Davis is a funny place. Perhaps this is neither unique nor uncommon, but I still hold a special place in my heart for the town, no matter how anal the town is towards the students -- especially in spite of, or perhaps because of the brilliant mix of yuppie + militant NIMBY activism pursued by the town residents.
An aside: one of my first memories of Davis was, during a visit as a high school senior looking at colleges, I talked to an activist group fighting to preserve the Richards Underpass. As they explained it to me, this bridge was a historical site and that the big, evil Davis expansionist interests wanted to blow it away and put what amounted to a four lane expressway directly into quaint old downtown Davis. Downtown Davis was indeed quaint, and the bridge did indeed look "historic" (now I understand this is a euphemism for "crumbling," "old," and "inadequate"), so I thought saving the underpass was a fine and dandy idea. Little did I realize that I'd go on to live in South Davis and spend the next two or three years of my life dodging cars, other bikes, and floods in that undercrossing, as well as spend what must have been cumulative days waiting in traffic to get through those intersections during my time in Davis.
But I digress. I miss Davis. It had been years since I was back, and in fact hadn't managed to catch UC Davis's annual Picnic Day since I lived there. I've somehow met quite a few new UC Davis alums since leaving Davis, and it seems that everybody picked this year to go back.
Wow. Things have changed. New streets. New traffic lights. A new stadium. New parking garages. The old places we used to go out are -- at best -- less cool, and at worst a part of Davis history. New bars and clubs have sprung up everywhere. In a beautiful twist of irony, what was once the Davis main police station downtown is now a bar.
Picnic day was fun, though! I took my bike up to Davis to relive the glory days of tearing around campus, saw the sheep dog herding competitions, the dog agility course, the frisbee dog competitions, a grapevine pruning demo (how very Davis), and more. I managed to miss -- just like every year -- the Doxie Derby. Maybe in 2009!
I even ran into Dee, an old friend from Team Fate who's now back in Davis working for ITS evangelizing Plug In Hybrids. In what turned out to be the crowning moment of the day, I got to go back to her and Mark's house to meet (and photograph) their newly adopted dog:
So cute!
The happy family...