that's right a real honest-to-goodness chef. The only thing I realized is that I don't want to be a line chef...turns out I don't take direction well from others and I'm REALLY good at delegating jobs out.
I have a strong back round in working with special needs persons and just spent the last school year working with broad spectrum autism kids. So I started thinking on how I can combine the two passions into one....here's what I came up with.
I moved here to Portland to try and open up a restaurant that will be called Today's Special and have about 40% of the staff be special needs. Wheelchair accessible chef's tables in the back, Braille on the menus, an ASL interpreter, and picture menus...those are just a few of the things that I want to do. I have it all planned in my head, I just need the financial backing of an investor.
That's where friends, family, and just about anyone else who will listen to me comes into play. Through Pepsi they are giving away a million dollars a month to different grants. It's called the Pepsi refresh grant. Once things get settled here I'm going to start working on the business plan, and the grant proposal. I don't want to have a big place a smaller place that has a great comfort food.
So please tell everyone you know about this, and get them to vote when the time comes.

For now the next few blogs will be about the trip out here, daily reflections on things, people and places that got me from there to here. So buckle up, put on some sunscreen and be prepared to laugh.
There is a small caveat that I must address. I may not always be the most PC person that I know so if there are things that offend I pre-apologise.....
Hang on 'cause here we go kids...