More about Davis

I wanted to write a little more about Davis, just to give everyone a bit more of an impression where I ended up here. And it's basically all summed up in this driving billboard parked in my street:

I have already written about the bike-friendliness and the large campus. To make sure that the student-dept-laden students don't save money at the wrong end, Campus police hands out free bike lights. And a bike shop hands out free helmets as long as you sign a "Helmet hair, don't care"-pledge and promise to sacrifice your hair-do every single day. However, people keep telling me that Davis is not representative of the US or even California. The campus makes up a good third of the town and students and researchers are everywhere. Things seem pretty liberal and hipster. Oh yeah, and large wild turkey roam the streets constantly.
Other things are a bit more cliché: incredibly wide streets (even in backalleys) to accomodate the huge cars, which are parked in front of mostly one-storied individual houses with garbage disposals (bone-crushing meat grinders in the sink) and gigantic washing machines inside. Exhibit A to C can be found below.



The washing machine photo is from my house by the way, where I live with a super fun vet and epidemiology PhD-student. It's a bit far from campus but the good bike paths make up for it.

Unlike my brother, who spent a few months in Michigan towards the end of his university days, I did not end up at a sports university. I asked one of my colleagues if she wanted to come to the (american) football game with me. She replied drily: "I don't call what they are doing here football." I asked another colleague who had never seen the sport live either - and we went anyway.

And it was a spectacle. It was homecoming weekend and a beautifully warm day, so the relatively small stadium was fairly packed. A sizeable portion of the crowd seemed to be made up of the marching bands for the two team, plus an alumni band of UC Davis. We were playing Cal Poly (like half way to LA?) and it was a pretty tight game. UC Davis ran away with three touchdowns in the first few minutes but then the Cal Poly ponys (or stallions?) came back. We are the Aggies; our symbol is also some sort of horse. Probably a more fearsome horse. Fair enough.

So they were playing football and taking time outs and throwing balls and flags and smacking into each other and taking time outs and jumping around with towels in their hands and marching bands marched and the coaches took time outs and cheerleaders cheered and dancing groups danced and then the other marching band marched and rolled on the ground a little and then some more playing and maybe another time out ... and in three hours later UC Davis had won 31:28. In short: it was fun! The sun was shining, the beer was good, everyone had a good time. Except the horses. The ones with the white helmets...

I guess I'll stick with Baseball.